Malawi came under British rule through Scottish missionaries, a lake named by Livingstone and a race against Portugal. Nyasaland gave the empire cheap labour and soldiers, and got so little back that officials called it the "imperial slum". It produced one of Africa's first armed risings against colonial rule, and in 1959 a British judge called it a police state.
The name Malawi recalls the Maravi kingdoms that ruled the lands south and west of the lake from about the 15th century. In the 19th century the region was torn apart by the East African slave trade, run by Swahili-Arab and Yao traders who marched captives to the coast for Zanzibar and the Indian Ocean, and by Ngoni armies who had come north from southern Africa.
David Livingstone travelled up the Shire River on his Zambezi expedition and reached the lake in September 1859. He saw the slave caravans and called on Britain to bring "Christianity and commerce" to end the trade. An Anglican mission, the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, arrived in 1861.
After Livingstone's death in 1873, Scotland answered his call. The Free Church of Scotland founded the Livingstonia Mission at Cape Maclear on the lake in 1875, led by the young doctor Robert Laws. The Church of Scotland founded the Blantyre Mission in the Shire Highlands on 23 October 1876, naming it after Livingstone's birthplace. Scottish traders and planters followed.
In the late 1880s Portugal claimed the Shire Highlands as part of a belt of territory from Angola to Mozambique. Britain moved to block it. In 1889 a British protectorate was declared over the Shire Highlands, and in May 1891 it was extended over the whole area, with Harry Johnston as the first Commissioner. Johnston fought a series of wars against Yao and other chiefs who resisted, using Sikh troops from India and African soldiers.
The territory was renamed the British Central Africa Protectorate in 1893 and Nyasaland on 6 July 1907, with a governor in Zomba. European planters took much of the best land in the Shire Highlands. Africans living on estates had to pay with unpaid labour, a system called thangata. A hut tax pushed tens of thousands of men to work in the mines of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa. Investment was so low that Nyasaland was widely known as the "imperial slum".
John Chilembwe was educated at a Church of Scotland mission and then in the United States, where he trained as a Baptist minister. He returned in 1900 and, with help from African American Baptists, founded the Providence Industrial Mission at Mbombwe, near Chiradzulu, with schools and churches run by Africans.
He was angered by land loss, thangata, the hut tax, and above all by the thousands of Nyasas sent to die as soldiers and porters in the First World War campaign in East Africa. On the night of 23 January 1915 his followers attacked the Magomero estate of the A. L. Bruce family, who were related by marriage to Livingstone, and killed its hated manager, William Jervis Livingstone, and two other white men. The rising found little support beyond the area and was crushed within days. Chilembwe was shot dead by African troops near the Mozambique border on 3 February 1915. His church was blown up, and many of his followers were executed or imprisoned.
A commission of inquiry heard evidence from Africans about the hut tax, forced labour and being made to remove their hats to Europeans. Chilembwe is now a national hero. Malawi marks John Chilembwe Day every year on 15 January, and his face is on the country's banknotes.
Africans founded the Nyasaland African Congress in 1944. They fiercely opposed the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, which Britain imposed on 1 August 1953 and which put Nyasaland under the influence of white settlers in Salisbury. In 1958 Dr Hastings Kamuzu Banda, a Nyasa doctor who had worked in Britain and in Ghana, came home to lead the Congress.
Protests grew. Just after midnight on 3 March 1959 Governor Sir Robert Armitage declared a state of emergency across the protectorate. In "Operation Sunrise", Banda and the Congress leaders were arrested and flown to prison in Southern Rhodesia, the Congress was banned, troops were brought in from the Rhodesias, and hundreds more were detained without trial. Dozens of Africans were shot dead by troops and police in the weeks that followed. The Colonial Secretary told the House of Commons that Congress had planned a massacre of Europeans.
A commission under the judge Patrick Devlin found no evidence of any such murder plot. Its report, published in July 1959, found that excessive and illegal force had been used and opened with a sentence that shocked London:
"Nyasaland is – no doubt only temporarily – a police state."Report of the Nyasaland Commission of Inquiry (Devlin Report), HMSO, 1959
The government rejected the report. But it helped convince Britain that the Federation could not survive against the will of the African majority.
Banda was released in 1960 and took part in constitutional talks at Lancaster House in London. His Malawi Congress Party, the successor to the banned Congress, won the 1961 elections by a landslide. Nyasaland became self-governing in 1963 with Banda as Prime Minister, and the Federation was dissolved on 31 December 1963. On 6 July 1964 Nyasaland became independent as Malawi.
Malawi became a republic on 6 July 1966, with Banda as President and his party the only legal one. In 1971 he was declared President for Life. His rule was harsh, and he kept close ties with apartheid South Africa. In 1975 he moved the capital from Zomba to Lilongwe, in the centre of the country near his birthplace. A referendum in 1993 restored multi-party politics, and Banda lost the election of 1994.
Malawians call their country "the warm heart of Africa". Its history of resistance runs from Chilembwe to the women and men jailed in 1959. Our partner site covers the continent's independence stories:
The David Livingstone Birthplace museum in Blantyre, near Glasgow, tells the Scottish side of the story. The Livingstonia and Blantyre mission papers are held at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh. The Devlin Report and the Colonial Office files on the emergency are at The National Archives in Kew.
In Blantyre, visit St Michael and All Angels Church, built by the mission, and Mandala House, the oldest building in the country. Zomba, the old colonial capital, has its colonial buildings and the Zomba Plateau. In the north, Livingstonia on its escarpment above the lake has the Stone House museum. Cape Maclear, where the first mission landed, is in Lake Malawi National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Providence Industrial Mission church at Mbombwe, near Chiradzulu, was rebuilt and stands near Chilembwe's grave memorial.
Entrance fees are included in the tour price; tips are not included but are always welcome.
Neighbouring Zambia and Victoria Falls:
In London:
Northern Rhodesia, copper and Kaunda.
The settler colony that ran the Federation.
Zanzibar and the East African slave trade Livingstone fought.
All of Britain's African territories, country by country.
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