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The Pink Map - Portugal's claim of sovereignty of the land between Portuguese Angola and Portuguese Mozambique.

The Pink Map (Portuguese: Mapa cor-de-rosa), also known as the Rose-coloured Map, was a document prepared in 1882 to represent Portugal's claim of sovereignty of a land corridor between Angola and Mozambique. The area claimed included the whole of what is currently Zimbabwe, and large parts of modern Zambia and Malawi. In the first half of the 19th century, Portugal fully controlled only a few coastal towns in Angola and Mozambique; it also claimed suzerainty over other almost independent towns and nominally Portuguese subjects in the Zambezi valley, but could rarely enforce it. However, most of the territory now within Angola and Mozambique was entirely independent of any Portuguese control. Between 1840 and 1869, Portugal expanded the ares it controlled but began to feel threatened by the activities of other powers. It reacted by funding scientific exploration of central Africa and trying to negotiate bi-lateral treaties with its European rivals. However, the British government refused to accept any claims not based on effective occupation and following disputes with Portugal over the Shire Highlands and Manicaland Britain issued the 1890 British Ultimatum to Portugal on 11 January 1890. This ensured that Portuguese military forces retreated from areas claimed by Portugal on the basis of historical discovery and recent exploration, but also claimed by Britain on the basis of effective occupation. The ultimatum ended Portuguese hopes of linking Angola and Mozambique.

Portuguese possessions 1800-1870=

At the start of the 19th century, effective Portuguese governance in Africa south of the equator was limited. Portuguese Angola consisted of the areas around Luanda and Benguela, and a few almost independent towns over which it claimed suzerainty, the most northerly of which was Ambriz. Portuguese Mozambique was limited to the Island of Mozambique and several other coastal trading posts or forts as far south as Delagoa Bay. In the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Angola's main function was to supply Brazil with slaves. This was facilitated, firstly by the development of coffee plantations in southern Brazil from the 1790's, and second, the two agreements of 1815 and 1817 between Britain and Portugal, which (on paper at least) limited Portuguese slave trading to areas south of the equator. This trade diminished after Brazilian independence in 1822, and more sharply following an agreement between Britain and Brazil in 1830 by which the Brazilian government prohibited slave imports. To find slaves for export from the the Angolan towns, Afro-Portuguese traders penetrated as far inland as Katanga and Kazembe, but otherwise there was little penetration of the interior and no attempt to establish control. When the Brazilian slave trade declined, slaves were used on Portuguese plantations which stretched inland of Luanda along the Cuanza River and to a lesser extent around Benguela. After Moçâmedes had been founded south of Benguela in 1840, and Ambriz had been occupied in 1855, Portugal controlled a continuous coastal strip from Ambriz to Moçâmedes, but little inland. Although Portugal claimed to control the Congo estuary, Britain would at best accept it had certain limited rights in the Cabinda enclave north of the river, although these did not make Cabinda Portuguese territory.

Portugal had occupied parts of the coast of Mozambique from the 16th century, but at the start of the 19th century, its presence was limited to Mozambique Island, Ibo and Quelimane in northern Mozambique, outposts at Sena and Tete in the Zambezi valley and Sofala to the south of the Zambezi and a port town at Inhambane further south again. Although Delagoa Bay was regarded as Portuguese territory, Lourenço Marques was not settled until 1781, and was temporarily abandoned after a French raid in 1796. In the late 18th century, most of the slaves exported through the Portuguese settlements in Mozambique were sent to Mauritius and Réunion, at that time both French colonies, but this trade was disrupted by wars with France, and in the early 19th century, many slaves were sent to Brazil. As was the case with Angola, slave exports declined after 1830, but were partly replaced by exports of ivory through Lourenço Marques from the 1840's onward.

Although Portugal claimed sovereignty over Angoche and a number of smaller Muslim coastal towns, these were virtually independent at the start of the 19th century. However, after Portugal had renounced the slave trade, these towns carried it in and, fearing British or French intervention, Portugal brought these towns under more effective control. Angoche resisted, and it took a military expedition and occupation in 1860-1 to end its slave trading. Portugal had also initiated the Prazo system of large leased estates under nominal Portuguese rule in the Zambezi valley. By the end of the 18th century, the valleys of the Zambezi and lower Shire River were controlled by four families that claimed to be Portuguese subjects but which were virtually independent. However, from 1840 the Portuguese government embarked on a series of military campaigns in an attempt to bring the prazos under its effective control. The Portuguese troops suffered several major setbacks before the last of the prazos was forced to submit in 1869.

In other inland areas, there was not even a pretence of Portuguese control. In the interior of what is today southern and central Mozambique, Nguni who had entered the area from South Africa under their leader Soshangane created the Gaza Empire in the 1830's and, up to Soshangane's death in 1856, this dominated southern Mozambique outside the two towns of Inhambane and Lourenço Marques. Lourenço Marques only remained in Portuguese hands in the 1840's and early 1850's because the Swazi vied with the Gaza for its control. After Soshangane's death, there was a succession struggle between two of his sons, and the eventual winner Mzila came to power with Portuguese help in 1861. Under Mzila, the centre of Gaza power moved north to central Mozambique, and came into conflict with the prazo owners who were expanding south from the Zambezi valley.

As was the case with Angola, in the 18th century Afro-Portuguese traders employed by the prazo owners penetrated inland from the Zambezi valley as far as Kazembe in search of ivory and copper. In 1798, Francisco de Lacerda, a Portuguese officer based in Mozambique, organised an expedition from Tete to the interior, hoping to reach Kazembe, but he died en route in what is now Zambia. Apart from Lacerda's expedition, none of the trading ventures into the interior from Angola or Mozambique had any official status and were not attempts to bring the area between Angola and Mozambique under Portuguese control. Even Lacerda's expedition was largely commercial in purpose, although it was later claimed to have established some claim to the area. In 1831, Antonio Gamitto also tried to establish commercial relations between, without success.

The position in the late 1860's was that Portugal had no effective presence in the area between Angola and Mozambique, and very little in large areas lying within the present-day borders of those countries. By the second half of the 19th century, various European powers had an increasing interest in Africa. The first challenge to Portugal's wider claims came from the Transvaal Republic, which in 1868 claimed an outlet to the Indian Ocean at Delagoa Bay. Although in 1869 Portugal and the Transvaal reached agreement on a border under which all of Delagoa Bay was Portuguese, Britain then lodged a claim to the southern part of that bay. This claim was rejected after arbitration by President MacMahon. His award made in 1875 upheld the border agreed in 1869. A more serious issue arose in the areas south and west of Lake Nyasa, (now Lake Malawi) which were explored by David Livingstone in the 1850's. Several Church of England and Presbyterian missions were established in the Shire Highlands in the 1860's and 1870's including a mission and small trading settlement at Blantyre in 1876. In 1878 the African Lakes Company was established by businessmen with links to the Presbyterian missions. Their aim was to set up a trading company that would work in close cooperation with the missions to combat the slave trade by introducing legitimate trade and to develop European influence in the area. Rather later, another challenge came from the foundation of a German colony at Angra Pequena, now known as Lüderitz, in Namibia in 1883. Although there was no Portuguese presence this far south, Portugal had claimed the Namibian coast on the basis of discovery.

Portuguese Exploration

Although the expeditions of Lacerda and Gamitto were largely commercial, the he third quarter of the 19th century was one scientific African expeditions. The Portuguese government was suspicious that the efforts of explorers from other European nations, particularly those whose leasers held some official, often consular, position (as Livingstone had), could be used by their home nations to claim territory Portugal regarded as its own. To prevent this, the Lisbon Geographical Society and the Geographical Commission of the Portuguese Ministry of Marine, which had responsibility for overseas territories as well as the navy, created a joint commission in 1875, which planned scientific expeditions to the area between between Angola and Mozambique. Although the Minister, Andrade Corvo, doubted Portugal's ability to achieve a coast-to-coast empire, he sanctioned the expeditions for their scientific value. Despite these mixed aims, there were three expeditions through which Portugal might attempt to assert its African territorial claims. These were led by Alexandre de Serpa Pinto, first from Mozambique to the eastern Zambezi in 1869, then to the Congo and upper Zambezi from Angola in 1876 and lastly in 1877-79 crossing Africa from Angola, with the intention of claiming the area between Mozambique and Angola. Also in 1877, Hermenegildo Capelo led an expedition from Luanda towards the Congo basin. Capelo made a second journey from Angola to Mozambique, largely following existing trade routes, in 1884-5.

Following Serpa Pinto’s explorations, the Portuguese government in 1879 made a formal claim to the area south and east of the Ruo River (the present south-eastern border of Malawi), and in 1882 occupied the lower Shire River valley as far as the Ruo. The Portuguese then asked the British government to accept this territorial claim, but the opening of the Berlin Conference of 1884-85 ended these discussions. Portugal’s efforts to establish this corridor of influence between Angola and Mozambique were hampered by one of the articles in the General Act of the Berlin Conference, which required effective occupation of areas claimed rather than historical claims based on discovery or claims based on exploration as used by Portugal.

To validate Portuguese claims, Serpa Pinto was appointed as its consul in Zanzibar in 1884, with the mission of exploring the region between Lake Nyasa and the coast from the Zambezi to the Rovuma River and securing the allegiance if the chiefs in that area. His expedition reached Lake Nyasa and the Shire Highlands, but failed make any treaties of protection with the chiefs in territories west of the lake. At the northwest end of Lake Nyasa around Karonga, the African Lakes Company made, or claimed to have made, treaties with local chiefs between 1884 and 1886. Its ambition was to become a Chartered company and control the route from the Lake along the Shire River.

Sources

• R Oliver and A Atmore, (1986). The African Middle Ages, 1400-1800. Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-29894-6.
• J C Miller, (1988). Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730-1830 University of Wisconsin Press.
• W. G. Clarence-Smith, (1985) The Third Portuguese Empire 1825-1975: A Study in Economic Imperialism, Manchester University Press.ISBN 978-0-719-01719-3
• P E Lovejoy, (2012). Transformations in Slavery, 3rd edition. Cambridge University Press ISBN 978-0-521-17618-7.
• R J Hammond, (1966). Portugal and Africa 1815-1910: a Study in Uneconomic Imperialism, Stanford University Press. ISBN 0-804-70296-9
• M Newitt, (1995). A History of Mozambique, London, Hurst & Co. ISBN 1-85065-172-8.
• M Newitt, (1969). The Portuguese on the Zambezi: An Historical Interpretation of the Prazo system, Journal of African History Vol X, No 1.
• J G Pike, (1969). Malawi: A Political and Economic History, London, Pall Mall Press.
• H. Livermore (1992), Consul Crawfurd and the Anglo-Portuguese Crisis of 1890, Portuguese Studies, Vol. 8.
• C E Nowell, (1947). Portugal and the Partition of Africa, The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 19, No. 1.
• J McCraken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, Woodbridge, James Currey. ISBN 978-1-84701-050-6.

• Teresa Pinto Coelho, (2006). Lord Salisbury´s 1890 Ultimatum to Portugal and Anglo-Portuguese Relations, p. 2. http://www.mod-langs.ox.ac.uk/files/windsor/6_pintocoelho.pdf
• R I Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: The Making of Malawi and Zambia, 1873-1964, Cambridge (Mass), Harvard University Press.
• F Axelson, (1967). Portugal and the Scramble for Africa, Johannesburg, Witwatersrand University Press.

John Buchanan was a Scottish horticulturist born 1855 who went to Central Africa, now Malawi, in 1876 as a lay member of the missionary party that established Blantyre Mission. Buchanan came to Central Africa as an ambitious artisan: his character was described as dour, devout and as restlessly ambitious, and he saw in Central Africa a gateway to personal achievement. He started a mission farm on the site of Zomba, Malawi but was dismissed from the mission in 1881 for brutality. From being a disgraced missionary, Buchanan first became a very influential planter owning, with his brothers, extensive estates in Zomba District. He then achieved the highest position he could in the British administration as Acting British Consul to Central Africa from 1887 to 1891. In that capacity declared a protectorate over the Shire Highlands in 1889 to pre-empt a Portuguese expedition that intended to claim sovereignty over that region. In 1891, the Shire Highlands became part of the British Central Africa Protectorate. John Buchanan died at Chinde in Mozambique in March 1896 on his way to visit Scotland, and his estates were later acquired by the Blantyre and East Africa Ltd.

Family Background

John Buchanan was born in Muthill, Perthshire on 15 May 1855. His father, John Buchanan, was a skilled worker at Drummond Castle who married Helen (neé Gilbert) in 1844; they had six known children: Duncan (b. 1851), Mary (b. 1853), John, David (b. 1858), Christina (b. 1860) and Robert (b. 1862). John Buchanan was married in 1893 and died at Chinde in Mozambique on his way from the British Central Africa protectorate to Scotland in March 1896. Two of his brothers died at Blantyre in the protectorate, David in 1892 and Robert in 1896, a few months after John’s death. His son, John Cecil Rankin (later Sir John) Buchanan (1896 - 1976) was a doctor who worked in the colonial medical services of Tanganyika, Somaliland and Aden between 1925 and 1940 and, after war service with the Royal Army Medical Corps in East Africa and the South Pacific, joined the Colonial Office Medical Service becoming its Chief Medical Officer in 1960.

Missionary Activities

John had been apprenticed as a gardener at Drummond Castle as a youth, and in 1876 traveled to Blantyre in what is now Malawi to work as a horticulturist and gardener. He was one of the original party under the leadership of Henry Henderson that founded the Church of Scotland Blantyre Mission. This mission was founded 15 years before a British protectorate was declared over the whole country.

Background to the Mission

The Scottish missions in Central Africa owed their origin to the activities of David Livingstone, who first explored the area in 1858-9 and described it as a suitable field for missionary enterprise and European settlement. However, his optimistic assessment was overtaken by a major famine in 1861-2, by the expansion of the Yao and by war and slave raiding, all of which severely disrupted what Livingstone had described as a near-idyllic society. Livingstone was himself at least partly responsible for some of this disruption as, on his Zambezi expedition, he brought with him from Barotseland a number of porters who are usually described as Makololo, and left them near Chikwawa on the Shire River in 1864 when the expedition ended. These men had firearms, and they soon attracted dependents and formed several small chieftaincies along the Shire River.

In the middle of the 19th century, there were several major population movements in Central Africa. One was the Yao migration into what became Nyasaland. The Yao people originally lived south of the Ruvuma River in what is now Mozambique, from where successive Yao groups moved to settle west of Lake Chiuta. The leaders of two major divisions of the Yao there were Malemia and Kawinga: these fought against one another and also against the Ngoni or Angoni, another migrant group. The Ngoni left South Africa in the 1820s under their leader Zwangendaba as part of the great migration called the mfecane, caused at least in part by rise of the Zulu Kingdom. Four Ngoni groups settled in parts of what today is Malawi in the 1850s, and expanded by raiding their neighbours and forcibly incorporating captives into their communities.

In the period after 1860, many people in what is now southern Malawi suffered insecurity because of warfare and slave raiding: this led to the widespread abandonment fertile land. Local chiefs tried to gain protection from European settlers who entered the area by granting them the right to cultivate vacant land, without intending to cede its ownership permanently. One example of this process was when the Rev. Duff MacDonald and John Buchanan, both of Blantyre Mission, met Malemia in August 1879 to request land for a farming outstation of the mission on the Mulunguzi River. The site of this mission station was later occupied by the Government headquarters in Zomba, the colonial capital of Nyasaland. The mission station itself moved to Domasi at the end of the 19th century. From 1878 until 1880, Buchanan worked as an agriculturalist for the mission at Zomba as well as at Blantyre, assisted by a small staff of Africans. He received permission from Malemia to plant coffee seedlings imported from the botanical garden at Edinburgh at Zomba.

The Blantyre Atrocities

In the late 1870s, Blantyre Mission and its outstation were poorly organised. Duff Macdonald, the leading clergyman after 1878, refused to become involves in its daily administration and control was largely exercised by Dr Thomas Macklin and three artisans: John Buchanan (who divided his time between Blantyre and Zomba), John Walker and George Fenwick. An increasing number of robberies at the mission led to arbitrary violence against suspected thieves, which was later called the “Blantyre atrocities”. Corporal punishment involved up to 200 lashes from a buffalo hide whip, sometimes with little evidence of wrong-doing. In February and March 1879, one man died after a severe flogging for having thrown away a chest of tea he was ordered to carry and another, accused of murder, was killed in a botched execution by a firing-squad.

Although a small minority within the Church of Scotland attempted to defend Blantyre Mission’s actions on the grounds that there was no civil authority to protect it, the prevailing view was that the mission had no legal or moral right to inflict these punishments. However, it was only after the publication of a pamphlet exposing these outrages in early 1880 that the Church's Foreign Mission Committee sent the Rev. James Rankin to Blantyre to investigate charges of inhuman treatment of Africans there. Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary appointed Alexander Pringle, a lawyer, to accompany Rankin on behalf of the British government. Rankin and Pringle took depositions at Blantyre in September 1880, which Rankin used to prepared a report on the Blantyre cases. This was considered in March 1881 by the Foreign Mission Committee, which concluded that the Rev. Macdonald should be removed for failure to supervise Buchanan and Fenwick, the two workers deemed most responsible for the two deaths and illegal floggings, and that Buchanan and Fenwick should be summarily dismissed.

Landowning

By the time he was dismissed by the mission in 1881, Buchanan had exchanged guns, calico, and some low-value trade goods for a total of 167,823 acres of land in the Shire Highlands. His land deals were dubious, as the agreements were signed by chiefs who had no understanding of English concepts of land tenure. This land was acquired in the name of Buchanan Brothers, a partnership of John and his two younger brothers, David and Robert, who joined him in Central Africa in 1881. These land deals were probably made in the expectation that, when more settlers arrived, land prices would rise. Buchanan also acted as broker for non-residents wishing to buy land, including Alexander Low Bruce, whose land later formed the A L Bruce Estates. After the establishment of the British Central Africa Protectorate, the Buchanan Brothers’ claims were recognised by the colonial administration, which issued Certificates of Claim (in effect the registration of freehold title) for all the separate areas of land they had acquired.

The Buchanan Brothers, led by John, experimented with a number of crops, starting with coffee, sugar-cane and tea at Zomba in the early 1890s and built a sugar mill to produce sugar for the local market. Buchanan himself described progress in coffee planting as slow before the declaration of the protectorate, but he began exporting in 1891, and in 1892-93 about ten million coffee seedlings were planted in the Shire Highlands. The first coffee grown was Coffea arabica but Blue Mountain coffee was also found to be suitable at the heights of about 3,000 feet usual in the highlands. Cultivating coffee as a major crop in Central Africa had a short and disappointing history. In 1896 there were over 10,000 acres under coffee in the Protectorate and 160 tons were exported, gaining high prices in London in 1896 and 1897. However, this coincided with a period of sustained coffee development in Brazil which lowered prices on the world market, and the Nyasaland coffee industry never recovered. In early 1890s, Buchanan introduced Virginia-type tobacco. This became the favoured estate crop in drier areas of the Shire Highlands after the failure of coffee, but tobacco growing only developed significantly after the opening of a railway in 1908.

John Buchanan was instrumental in the formation of the Nyasaland Planters Association, which mainly represented the interests of Buchanan Brothers and the African Lakes Company. In 1895, this fused with a rival association to form the British Central Africa Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce, a powerful lobby group for settler interests. John Buchanan was the first Chairman, until his sudden death early in 1896, when he was succeeded by his brother Robert, who died a few months later.

Administrative career

Britain had maintained consuls on the Island of Mozambique since 1856, mainly to monitor and combat the slave trade. Two of these Mozambique-based consuls, Elton in 1877 and O'Neill in 1882, visited the European missions and settlements in the Shire Highlands. O'Neill's visit was made in the aftermath of the Blantyre atrocities, and he recommended that a consul should be appointed for the Lake Nyasa area. The first consul to “the Kings and Chiefs of Central Africa in the territories adjacent to Lake Nyasa”, Captain Foot, was appointed in 1883 and used Blantyre, where a settlement had begun to grow around the Blantyre Mission, as his headquarters. His successor, Captain Hawes, set up his headquarters at Zomba in 1886, partly because if its nearness to the major slave route running south from Lake Nyasa to the coast, and partly because he disliked the settlers and missionaries of Blantyre. In 1887, the Buchanan Brothers completed a new consulate building on the slopes of Zomba Mountain, near the Mlunguzi stream, for Captain Hawes. This house was later occupied by the early governors of Nyasaland and was known as the Residency.

The Arab Wars

The African Lakes Company was established in 1877 as a trading and transport concern to work in close cooperation with the Scottish missions around Lake Nyasa, combating the slave trade by introducing legitimate trade and developing European influence in the area. In the mid-1880s, the company began to engage in open warfare against the Arab slave traders operating near Karonga at the north end of Lake Nyasa. Consul Hawes disagreed with this policy, but the company was supported by O’Neill the British Consul at Mozambique. When hostilities continued in 1887 against his advice, Hawes felt obliged to leave the area for England. Before Hawes left at the end of that year, he appointed John Buchanan as Acting Consul, although he retained the post of Consul until Johnson was appointed in 1889. Buchanan attempted to negotiate a peaceful settlement with the Arabs in March 1888, but without success. He later refused to authorise CaptainFrederick Lugard, who was visiting the area in a hunting trip, to lead a further expedition against them, because this was against the instructions that Hawes had left. Despite Buchanan’s refusal, the expedition organised by the African Lakes Company, supported by most of the European settlers and the Scottish missionaries and led by Lugard attacked the Arabs at Karonga from May 1888 onwards.

Establishing the Protectorate

Although Portugal claimed much of Central Africa on the basis of early exploration, its attempts to negotiate British acceptance of these claims failed. The Portuguese government occupied the lower Shire River valley as far as the Ruo River in 1882, but Britain declined to accept a Portuguese claim that the Shire Highlands should also be treated as part of Portuguese East Africa as it was not under their effective occupation. In 1888, the Portuguese government instructed its representatives in Portuguese East Africa to make treaties of protection with the Yao chiefs southeast of Lake Nyasa and in the Shire Highlands. Two expeditions, one under Antonio Cardosa, a former governor of Quelimane, the second led by Alexandre de Serpa Pinto, the governor of Mozambique set off at the end of 1888. Between them, these two expeditions made over twenty treaties with chiefs in what is now Malawi.

To prevent effective Portuguese occupation of the Shire Highlands, the British government appointed Henry Hamilton Johnston as British consul to Mozambique and the Interior in early 1889, and instructed him to report on the extent of Portuguese rule in the Zambezi and Shire valleys and to make conditional treaties with local rulers beyond Portuguese jurisdiction, to prevent them from accepting protection from Portugal. The Makololo who had remained on the Shire north and west of the Ruo River when Livingstone’s Zambezi expedition ended and formed chieftaincies there claimed to be outside Portuguese control. Serpa Pinto’s expedition was, in part, a response to a request from the Portuguese resident on the lower Shire for assistance in dealing with disturbances he claimed were caused by the Makololo.

Johnston arrived on the lower Shire River on his way to Blantyre in August 1889. He found Serpa Pinto camped east of the Ruo River in acknowledged Portuguese territory and advised him not to cross the river into the Shire Highlands. When Johnston arrived in the Shire Highlands, Buchanan’s post acting for Consul Hawes lapsed. However, Johnston found Buchanan indispensable in the early stages of the administration, particularly as a link with the settlers. Buchanan remained as Vice-Consul and, when Johnston was absent from his headquarters at Zomba, Buchanan was Acting Consul in his place. While he was acting for the absent Johnston, the Makololo asked Buchanan for British assistance, and in his role as Vice-Consul, he accused Portugal of ignoring British interests in this area and formally declared the Makokolo to be under a British protection on 21 September 1889, although this was contrary to his instructions to do no more than prevent local rulers accepting protection from another state.

The Portuguese claims to the Shire Highlands were opposed both by the African Lakes Company and the missionaries. It is likely that members of the British community there encouraged the Makololo to attack Serpa Pinto’s camp, which led to a minor battle between Pinto’s Portuguese troops and the Makololo on 8 November 1889 near the Shire River. Although Serpa Pinto had previously acted with caution, he then crossed the Ruo and occupied much of Makololo territory. Following this Johnston proclaimed a further protectorate over the districts west of Lake Nyasa. This was contrary to his instructions from the British government, but was endorsed by the Foreign Office in May 1891. Buchanan was made a [[Order of Saint Michael and Saint George| Companion of Saint Michael and Saint George (C.M.G.) in 1890 for his services as consul.

Protectorate Administration

Between the British issuing of an Ultimatum to Portugal on 11 January 1890 and the signing of a treaty in Lisbon on 11 June 1891, both Britain and Portugal tried to occupy more of the disputed areas and assert their authority. Buchanan asserted British sovereignty on the Shire Highlands by executing two Portuguese cipais (African soldiers), claiming they were within British jurisdiction. In this period, Johnston began to establish his administration. He had decided to make no appointments before he arrived in Nyasaland, as he believed he would find men there with knowledge of the country and its people, and who were physically and mentally tough. In 1890, he appointed eight political officers, officially entitled “Collectors of Revenue” including John Buchanan, who was also Vice-Consul.

In 1891, Johnston appointed Alfred Sharpe as Vice-Consul in place of Buchanan. Sharpe, who was a solicitor and had acted as a magistrate in Fiji between 1885 and 1886, had come to Central Africa as an elephant hunter and ivory trader in 1887, but had became involved in the African Lakes Company’s war against the Arab slave traders. Sharpe had not been appointed as a political officer in 1890, because he was on a mission for Cecil Rhodes to Katanga, but on his return, Johnston chose him over Buchanan on account of his legal training, activity and because, unlike Buchanan, he had no estate to run.

Legacy

At the time of his death, Buchanan was on his way to Europe, but died in March 1896 at Chinde, a port at the mouth of the Zambezi, of a severe fever contracted during the journey down the Zambezi river. David Buchanan had predeceased him in 1892 and Robert died later in 1896. After the deaths of all three Buchanan brothers, a Buchanan Brothers Company was formed to take over assets of the their former partnership, and this company was run by a local manager until 1901. Although there were other family members, none were resident in British Central Africa or involved in the business.

John William Moir (1851-1940) was recruited in 1878 as one of the first managers of the the African Lakes Company. After he went on leave in March 1890, he was not re-appointed as by the company as its manager. He returned to British Central Africa in 1893, and became a pioneer tea planter. Robert Spence Hynde originally came to Nyasaland in 1888 as a Church of Scotland lay missionary, but soon became a planter. In 1898, John Moir and Robert Hynde incorporated Blantyre and East Africa Ltd, a company registered in Scotland, which in 1901 acquired the estates of the Buchanan Brothers Company. The main activity of Blantyre and East Africa Ltd was the ownership of estates and its main crops were tobacco and tea. Blantyre and East Africa Ltd was one of four large estate-owning companies in colonial Nyasaland.

Sources

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See Also

African Lakes

Blantyre and East Africa Ltd

{Persondata | NAME = Buchanan, John | ALTERNATIVE NAMES = | SHORT DESCRIPTION = British colonial businessman and administrator | DATE OF BIRTH =15 May 1855 | PLACE OF BIRTH =Muthill, Perthshire | DATE OF DEATH =March 1896 | PLACE OF DEATH =Chinde, Mozambique }}

Category:1855 births Category:1896 deaths Category:Colonialism Category:Nyasaland Category:History of Malawi

William Jervis Livingstone was the manager of the Magomero Estate in Nyasaland owned by A L Bruce Estates Ltd and was killed in 1915 during the uprising against colonial rule led by John Chilembwe. Livingstone was born in Argyllshire, Scotland in 1865 and appointed as manager of Magomero in 1893. Although he experimented with growing coffee and later cotton, the estate was not a financial success and Livingstone imposed increasingly harsh labour demands on the estate workers there. He was also accused of the brutal treatment of those workers, but both the excessive work demands and his brutality were the results of the pressures for financial success originating from Alexander Livingstone Bruce, a director and major shareholder in A L Bruce Estates Ltd, who also lived in Nyasaland. Bruce considered independent African churches were subversive, and instructed Livingstone to destroy the churches and schools that Chilembwe built on the Magomero estate. Chilembwe's grievances about colonial rule and the oppression of African estate workers came to focus on William Jervis Livingstone and, when he initiated his revolt on 23 January 1915, Chilembwe ordered some of his men to attack the A L Bruce Estates, to kill all European men and to return with Livingstone's head. Livingstone and three others, including an African servant were killed at Magomero but the women and children were unharmed. In the aftermath of uprising, Livingstone alone was blamed for the harsh and unsatisfactory conditions on the A L Bruce Estates and Alexander Livingstone Bruce escaped censure. More recently, Livingstone's character has been re-examined and, although undoubtedly a violent man, he is also regarded as reacting to the impossible demands made by Bruce.

Birth and family

William Jervis Livingstone was born on 8 March 1865 at Bachuil, Argyllshire, in Scotland. His father, Alexander Livingstone (1815-1906), was a Baptist minister and his mother Jessie (nee McPherson, 1824–99) was Alexander’s second wife. Alexander Livingstone had seven children, of whom three died as infants and two, including William’s older half-brother, in their twenties. Only William and his younger brother Thomas survived into the 20th century. In 1908, William married Katherine (nee MacLachlan) and they had three children, one of whom died as an infant.

Both Alexander Livingstone and later his son William claimed the title of Baron of Bachuil, although this dignity was not formally recognised until 2004 and it did not imply ownership of any land. William Jervis Livingstone considered that he was related to David Livingstone, but no direct connection has been proven. It has been claimed that David Livingstone’s daughter Agnes called on William Jervis Livingstone to manage the Magomero Estate after the death of her husband, Alexander Low Bruce, on account of this relationship. However, it is more probable that Alexander Low Bruce made the appointment shortly before his death. Livingstone was 28 years old when he was appointed to manage Magomero and 49 when he was killed there on 23 January 1915: most of what is known of him concerns his 21 years as manager of that estate.

Magomero

Agnes (b. 1847), the daughter of David Livingstone married Alexander Low Bruce (b. 1839) in 1875. They had four children including two sons, David Livingstone Bruce (b. 1877) and Alexander Livingstone Bruce (b. 1881). Alexander Low Bruce was a master brewer who supported African commercial and missionary organisations and, after his marriage to Agnes Livingstone, he became a director of the African Lakes Company. He never visited Nyasaland, but obtained title to some 170,000 acres of land there through his association with the African Lakes Company and the agency of John Buchanan, a planter who also brokered land sales by local chiefs. Of this land, 162,000 acres formed the estate that he named Magomero, situated south of Zomba. On his death in 1893 aged 54, title to his African assets passed under his will to the A L Bruce Trust, whose main beneficiaries were his two sons, then aged 16 and 12.

Shortly before his death, Alexander Low Bruce had appointed a manager for each of his two estates in Nyasaland. William Jervis Livingstone took control of the main estate of Magomero in Chiradzulu District and D.B. Ritchie was charged with the smaller Likulezi Estate near Mlanje. Initially, Agnes assumed oversight of the A L Bruce Trust until Bruce's heirs, David and Alexander, could take over when they came of age. The provisions of their father's will expected them to run the estates:

"…not on account of any pecuniary advantage…but in the hope and expectation that they will take an interest in the opening up of Africa to Christianity and Commerce on the lines laid down by their grandfather the late David Livingstone."

However, after their mother’s death, and as the Magomero estate showed potential, David Livingstone Bruce and Alexander Livingstone Bruce purchased the assets of the A L Bruce Trust in 1913, paying just over £41,000 for its two estates. They then incorporated A L Bruce Estates Ltd in 1913 as a commercial venture with a share capital of £54,000, largely held by the two sons and one of the daughters of Alexander Low Bruce.

When Magomero was acquired, it was largely unoccupied and uncultivated, and William Jervis Livingstone needed to find suitable crops and workers. At first, he tried unsuccessfully to grow coffee, then turned first to cotton and later to tobacco. Most workers at Magomero were not local people but "Anguru", a term used to describe a number of different Lomwe speaking migrants from Mozambique. These Lomwe workers came to Magomero as tenants; initially the men had to work for one month a year in lieu of rent: single women were exempt. Livingstone ordered the planting of about 70,000 bushes of Arabica coffee in 200 to 300 acres as the first estate crop at Magomero in 1895, but after poor crops in 1898 and 1899 because of frost and a collapse in world coffee prices in 1903, he looked for more profitable crops.

Livingstone turned to cotton from 1903: growing Egyptian cotton was unsuccessful as it was more suitable for hotter areas, but from 1906, he developed a hardier variety of Upland cotton called Nyasaland Upland, and in 1908 planted 1,000 acres at Magomero with it; this was increased to 5,000 acres by 1914. Cotton required intensive labour over a long growing period, and Livingstone ensured that 3,000 to 5,000 workers were available throughout its five or six month growing season by exploiting the obligations of the labour tenancy system called thangata. This word originally meant help, such as one neighbour might give another, but it came to mean the work that a tenant on a European-owned estate had to undertake in lieu of rent. Tenants were also required to undertake additional work on account of the Hut tax which the owner paid on behalf of tenants. Other men worked for wages: they were often unpaid, underpaid or given tobacco instead of cash, and violently coerced by the owners. Alexander Livingstone Bruce was said to have pioneered the thangata system, and once Magomero started to grow cotton, Bruce, who lived in Nyasaland and had control of the estate operations, instructed Livingstone, his manager, to exploit thangata rigorously. When cotton growing started, the Bruce estates increased the labour demand to four or five months a year, mainly in the growing season, leaving tenants little time to grow their food. Single women tenants were now also required to work.

One of the main reasons that William Jervis Livingstone was killed in the 1915 Chilembwe uprising was the severity of his management. Following the uprising, the protectorate government tried to replace thangata by cash rents. However, Alexander Livingstone Bruce, as a major planter, led estate owners in threatening massive evictions if this change were implemented, and thangata remained. Even after Livingstone’s killing, the work obligation on the A L Bruce Estates was little modified, sometimes amounting to six months for thangata and Hut tax. However, as the Crown lands nearest to the estates were already crowded, and as most of the estate tenants had no claim to settle there, they had little option but to stay.

William Jervis Livingstone was quick-tempered and his actions, including arbitrarily increasing tenants’ workloads and ordering them to be beaten, worried officials of Blantyre District as the first decade of the 20th century progressed. As early as 1901, Livingstone was fined for aggravated assault, and there was testimony from fellow planters that he frequently beat his field workers and domestic servants with little provocation. However, several headmen from the Bruce Estates confirmed that Livingstone had distributed food in times of famine.

Chilembwe’s mission was the closest one to Magomero, and built schools and churches on the estate. Livingstone has been justifiably accused of destroying them, but Chilembwe provoked confrontation by erecting churches on private estate land, and it is clear that Livingstone acted under orders from Alexander Livingstone Bruce. Unlike the alternatively brutal and generous William Jervis Livingstone, Bruce (who had absolute control over estate policy) had the consistent aim of making a profit from its operations. Bruce, whose view was that educated Africans had no place in colonial society and opposed their education, recorded his personal dislike for Chilembwe as an educated African. He considered Chilembwe's churches were centres for agitation, and that by building them on the estate, Chilembwe was making a claim to part of its land. As Livingstone carried out the work of destruction, he rather than Bruce became a focus for Chilembwe’s grievances.

John Chilembwe

John Chilembwe (1871 – 1915) was a Baptist minister who attended a Church of Scotland mission around 1890, and became a servant of the radical missionary Joseph Booth in 1892. Chilembwe left Nyasaland in 1897 to be educated at the Virginia Theological Seminary and College, (now Virginia University of Lynchburg). He was ordained as a Baptist minister at Lynchburg in 1899 and returned to Nyasaland in 1900. Chilembwe started his Providence Industrial Mission in Chiradzulu district: in its first decade, it developed gradually, helped by donations from his American backers, and it founded several churches and schools. Initially, Chilembwe avoided any criticism that the colonial authorities might think was subversive, but by 1913, he had become more politically militant and openly criticised the government over African land rights and the conditions of tenants, particularly on the Magomero estate, on which many of his mission congregation worked.

Although in his first decade in Nyasaland Chilembwe had had reasonably success, after 1910 the mission faced rising debt, just when support from its American backers was drying up. His personal life was clouded by the death of a daughter, his asthma attacks and his declining eyesight and general health. These problems increased Chilembwe's bitterness toward Europeans in Nyasaland, and moved him towards thoughts of revolt. However, the outbreak and effects of the First World War was the key factor in moving him from merely thinking to planning action, which he believed would lead to the deliverance of the African people of Nyasaland.

Following a battle at Karonga in September 1914, Chilembwe wrote an impassioned letter to the "Nyasaland Times" newspaper, saying some of his countrymen, "have already shed their blood", others were being "crippled for life" and were "invited to die for a cause which is not theirs". By December 1914, Chilembwe was regarded with suspicion by the colonial authorities and the Governor decided to deport him and some of his followers. The war-time censor had stopped publication of Chilembwe’s letter. This, and the possibility that he learnt of his intended deportation, prompted him to bring forward his revolt, which made its success unlikely. Chilembwe gathered a small group of mission-educated Africans as his lieutenants, and in December 1914 and early January 1915, planned to attack British rule in Nyasaland.

The aims of the rising remain unclear, as Chilembwe and many of his leading supporters were killed, and as many relevant documents in Nyasaland were destroyed in a fire in 1919. However, his use of the theme of “Africa for the Africans” suggests a political motive rather than a purely religious one. Chilembwe is said to have likened his rising to that of John Brown, and stated his wish to "strike a blow and die". His plan had three parts, first to attack government centres in the Shire Highlands on the night of the 23rd to the 24th of January 1915 to obtain arms and ammunition and, second, to attack European estates in that area during the same night. These two parts relied on a force of about 200 men, mainly from Chilembwe's congregations or other independent African churches. The third part of the plan involved men from a simultaneous uprising planned for the Ncheu District to move south and link up with Chilembwe’s force. The first and third parts of the plan failed almost completely: few planned attacks were carried out, so few arms were obtained, and the Ncheu rising was abortive.

The Death of William Jervis Livingstone

On Saturday 23 January, Chilembwe claimed to have received information that the Europeans would begin killing all Africans on 25 January. He gathered his followers in Mbomwe church, the first he had built after his return from the United States, to give them final instructions for the rising. He did not accompany his men on their attacks, but divided them into several groups with different tasks. Two groups were sent north to attack the A L Bruce Estates with orders to kill all European men and bring back the head of William Jervis Livingstone, but not to harm any women. Most of the remaining men were to head south towards Blantyre, the commercial centre of the protectorate.

One of the two groups sent north led by Wilson Zimba was to attack the headquarters of the Magomero estate, which also stored rifles for part of the Nyasaland Volunteer Reserve. The other group under Jonathon Chigwinya was to attack the Mwanje plantation, a part of the Magomero estate some distance from the headquarters. There would normally have been three European men at the headquarters, William Jervis Livingstone, his assistant Duncan MacCormick and J T Roach, the estate engineer, but Roach was absent. There were also four European women and five children there. Zimba’s men surrounded Livingstone’s house and waited until the family retired for the night at around 9 pm, when several of them broke in, attacked Livingstone with spears and severely wounded him while he attempted to defend himself, using his rifle as a club. He was apparently still alive when he was decapitated with an axe in front of his wife. Duncan MacCormick lived alone in a small cottage a few hundred yards from Livingstone's main estate house. His cottage was not surrounded before the attack on Livingstone, but when MacCormick became aware of the commotion, he ran to investigate without arming himself with his rifle and was speared to death. Roach’s house was attacked after the deaths of Livingstone and MacCormick. When he was found to be absent, two rifles and ammunition he kept there were taken. The whole attack on the headquarters was over by 9.30 pm.

Meawhile, the Mwanje plantation had been attacked around 8 pm. One of the two European men and his servant were speared to death, but the other European fought off his attackers with rifle fire. Two other Africans were killed by the groups sent south, and a European-run mission was set on fire and a missionary was severely wounded. On Sunday 24 January, Chilembwe conducted a service Mbomwe church next to a pole impaling Livingstone's head, but by 26 January he realised that the uprising had failed. After avoiding early attempts to capture him and apparently trying to escape into Mozambique, he was tracked down and killed on 3 February.

Livingstone’s Reputation

Despite having the name Livingstone and a claim to a notable ancestry, William Jervis Livingstone had no money of his own and was an employee with an uncertain status among landowning planters. After his death, many found it convenient to blame him for the Chilembwe revolt. His main failing was that he never made a commercial success of Magomero, but A L Bruce Estates Ltd was undercapitalised and almost never made a profit except in the few boom years for tobacco just after the First World War. His employers expected results and, although Livingstone may have acted reasonably in the early years of being manager at Magomero, once the estate turned to cotton planting, enforcing the heavy demands it made on workers brought out his brutality. Unlike some landowner-planters, who made money and exercised their authority without having problems with the colonial authorities, Livingstone’s actions worried officials from early in the first decade of the 20th century. Livingstone was caught between the demands of his employers and treating the African workers and tenants he supervised fairly and reasonably: his employers usually won. Although most attention had been given to Livingstone, Alexander Livingstone Bruce, who was a director and major shareholder of A L Bruce Estates Ltd had charge of the company’s operations in Nyasaland. Bruce used Livingstone and other European employees to enforce his policies, and tacitly approved of their methods.

At the official enquiry into Chilembwe’s uprising held in June 1915, the planters blamed missionary activities, while European missionaries emphasised the dangers of the teaching and preaching of African-led churches like Chilembwe's. African members of European-led churches complained about the treatment of workers on estates. The official enquiry needed to find causes for the rising and it blamed Chilembwe for his mixture of political and religious teaching, but also the unsatisfactory conditions on the Bruce Estates and the unduly harsh regime of William Jervis Livingstone. In this enquiry, the Resident at Chiradzulu told the Commission appointed to consider the revolt that the conditions imposed on the A L Bruce Estates were illegal and oppressive, including paying workers poorly or in kind (not in cash), demanding excessive labour from tenants or not recording the work they did, and whipping and beating both workers and tenants. The abuses were confirmed by Magomero workers and tenants questioned by the Commission in 1915.

Oral tales, not recorded until much later, include the widely reported and possibly mythical one that Livingstone used to beat corpses at funerals with his walking stick to make sure they were dead and not simply shamming. His wife defended him passionately, claiming he was charitable to the hungry and sick. Her defence is quite plausible: Livingstone was quick-tempered and may have been violent and kind at different times. Her defence was that Livingstone was good master, not a bad one as the commission claimed. The concept of the master-servant relationship was at the heart of colonial society, but this concept was precisely what Chilembwe was fighting with his schools and self-help schemes, and ultimately why Livingstone was killed.

Sources

• L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-32182-4
• Geni, William Jervis Livingstone. http://www.geni.com/people/Baron-William-Jervis-Livingstone/6000000000987913269
• N Livingstone of Bachuil, (2004) The MacLeas or Livingstone and their allodial Barony of the Bachuil http://www.baronage.co.uk/2006a/Bachuil.pdf
• Clan Livingstone website http://www.clanlivingstone.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1151&hilit=Nyasaland&start=70
• http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~swilson/livingstone/descendants.htm
• http://www.nls.uk/catalogues/online/cnmi/inventories/acc11777.pdf
• J McCraken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, Woodbridge, James Currey. ISBN 978-1-84701-050-6
• L. White, (1984). 'Tribes' and the Aftermath of the Chilembwe Rising, African Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 333.
• R Tangri, (1971). Some New Aspects of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915, African Historical Studies, Vol. 4, No. 2.
• G. Shepperson and T. Price, (1958). Independent African. John Chilembwe and the Origins, Setting and Significance of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915. Edinburgh University Press.
• R. I. Rotberg, (1970). Psychological Stress and the Question of Identity: Chilembwe's Revolt Reconsidered, in R I. Rotberg and A. A. Mazrui, eds., Protest and Power in Black Africa, New York, Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-019-500093-1.
• R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: The Making of Malawi and Zambia, 1873-1964, Cambridge (Mass), Harvard University Press.
• G MacCormick, (2004). Duncan MacCormick, 1888 - 1915 Planter at the Magomero Estate, The Society of Malawi Journal, Vol. 57, No. 2.

See Also

Clan MacLea

A L Bruce Estates

Thangata

John Chilembwe

Category:1865 births

Category:1915 deaths

Category:History of Malawi

Category:Nyasaland

Category:Colonialism

The Devlin Commission was a Commission of Inquiry set up in 1959 under the chairmanship of Mr. Justice Devlin, later Lord Devlin, after African opposition to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, particularly its farming and rural conservation policies, and demands for progress towards majority rule promoted by the Nyasaland African Congress under its leader Dr Hastings Banda led to widespread disturbances in Nyasaland and some deaths. A State of Emergency was declared in March 1958; about 1,300 people, many of whom were members of the Nyasaland African Congress were detained without trial, over were 2,000 imprisoned for offences related to the emergency and the Congress itself was banned. During the State of Emergency, a total of 51 people were killed by troops or the police. Although the four members of the Commission were members of the The British Establishment, its findings were highly unfavourable to the Nyasaland Government. The Devlin Report is the only example of a British judge examining whether the actions of a colonial administration in suppressing dissent were appropriate. Devlin’s conclusions that excessive force was used and that Nyasaland was a “police state” caused political uproar. His report was largely rejected and the state of emergency lasted until June 1960. Although the Devlin Report was initially discredited, in the longer term it helped to convince the British Government that the Federation was not acceptable to its African majority. Dr Banda was released from detention 1960 and the Federation was dissolved in 1963.

Unrest in Nyasaland

The violent uprising of John Chilembwe in 1915 was an expression of the frustration of educated Africans denied an effective political voice and of the grievances of ordinary Africans denied a share in the benefits of the colonial economy as well as of religious radicalism. After the Chilembwe rising, protests against colonial rule were muted and concentrated on economic and social improvement for Africans, with political representation as a distant aspiration. However, a 1930 declaration by the British government that white settlers north of the Zambezi could not form minority governments to dominate local Africans stimulated political awareness. In the 1940s and early 1950s, the most pressing problem was African access to land. Between 1892 and 1894, about 15% of the total land area of the Nyasaland, including some 867,000 acres, or over 350,000 hectares of the best land in the Shire Highlands the most densely populated part of the country, had been turned into European owned estates. Africans who were resident on these estates were required to pay rent, normally satisfied by their undertaking agricultural work for the owner under the system known as thangata, which later developed into a form of sharecropping in some areas.

For many years, neither the Nyasaland government nor British government had dealt with African land grievances, despite recognising that a problem existed: generally, the supposed needs of the estate owners were given priority. Thangata was regulated by the Natives on Private Estates Ordinance 1928: however, this allowed landowners to evict up to 10% of residents at five-yearly intervals. It did not provide a permanent solution, as it did not deal with the problem of estate land that was under-utilised but not available to African farmers, nor with the owners' ability to evict tenants. The legislation was overtly race-based, as used the category of “Native” (or African) to determine land rights. There were no large-scale evictions in 1933 and few in 1938, but in 1943 hundreds of families in the Blantyre District refused to leave their tenancies as there was nowhere for them to go to, and the colonial authorities declined to use force. The evictions due in 1948 were suspended because of a serious famine: they took place in 1950, but were resisted. Tensions between estate owners and tenants remained high up to the early 1950s. In the overcrowded Cholo district, the British Central Africa Company treated tenants on its tea estates harshly. There were riots in 1945, and between 1950 and 1953 the company tried to evict about 1,250 tenants and increase the rents of the rest. Many refused to pay rent or taxes and occupied land on undeveloped parts of company estates. Serious riots broke out in Cholo in August 1953, leading to eleven dead and seventy-two injured. The Abrahams Commission (also known the 1946 Land Commission) was appointed by the Nyasaland government in 1946 to inquire into land issues in Nyasaland following riots and disturbances by tenants on European-owned estates in Blantyre districts in 1943 and 1945. Abrahams proposed that the Nyasaland government should purchase all unused or under-used freehold land on the estates, which would become Crown land allocated to African smallholders. Africans on the estates were to be offered the choice of remaining there as workers or tenants, or of moving to Crown land. The programme of land acquisition accelerated after 1951, and by 1957 the government had negotiated the purchase of most of the land it had targeted. By June 1954, 350,000 acres had been re-acquired, leaving only 3.7% of Nyasaland’s land in estates. At independence in 1964, this had been reduced to less than 2% per cent.

In the same period that the economic position of Nyasaland’s Africans was improving, their political aspirations received a set-back. Agitation by the Southern Rhodesia government led to a Royal Commission (the Bledisloe Commission) on future association between Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Despite almost unanimous African opposition, its report in 1939 did not rule-out some form of future association, provided that Southern Rhodesia forms of racial discrimination were not applied north of the Zambezi. The danger of Southern Rhodesian rule made demands for African political rights more urgent, and in 1944 various local associations united into the Nyasaland African Congress. One of its first demands was to have African representation on the Legislative Council, which advised governors on local legislation. Before 1949, African interests were represented on this council by a sole white missionary. In 1949, three Africans were nominated by the governor to the Legislative Council.

From 1946, the Nyasaland African Congress received financial and political support from Hastings Banda, then living in Britain. Despite this support, Congress lost momentum until it was revived by new Southern Rhodesian proposals for amalgamation in 1948. Post-war British governments of both main parties agreed to a federal solution for Central Africa, not the full amalgamation that the Southern Rhodesian government preferred. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was pushed through in 1953 against very strong African opposition. The main African objections to the Federation were summed up in a joint memorandum prepared by Hastings Banda for Nyasaland and Harry Nkumbula for Northern Rhodesia in 1951. These were that political domination by the white minority of Southern Rhodesia would prevent greater African political participation and that control by Southern Rhodesian politicians would lead to an extension of racial discrimination and segregation. After Federation was imposed, the Nyasaland African Congress promoted a campaign of non-violent resistance. This may have been a factor in the Cholo riots in August 1953, although there were also local land issues. In early 1954, Congress abandoned its campaign and lost much of its support.

The Background to the Emergency

In 1955, the Colonial Office agreed to the suggestion of the governor, Geoffrey Colby, that African representation on Nyasaland’s Legislative Council should be increased from three to five, and that the African members should no longer be appointed by the governor, but nominated by Provincial Councils. These Provincial Councils were largely composed of chiefs but, as they were receptive to popular wishes, this allowed these Councils to nominate Congress members to the Legislative Council. This occurred in 1956 when Henry Chipembere and Kanyama Chiume, two young radical members of Congress, were nominated together with three moderates. This success led to a rapid growth in Congress membership in 1956 and 1957. Several of the younger members of the Nyasaland African Congress had little faith in the ability of its leader, T D T Banda, who they also accused of dishonesty, and wished to replace him with Dr Hastings Banda then living in the Gold Coast. Dr Banda announced he would only return if given the presidency of Congress: after this was agreed he returned to Nyasaland in July 1958 and T D T Banda was ousted. Dr Banda was absolutely opposed to Federation, but otherwise quite moderate and far less radical that the younger Congress members. In the nine months between his return and the declaration of a State of Emergency, he combined opposition to Federation with more popular causes, such as the African smallholders’ dislike of agricultural practices imposed to promote soil conservation and also the remnants of thangata. Banda’s strategy was to use these popular issues mobilize Congress supporters into strikes, demonstrations, disobedience and protests that would disrupt the everyday operation of the colonial government. Although the Nyasaland African Congress was at first based in Blantyre, many branches were established in the Northern Regionafter 1955. Schemes to prevent cutting down and burning trees and growing finger millet, and to restrict the numbers of cattle owned started in 1938, but from 1947 they were increasingly enforced through fines. From 1951, unpaid work on schemes designed to prevent soil erosion was imposed by the Nyasaland government. Resistance to these measures created a climate of rural radicalism in the Congress branches in the Northern Region, which organised a campaign sabotaging rural conservation schemes. A wider campaign of demonstrations, many leading to riots, started before a State of Emergency was declared. These intensified after 3 March, particularly in Karonga District, where armed Congress supporters evaded arrest by the small numbers of local police with the active support of the local population.

In January 1958, Banda presented Congress proposals for constitutional reform to the governor, Sir Robert Armitage. These were for an African majority in the Legislative Council and at least parity with non-Africans in the Executive Council. As this would inevitably lead to a demand for withdrawal from the Federation, the governor refused. This breakdown in constitutional talks led to demands within Congress for an escalation of anti-government protests and more violent action. Action by Congress supporters became more violent, statements by leading activists were increasingly inflammatory and Armitage decided against offering concessions, but prepared for mass arrests. On 21 February, European troops of the Rhodesia Regiment were flown into Nyasaland and, in the days immediately following, police or troops opened fire on rioters in several places, leading to four deaths. In deciding to make widespread arrests of the covering almost the whole Congress organisation, Armitage was influenced by reports of a meeting of Congress leaders (held in Banda’s absence) on 25 January 1959 which approved a policy of strikes, retaliation against police violence, sabotage and defiance of the government. A report received by the police from an informer who was present also mentioned a discussion of the possible action to be taken if Banda were arrested, which included loose talk about attacking Europeans. This, and information from other informers, was the basis for the claim by the Head of Special Branch that the meeting had planned the indiscriminate killing of Europeans and Asians, and of those Africans opposed to Congress, the so-called “murder plot”. Whatever inflammatory rhetoric may have been used by Congress leaders, there is no evidence that they planned to match their words with actions. The Nyasaland government took no immediate action against Banda or other Congress leaders, and continued to negotiate with them until late February. However, Banda and his colleagues refused to condemn the violent actions of Congress members, which were increasingly directed at Africans who failed to support Congress. The governor only made a specific reference to the “murder plot” after his declaration of a State of Emergency failed to restore order quickly.

The Emergency and the Devlin Commission

On 3 March 1959 Sir Robert Armitage, as governor of Nyasaland, declared a State of Emergency over the whole of the protectorate and arrested Dr. Hastings Banda its president and other members of its executive committee, as well as over a hundred local party officials. The Nyasaland African Congress was banned the next day. Those arrested were detained without trial, and the total number detained finally rose to over 1,300. Over 2,000 more were imprisoned for offences related to the emergency, including rioting and criminal damage. The stated aim of these measures was to allow the Nyasaland government to restore law and order after the increasing lawlessness following Dr Banda's return. Rather than calming the situation immediately, in the emergency that followed fifty-one Africans were killed and many more were wounded.

The arrests were made as part of “Operation Sunrise”, so called because the State of Emergency was declared just after midnight on 3 March and arrest squads were sent out at 4.30 am. By 6 am most principal Congress leaders had been arrested and detained, by 9 pm that day 130 had been arrested but even by 5 March a quarter if those listed for arrest had not been detained. Some were released very quickly, but 72 prominent detainees, including Dr Banda, were flown to Southern Rhodesia later on 3 March. Others were detained in Nyasaland. In the course of Operation Sunrise itself, no-one being arrested was killed; five were injured, but none seriously. However in the immediate aftermath of the operation, 21 people were killed on 3 March. Of these, 20 were killed at Nkhata Bay where those detained in the Northern Region were being held prior to being transferred by Lake Steamer to the south. A local Congress leader, who had not been arrested, encouraged a large crowd to gather at the dockside at Nkhata Bay, apparently to secure the release of the detainees. Troops who should arrived at in the town early on 3 March were delayed and, when they arrived, the District Commissioner felt the situation was out of control, and he ordered then to open fire. The other death on 3 March was in Blantyre, and there were six more deaths in the Northern Region and five in Machinga District up to 19 March. Most if these deaths occurred when soldiers of the Royal Rhodesia Regiment or Kings African Rifles were ordered to open fire on rioters. The remainder of the 51 officially recorded deaths were in military operations in the Northern Region. The initial reaction of many Congress supporters was rioting, damage to government and European property and strikes but within a few days, following action by the police and troops, the Southern Region was calm but tense and the strikers returned to work. In the more remote areas, particularly of the Northern Region, the destruction of bridges and government buildings and rural resistance, including attacks on conservation schemes, continued for several months, particularly in the Misuku Hills, a remote area of rural Congress radicalism close to the border with Tanganyika Territory. This continued resistance was countered by what the governor described as a campaign of harassment by troops and police, and allegations of brutality made against them were later considered by the Devlin Commission. It rejected some claims, including those of rape and torture made against Federation troops during a military action in the Misuku Hills, but it upheld other complaints, including the burning of houses, the imposition of arbitrary fines and beatings, which it considered illegal. J McCracken, (2012).

Within two days of the declaration of the state of emergency, the British cabinet under Harold Macmillan decided to set up a Commission of Inquiry into the disturbances. In addition, a wider Royal Commission on the future of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was to be held in 1960 (this became the Monkton Commission). Macmillan did not choose Devlin and later criticised his appointment on the basis of his Irish ancestry and Catholic upbringing, and his supposed disappointment at not being made Lord Chief Justice. Macmillan not only broadly rejected the Devlin Report, which had taken several months to prepare, but engineered the production of the rival Armitage Report, which was prepared very quickly so it could be released on the same day as the Devlin Report. The chairman of the Commission of Inquiry was Patrick Devlin, born in 1905 and made a High Court judge in 1948. He was promoted to the Court of Appeal in 1960, and in 1961 was made a Law Lord. He retired in 1964, at the age of only 58, but later denied this was because he was disappointed at not being offered the more senior posts of Lord Chief Justice or Master of the Rolls.

Its other three members included a former colonial governor, the head of an Oxford College and a Scottish Lord Provost. The delay in finalising the form of the Commission and its membership was caused by disputes within the government and parliament. The Secretary of State for the Colonies expressed doubts about an inquiry related to Nyasaland alone, and governor Armitage was opposed to any form of Commission, particularly one containing any member of parliament. Despite strong parliamentary pressure for its members’ involvement, the cabinet decided on 17 March 1959 that the inquiry would be carried out by a Commission of three and a presiding judge: the government announced its composition on 24 March. The commission was to inquire into and report on the recent disturbances in Nyasaland and the events leading up to them. They arrived in the protectorate on 11 April and spent five weeks there, a week in Southern Rhodesia and four days in London. They took evidence from 455 individual witnesses and 1,300 witnesses in groups. The Nyasaland government presented many documents to the Commission and later gave it oral evidence. Although Devlin had been a Conservative supporter and the other commissioners were Conservatives party members, the Commission went about its work in a way that concerned the Nyasaland government, which had hoped that its declaration of the State of Emergency and the subsequent actions of the police and troops would be vindicated.

A few days after Devlin arrived in Nyasaland, Armitage received advice from the Colonial Office on the action to be followed when a governor dissented from the findings of a Commission of Inquiry, and was told that he could dissent if he felt it was justified. At the end of May, Armitage thought the commission were satisfied that the State of Emergency was necessary, but that it did not accept that there was a massacre plan, and had concentrated on the use of firearms and the burning of houses by government forces, ignoring events leading up to such incidents. He suspected that the Commission's report would be highly critical. The Commission concentrated on three areas: the State of Emergency, the murder plot and African opposition to Federation. It found that the declaration of a State of Emergency was necessary to restore order and prevent a descent into anarchy, but it criticised instances of the illegal use of force by the police and troops, including burning houses, destroying property and beatings. It also found that the Nyasaland government suppression of criticism and support for Congress justified calling it being called a “police state”. Its strongest criticism was over the “murder plot”, which it said not exist, and the use made of it by both the Nyasaland and British governments in trying to justify the Emergency, which it condemned. It also declared that Banda had no knowledge of the inflammatory talk of some Congress activists about attacking Europeans. Finally, it noted the almost universal rejection of Federation by Nyasaland’s African people and suggested the British government should negotiate with African leaders on the country’s constitutional future.

Aftermath to the Devlin Report

The Colonial Office obtained an early draft of the Commission’s report and passed a copy to Armitage, which he used to prepare a document attacking its findings. Armitage then flew to London, where he joined a high level working party which drafted a despatch, often known as the Armitage Report, to counter the Devlin Report. In the Commons debate on the report, the government noted that the Commission had found the declaration of a State of Emergency justified, but it attacked their use of the expression “police state” and its rejection of talk about killings and beatings of Europeans as no more than rhetoric. The government also minimised Devlin's criticisms of handcuffing and gagging prisoners, burning houses and other illegal acts on ilt grounds if necessity. The Secretary of State for the Colonies said that the government had the right and a duty to reject the Commission's findings where it disagreed with them, and used this argument to justify accepting what little in its report was favourable and rejecting all that was unfavourable, instead of rejecting the whole report.

Devlin’s use of the phrase “a police state” caused deep offence, particularly as it was placed on the first page of his report. The governor of Nyasaland, Sir Robert Armitage, was incensed by the allegation, and the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Alan Lennox-Boyd, thought the claim was grossly unfair. Nyasaland did not have a particularly large police force for its population, but strong African resistance to the creation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland led to a rapid increase in the police numbers from 860 to 1,100 in 1953, including a police mobile force of riot squads. By 1959, Nyasaland had over 2,000 police. It was not the size or expansion of the police force which made Devlin claim that Nyasaland was a police state. He used the expression because in Nyasaland under the State of Emergency it was unsafe to express approval of Congress and unwise to make significant criticisms of its government. Although the commissioners realised the problems in using the expression “police state”, they intended to say that, in a State of Emergency, any country must inevitably become a police state. It is likely that Colonial Office ministers could have persuaded Devlin to remove this expression, but they felt it would be unwise to press the Commission on this.

The Nyasaland government had imprisoned Banda, not realising that he was the only African politician they could negotiate with on a credible constitution for the protectorate. Devlin’s conclusion that there was no murder plot and that Banda, unlike other Congress leaders, was not involved in promoting violence opened the way for the British government to deal with him. Had Devlin found there was a murder plot and that Banda had encouraged violence, this would have been very difficult. Despite Lennox-Boyd's rejection of the Devlin Report, once Iain Macleod replaced him at the Colonial Office late in 1959, Devlin was approached by Macleod for advice. The Royal Commission on the future of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (the Monkton Commission) toured the Federation in February 1960. It had been given limited terms of reference and was boycotted by the opposition Labour Party and the African nationalists in Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. As the Commission’s composition seemed weighted towards a continuation of the Federation, its report disappointed the British government. The Monkton Commission reported widespread and sincere opposition to the Federation in the two northern territories. It considered Federation could not survive without at least a major devolution of powers to Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia, giving more voting rights to Africans and lessening racial discrimination. Most importantly, it also recommended that Britain should retain the right to allow the secession of either northern territory, recognising that African nationalists would not accept even a modified Federation. The British government broadly accepted this report, signalling a withdrawal of support for the Federation and the acceptance of early majority rule for Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia. Accordingly, and despite opposition from Armitage, the governments of the Federation and Southern Rhodesia, and some colleagues in the cabinet, Macleod released Banda from detention on 1 April 1960 and immediately began to negotiate with him on Nyasaland's constitutional future. The state of emergency was lifted on 16 June 1960. The Malawi Congress Party was formed in 1959 as the successor to the banned Nyasaland African Congress, with Banda as leader. Following an overwhelming Malawi Congress Party victory in August 1961 elections, preparations were made for independence, which was achieved on 6 July 1964.

Sources

• J McCraken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, Woodbridge, James Currey. ISBN 978-1-84701-050-6
• C Parkinson, (2007) Bills Of Rights and Decolonization: The Emergence of Domestic Human Rights Instruments in Britain's Overseas Territories, Oxford University Press ISBN 0-199-23193-1
• R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa: The Making of Malawi and Zambia, 1873-1964, Cambridge (Mass), Harvard University Press.
• B. Pachai, (1978). Land and Politics in Malawi 1875-1975, Kingston (Ontario), The Limestone Press.
• C Baker, (1993). Seeds of Trouble: Government Policy and Land Rights in Nyasaland, 1946-1964, London, British Academic Press.
• B Pachai (1973) Land Policies in Malawi: An Examination of the Colonial Legacy, The Journal of African History, Vol. 14, No. 4.
• R Palmer, (1986). Working Conditions and Worker Responses on the Nyasaland Tea Estates, 1930-1953, Journal of African History, Vol. 27, No. 1.
• A C Ross, (2009). Colonialism to cabinet crisis: a political history of Malawi, African Books Collective. ISBN 99908-87-75-6.
• J G Pike, (1969). Malawi: A Political and Economic History, London, Pall Mall Press.
• J McCracken, (2002). The Ambiguities of Nationalism: Flax Musopole and the Northern Factor in Malawian Politics, c. 1956-1966, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, Special Issue: Malawi,
• C Baker, (2007). The Mechanics of Rebuttal: The British and Nyasaland Governments' Response to The Devlin Report, 1959 The Society of Malawi Journal, Vol. 60, No. 2,
• C Baker, (1997). State of Emergency: Nyasaland 1959, I.B.Tauris. ISBN 1-860-64068-0.
• A Horne, (2008) Macmillan: The Official Biography, Pan Macmillan. ISBN 0-230-73881-8
• The Independent, (1992). Obituary of Lord Devlin. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-lord-devlin-1539619.html
• C Baker, (1997). Nyasaland, 1959: A Police State? The Society of Malawi Journal, Vol. 50, No. 2.

Category:History of Malawi

Category:Nyasaland

Category: Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland

Category:Colonialism

Category:Constitutional commissions

Agricultural Activities

Although Nyasaland has some mineral resources, particularly coal, these were not exploited in colonial times. British Geological Survey (1989) Review of lower Karoo coal basins and coal resources development with particular reference to northern Malawi. www.bgs.ac.uk/research/international/dfid-kar/WC89021_col.pd

Without economic mineral resources, the protectorate’s economy had to be based on agriculture, but in 1907 most of its people were subsistence farmers. In the mid-to-late 19th century, manioc, rice, beans and millet was grown in the Shire Valley, maize, cassava, sweet potatoes and sorghum in the Shire Highlands,and cassava, millet and groundnuts aling the shores of Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi). These crops continued to be staple foods throughout the colonial period, although with less millet and more maize. Tobacco and a local variety of cotton were grown widely.

P. T. Terry (1961) African Agriculture in Nyasaland 1858 to 1894, The Nyasaland Journal, Vol. 14, No. 2, pp. 27–9.

Europeans criticised the practice of shifting cultivation in which trees on the land to be cultivated were cut down and burnt and their ashes dug into the soil to fertilize it. The land was used for a few years after another section of land is cleared. P. T. Terry (1961) African Agriculture in Nyasaland 1858 to 1894, pp. 31–2

Compared with European, North American and Asian soils many sub-Saharan African soils are low in natural fertility, being poor in nutrients, low in organic matter and liable to erosion. The best cultivation technique for such soils involves 10 to 15 years of fallow between 2 or 3 years of cultivation, the system of shifting cultivation and fallowing that was common in Nyasaland as long as there was sufficient land to practice it. As more intensive agricultural use began in the 1930s, the amounts and duration of fallow were progressively reduced in more populous areas. A situation approaching continuous monocropping developed on many Malawian smallholdings, which placed soil fertility under gradually increasing pressure [26] [27].

Throughout the protectorate, the colonial Department of Agriculture held negative attitudes towards African agriculture, which it failed to promote and favoured European planter interests. Although in the early years of the 20th century European estates produced the bulk of exportable cash crops directly, by the 1940s, a large proportion of many of these crops (particularly tobacco) was produced by Africans, either as smallholders on Crown land or as tenants on the estates [31].

most of its people were subsistence farmers growing maize, millet and other food crops for their own consumption. it had no economic mineral resources, its colonial economy had to be based on agriculture, but before 1907 it had hardly started to develop. In pre-colonial times trade was limited to the export of ivory and forest products in exchange for cloth and metals and, for the first few years of the protectorate, ivory and rubber collected from indigenous vines were the principal elements of a tiny export trade. The first estate crop was coffee, grown commercially in quantity from around 1895, but competition from Brazil which flooded the world markets by 1905 and droughts led to its decline in favour of tobacco and cotton. Both these crops had previously been grown in small quantities, but the decline of coffee prompted planters to turn to tobacco in the Shire Highlands and cotton in the Shire Valley. Tea was also first planted commercially in 1905 in the Shire Highlands, but significant development of tobacco and tea growing only took place after the opening of the Shire Highlands Railway in 1908 [24].

It has been claimed that, throughout the colonial period and up to 1982 Malawi had sufficient arable land to meet the basic food needs of its population, if the arable land were distributed equally and used to produce food [28]. However, as early as 1920, while the Land Commission did not consider that the country was inherently overcrowded, it noted that, in congested districts where a large proportion of the working population was employed, particularly on tea estates or near towns, families had only 1 to 2 acres to farm [29]. By 1946, the congested districts were even more crowded [30]. The colonial policies of supporting estates and promoting exportable cash crops did not create any credible alternative to smallholding. The negative attitudes of the colonial Department of Agriculture towards African agriculture, which it failed to promote and the protection of European planter interests created food insecurity among the most disadvantaged portions of the African population[31]. The Department of Agriculture's prediction that soil fertility would decline at a rapid rate is contradicted by recent research. This showed that the majority of Malawian soils were adequate for smallholders to produce maize. Most have sufficient (if barely so) organic material and nutrients, although their low nitrogen and phosphorus favours the use of chemical fertilisers and manure[32]. It seems likely that the Department’s views had little effect on the way that African farmers actually cultivated their land, as its effort was spread very thinly.