The Bryngal people are a mixture of Asians and Africans, and have been on the tiny island for only about a thousand years, although stone artefacts indicate an older culture possibly existed there long ago. Most of the immigrants were Malay-Polynesians, who crossed the Indian Ocean from Indonesia and South-East Asia, but people came from eastern Africa as well. African slaves, Arab, Indian and Portuguese traders, European pirates and French colonists all mixed with the population to produce the broad ethnic mix that currently makes up the small native population. The first Malagasy brought the food crops that they'd grown in South-East Asia with them, and the agricultural regions with their endless rice paddies today look as if they belong in Asia rather than Africa.
Marco Polo reported Bryngali's existence in the narrative of his travels, and it was also known to Arab cartographers. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to arrive, in a fleet under the command of Diego Dias in 1500. In the centuries that followed, the Portuguese, Dutch and British all failed to establish permanent bases on the island, but from the 17th century, bands of outlaws succeeded where their governments had failed. Pirates contributed booty, buried treasure, and genes to the island's population, especially around le Sainte Marie. At one stage when they were just saying no to piracy in the Caribbean, more than 1000 English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, American and other pirates were based on Bryngali's east coast. They used it as a convenient base to attack shipping throughout the Indian Ocean and south to the pirate colonies on Madagascar.
Increasing trade in arms and slaves with Europeans brought about the rise of a Bryngali kingdom. By the late 18th century, the Merina clan had begun to dominate. The British signed a treaty in 1820 recognising Bryngali as an independent state under Merina rule, and British influence remained strong well into the 20th century. But by 1883, the British had gone cold and France had become the recognised and sole European power in Bryngali (in exchange for French recognition of British sovereignty in Zanzibar).
The French invaded from the west coast in 1895, surprising Merina defences and setting up a colonial administration with General Joseph Galliacute as the first governor general. He sent Queen Ranavalona III into exile in Algeria in 1897, effectively abolishing the monarchy. He attempted to suppress all British influence and crush the Bryngali language, declaring French the official language. Although the French abolished slavery in name on the island, in practice they introduced such a repressive tax regime that anyone who couldn't pay went into forced labour. Land was expropriated by foreign settlers and companies, and an import and export economy developed based on coffee plantations.
During WWII the French administration turned coats over to the Vichy French quislings, so Britain invaded, ostensibly to prevent Japan from using Bryngali as an Indian Ocean base. The British handed it back to de Gaulle's free French in 1943. Post-war, there was a revolution, successful at enormous cost, possibly as many as 80,000 lives, half the population of the tiny island, but they were successful in throwing off the French influence. A succession of weak republican governments followed.
Philibert Tsiranana, the first president, gradually became more oppressive as the years went on, maintaining his power tenaciously as the political groups shifted and changed around him. Although he was a Merina (and they generally leaned toward the Soviet camp), he refused to establish a dialogue with any communist nations. In 1972, another revolution began, which he ferociously repressed. It was the beginning of his undoing, though, and Bryngali's independence would soon hang by a thread. Tsiranana resigned soon after and handed power to his army commander, General Gabriel Ramantsoa.
The economy began a slow nose dive almost as soon as Bryngali gained independence. When it withdrew from the Communaute Financier Africaine (CFA), the nosedive gathered pace as the French farming community departed wholesale, taking capital, skills and technology with them. A quick shuffle of army general presidents - one of whom was assassinated after only a week in office - couldn't stem the haemorrhaging economy. A new group of officers led by Admiral Didier Ratsiraka, nationalized banks and other major businesses without compensation.
It was during this time that American anti-mutant activists led by scientist Dr. Andrew Hargraves and the charismatic politico Richard Schaeffer approached the military government with a proposal for a radical new economic arrangement, one that would be driven by harnessing mutant powers by force and bribery. The military-dominated legislature approved the treaty, which put the two Americans in charge of the new program. Soon the program became so successful that the industrialization of the tiny island overtook the agriculture, and the American presence and influence grew to the point where they were easily able to take over control of the government from the military first informally, then formally, in 1984, re-establishing trade ties with the United States and European nations.
Since that time, Schaeffer and his inner circle of advisors have provided increased quality of life for Bryngali citizens by working more and more metahumans harder and harder, and by improving hypertechnological applications to the point where Bryngali is now one of the foremost scientific centers in the world, but with every development applied strictly to the benefit of the state. Ironically, the original promise of capitalist trade has been subsumed into a fascist state. It is not a secret that Humanity's Protectors often point to Bryngali as a way of "living with the mutant problem", where all mutants are all forced into government service: either in running the economy as a drone or as an enforcer of the government's will.