British Nyasaland
There was no British possession so little known to the British people as Nyasaland. Far removed by its geographical situation from the great centres of political and commercial activity, its brief history, while full of incident, contains hardly anything of that sensational element which, at different times, has so powerfully drawn the attention of the world at large to other parts of the African continent. Alone of Britain's African dominions, the little Protectorate of Nyasaland, with a record conspicuously free from the scandals of maladministration, remained almost a terra incognita.
At the time when its possession was made the subject of rival claims, the truth is that very much less was then positively known about the resources of Nyasaland than about its disabilities. The former had scarcely been tapped. The latter were too obvious to be overlooked. The country was generally reported to be unhealthy, to be difficult of access, to be inhabited by wild and ignorant native tribes. The expenses of founding and maintaining an administration there were likely to be considerable, and nothing was more certain than that the country itself would for years be incapable of contributing much towards those expenses. There was, therefore, no particular reason why even the most rabid Imperialist should regard it on its own merits with a covetous eye.
At the same time the fact remained that British adventurers had obtained certain interests in the neighborhood, and it was felt that the circumstances under which those interests had been acquired were such as to emphasise in a peculiar manner the duty of the State to guard them from infringement. In a soil like that of Central Africa the tree of civilisation grows hardly and by slow degrees, watered with the sweat and blood of men and rooted in forgotten graves.
Lord Salisbury justly described the early Nyasaland settlements as "splendid monuments of British energy and enthusiasm"; and wherever such energy and such enthusiasm have been brought to the task of Imperial expansion, wherever such risks have been faced and such difficulties overborne, it lies most clearly with the Mother Country to preserve and extend the work of her pioneers, lest there come the shameful afterknowledge that, through her own default, brave men served her without effect, and gave their generous lives in vain." Such then was England's title to Nyasaland, and such were her responsibilities there. Nor was evidence lacking to show that the Imperial Government did in fact view the situation in the light of its responsibilities, and that, in assuming direct control over Nyasaland, it was primarily influenced not by considerations of mere territorial aggrandisement or political expediency, but by a simple determination to protect, at all reasonable cost, the rights of the handful of British subjects who had been the first to enter the country and the first to attempt its development.
Considered on these grounds, the establishment of the British Central Africa Protectorate was not merely justifiable, but in strict accordance with a fundamental axiom of civilised administration. Nor, assuredly, can that measure be counted as a reproach to Great Britain on the ground of anything like sharp practice. It was the desire of the British Government, in the first place, to protect British interests in Nyasaland, not necessarily by founding a Protectorate there.
Although the Portuguese reached the area in the 16th century, the first significant Western contact was the arrival of David Livingstone along the shore of Lake Malawi in 1859. Subsequently, Scottish Presbyterian churches established missions in Malawi. One of their objectives was to end the slave trade to the Persian Gulf that continued to the end of the 19th century.
Livingstone's death in 1873 was immediately followed by the founding in Nyasaland of the Free Church and Church of Scotland Missions, and of the African Lakes Company. In 1878, a number of traders, mostly from Glasgow, formed the African Lakes Company to supply goods and services to the missionaries. Other missionaries, traders, hunters, and planters soon followed.
In 1883, a consul of the British Government was accredited to the "Kings and Chiefs of Central Africa," and in 1891, the British established the Nyasaland Protectorate (Nyasa is the Yao word for "lake"). Although the British remained in control during the first half of the 1900s, this period was marked by a number of unsuccessful Malawian attempts to obtain independence. A growing European and US-educated African elite became increasingly vocal and politically active - first through associations, and after 1944, through the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC).
During the 1950s, pressure for independence increased when Nyasaland was joined with Northern and Southern Rhodesia in 1953 to form the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. Kamuzu Banda first became involved in his homeland’s politics in the late 1940s, when white settlers in the region demanded the federation of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland. Banda and others in Nyasaland strongly objected to this extension of white dominance, but the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was nevertheless established in 1953. In July 1958, Dr. Hastings Kamuzu Banda returned to the country after a long absence in the United States (where he had obtained his medical degree at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1937), the United Kingdom (where he practiced medicine), and Ghana. He assumed leadership of the NAC, which later became the Malawi Congress Party (MCP). In 1959, Banda was sent to Gwelo Prison for his political activities but was released in 1960 to participate in a constitutional conference in London.
On April 15, 1961, the MCP won an overwhelming victory in elections for a new Legislative Council. It also gained an important role in the new Executive Council and ruled Nyasaland in all but name a year later. Banda served as minister of natural resources and local government in 1961–63 colonial government, and he became prime minister in 1963, the year the federation was finally dissolved. In a second constitutional conference in London in November 1962, the British Government agreed to give Nyasaland self-governing status the following year.
Banda became Prime Minister on February 1, 1963, although the British still controlled Malawi's financial, security, and judicial systems. A new constitution took effect in May 1963, providing for virtually complete internal self-government. The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland was dissolved on December 31, 1963, and Malawi became a fully independent member of the Commonwealth (formerly the British Commonwealth) on July 6, 1964. Two years later, Malawi adopted a new constitution and became a one-party state with Banda as its first president.
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