Native Trust Land

Last updated

Native Trust Land in colonial Nyasaland was a category of land held in trust by the Secretary of State for the Colonies and administered by the colonial governor for the benefit of African communities. In pre-colonial times, land belonged to the African communities that occupied it, and their members were free to use it in accordance with local customary law. In the late 19th century, large areas of fertile land were acquired by European settlers, and the remainder became Crown land, which the colonial government could alienate without the consent of the resident communities. To give a measure of protection to those communities, in 1916 land in Native Reserves, which then amounted to about a quarter of the land in the protectorate, was designated as Native Trust Land, to be held in trust for the benefit of African communities. Later, in 1936, all Crown Land except game or forest reserves or that used for public purposes became Native Trust Land, and Native Authorities were authorised to allocate Trust Land to their communities in accordance with customary law. After 1936, Native Trust Land constituted over 80% of the land in Nyasaland and most African farmers farmed Native Trust Land (renamed African Trust Land in 1950) from then until Nyasaland gained independence as Malawi in 1964 and after.

Contents

Pre-colonial land ownership

In much of Malawi, the right of land ownership in pre-colonial times belonged under customary law to the African communities that occupied it. Community leaders could allocate the use of communal land to be used by its members, but in general they did so in accordance with custom, which generally prevented it being granted to outsiders. Neither the leaders nor the current members of a community could alienate its land, which they held in trust for future generations. In 1902, the Parliament of the United Kingdom enacted the British Central Africa Order, which provided that English Law (including land law) would apply generally in the British Central Africa Protectorate, and that the Crown had sovereignty over all the land in the protectorate, which was held by others as its tenants. Customary law had little or no legal status in the early colonial period and little recognition or protection was given to customary land or the communities that used it. [1]

After 1860, the area that is now southern Malawi suffered insecurity through warfare and slave raiding: this led to the widespread abandonment fertile land. Local chiefs tried to gain protection from European companies and settlers who had entered the area from the 1860s by granting them the right to cultivate this abandoned, insecure land. The African Lakes Company, formed in 1877 to cooperate with the missions established in central Africa by combating the slave trade and introducing legitimate trade, claimed to have made treaties or agreements with several chiefs. Some of these treaties claimed to have transferred sovereignty to the company, which may have had the ambition to become a Chartered company. [2] Three others individuals also claimed to have purchased large areas of land. Eugene Sharrer claimed to have acquired 363,034 acres, and he had attempted to induce chiefs to give up their sovereign rights: he also possibly intended to form his own Chartered company. Alexander Low Bruce, the son-in-law of David Livingstone and a director of the African Lakes Company, claimed 176,000 acres, and John Buchanan and his brothers claimed a further 167,823 acres. These lands were purchased for trivial quantities of goods under agreements signed by chiefs with no understanding of English concepts of land tenure. [3] [4]

The Colonial Land Settlement

The British government appointed Harry Johnston, later Sir Harry, as commissioner and consul-general of the British Central Africa Protectorate from 1891. Johnston rejected the suggestion that any agreements made before the protectorate was established could transfer sovereignty to individuals or companies. However, he did accept that these agreements might be evidence of land sales. The prevailing legal theory in the 1880s was that the Crown's authority in any British protectorate was limited to the management of its external relations and the affairs of British subjects. Protected Africans retained their internal sovereignty, and were only subject to Crown control if, and to the extent, agreed on in treaties and concessions. The mere proclamation of a protectorate did not give the Crown property in its land or minerals, unless the agreements with African rulers so provided. [5]

Before the British Central Africa Protectorate was proclaimed in June 1891, Johnston had only made treaties of friendship with local chiefs; these did not surrender sovereignty to the Crown, and he did not consider that the Crown had a general claim to sovereign ownership of any land unless this had been expressly transferred by cession. Without sovereignty, the Crown had no right to alienate that land. The treaties that he made from July 1891 did cede sovereignty over land in the areas concerned, but they granted the chiefs and people involved the right to retain the land that they actually occupied, leaving all the unoccupied land free for the Crown to dispose of. The treaties that included the cessation of land rights covered less than half of the Protectorate. Although the protectorate had been proclaimed on the understanding that British South Africa Company would contribute to the costs of its administration, Johnson, resisted the company's demand that Crown lands where sovereignty had been ceded, which formed over 20% of the land of the protectorate, should be transferred to its control and that Johnson should also facilitate the transfer of lands remaining in African hands, amounting to over 40% of total land, to it (the remaining 15% was already in European ownership). This would have created a situation on the South African model, with African confined to limited reserves. [6] [7]

Although Johnston accepted that the land belonged to its African communities, so their chiefs had no right to alienate it to anyone, he put forward the legal fiction that each chief's people had tacitly accepted he could assume such a right. Under this interpretation chiefs could cede land to the Crown or sell or grant land not currently being used by the community to Europeans. Johnston also claimed that the Crown had two rights as the Protecting Power. Firstly, that any "waste" land (if not currently in use or occupied) was Crown Land and freehold or leasehold titles over it could be granted to Europeans. This, however disregarded African practices of cultivation, in which only a part of a family's land would be cultivated at any time, with the greater part left fallow to be used in the future. Secondly, that the Crown was entitled to investigate whether any earlier sales or transfers were valid and, if they were, to issue a Certificate of Claim (in effect a registration of freehold title) in the land to the new owners. [8] [9] The land comprised in the Certificates of Claim amounted to some 1.4 million Hectares, including a claim in North Nyasa district of just over 1 million Hectares; the rest was mainly in the Shire Highlands. [10] Johnston had no legal training and the protectorate had no law officers until 1896. However, when the legality of the Certificates of Claim system was challenged in 1903 on the basis that the agreements made by the chiefs breached the rights of their community members, the Appeals Court upheld the validity of the certificates, ruling that that title arose from a grant by the Crown's representative, not from any agreements made by the chiefs. The court did however judge that many aspects of the agreements were unfair and one-sided. [11] [12]

Johnston recorded that his review of land claims begun in late 1892 was necessary because the proclamation of the protectorate had been followed by a wholesale land grab, with huge areas of land bought for trivial sums and many claims overlapping or requiring adjustment. He regarded long occupation and improvement of the land as the best way to justify a claim, but it only rarely happened. Failing this, he or an assistant sought confirmation that the chiefs named in agreements had agreed to sell the land and had received a fair return for the sale. However, his estimates of land value were very low, from a halfpenny an acre for indifferent land up to a maximum of threepence an acre in the most favoured districts. The existing African villages and farms were exempted from these sales, and the villagers were told that their homes and fields were not being alienated. In addition, most Certificates of Claim included a non-disturbance clause providing that existing African villages and planted areas were not to be disturbed without consent from the protectorate government. [13]

African Land Rights

The non-disturbance clauses were largely ineffective, firstly because the landowners routinely ignored them with impunity, secondly because the land occupied by Africans at the date of the certificate was not recorded and thirdly, the practice of shifting cultivation meant that much of what Johnston thought was unoccupied or waste land near villages was temporarily out of use and resting under local variants of the Chitemene system that is still employed in parts of Zambia. [14] [15] No protection was offered to Africans living outside the area of Certificates of Claim, but subsistence cultivators on Crown land were allowed to continue on their holdings unless and until the land was sold or leased to settlers. As all Crown lands were potentially available for settler expansion, villagers living on as yet unalienated land felt insecure. [16]

In the early years of the protectorate, owners usually did not object to Africans resident on their estates practising shifting cultivation and moving their fields every few years, as they wanted to retain existing residents and attract new ones as a workforce. However, any new residents were obliged to provide unpaid labour in lieu of rent for the land they occupied under the system of thangata. Although original residents were, at least in theory, exempt from this form of labour rent, once cotton started to be grown commercially after 1901, followed by widespread planting of tobacco from 1905, this exemption came under attack. Both crops needed a great deal of labour during their growing seasons, and owners attempted to reduce all residents to the status of insecure labour tenants, who could be evicted at will. This situation was not finally resolved until the colonial administration's Natives on Private Estates Ordinance 1928 removed the distinction between descendants of original residents and others by abolishing non-disturbance clauses. [17]

After 1900, the view which gained prominence among Foreign Office lawyers was that the former theory of protectorate only applied to those declared over more civilised communities and that the mere declaration of a protectorate over what in one case were termed "semi-barbarous natives" gave Crown officers in that protectorate the right to dispose of land there. An Order-in-Council for government of the British Central Africa Protectorate issued in 1902 declared that all rights related to Crown lands were vested in the commissioner, and it empowered him to dispose of any such land. Crown lands were defined as all public lands in the Protectorate under the control of the Crown through any treaty or agreement. [18]

The effect of the British Central Africa Order, 1902 was that all land not in private European ownership became Crown land which the colonial government could alienate: this covered about 85% of the protectorate's land area. Alfred Sharpe, who was commissioner then governor from 1896 to 1910, favoured a policy of creating reserves limited to those areas required for African subsistence, and allowing any land not required for subsistence to be alienated for commercial farming. In 1904, he received powers to reserve areas of Crown Land for the African people under the Native Locations Ordinance, 1904. His successor as governor from 1911 to 1913, William Manning, who had previously served in the protectorate from 1893 to 1902, was more sympathetic to African farmers, and opposed moving them into minimal reserves to clear land for European settlers. By 1913, the Native Reserves covered 6.6 million acres out the 22.3 million acres of land in the protectorate, and a further 2.6 million acres of Crown Land were planned to become future reserves. These areas and the private estates encompassed nearly all the land which seemed capable of cultivation. The population was growing and concerns about future land availability started a debate about the respective needs of European and African communities for land. [10] [1]

The Creation of Native Trust Land

The Land Registration Ordinance, 1916 recognised the Native Reserves as Native Trust Land, to be held in trust for the benefit of African communities. The 1916 Ordinance did not provide for the administration of Trust Land by African communities or their leaders, as formal indirect rule was only introduced in 1933–34, although, in practice, chiefs had day-to-day charge of land distribution. [19] It was not until the Nyasaland Protectorate (Native Trust Lands) Order, 1936 that any conversion of Trust Land to freehold was prohibited. The 1936 Order declared that all Crown Land except game or forest reserves or that used for public purposes would become Native Trust Land, and authorised Native Authorities to allocate Trust Land to their communities in accordance with customary law. This reflected the Colonial Office rejection to the Report of the 1920 Land Commission (which was not approved as it interfered with native land rights). The Land Commission was one of a number of bodies that tried to bring order to the confusion over land rights in Nyasaland. Its report opposed formal reserves, but recommended a calculation of what land should be provided for present and future African subsistence agriculture and making much of the rest available for European settlement. It also wanted curbs on Africans cultivating economic crops, which was also aimed at promoting European agriculture. [20] The report of an East Africa Lands Commission in 1924-5 favoured a reserve system similar to that of Kenya, with a Native Lands Trust Board to oversee the reserves. An Ordinance for this purpose was enacted in 1927, and certain areas were designated as "Crown lands for the settlement of Natives", but this did little to change existing arrangements and, as some commercial development by settlers was considered useful, there was provision for some land alienation, in the form of 99-year leases. [21] After a review of pre-1891 land claims following the Report of the Natives Reserve Commission, 1929, the Colonial Office believed that the Crown had a very uncertain title to land comprised in any treaty where sovereignty had not been ceded expressly. It did not propose to return any land to African ownership but wished to hold it and other former Crown land in Trust for Africans. [22] [23]

The 1936 Native Trust Land Order classified land as Crown, Reserved, and Native Trust lands. Crown Land was defined as including all lands and interests in land acquired or occupied by or on behalf of the Crown. Reserved lands covered land occupied under Certificates of Claim (previously classified as private land) and any land subsequently granted or leased out of Crown lands. Reserved lands also included forest reserves and land in township areas. All other land became Native Trust Land. This was vested in the Secretary of State for the Colonies, but administered by the governor for the use and common benefit of the natives. The 1936 Order recognised that Africans could occupy and use Native Trust Land as a matter of right, but no other racial group in the protectorate was similarly entitled. The Governor could, however, grant a right of occupancy of Native Trust land to a member of any racial group, normally as a lessee. Subsequently, the 1950 Order-in-Council restyled Native Trust Land as African Trust Land (as the word "native" had pejorative connotations), Crown Land as Public Land, and Reserved lands as Private Land. This structure remained in place until independence in 1964. African Trust Land was now vested in the governor for the use and common benefit of the Africans. The authorities controlling land use and occupation were African chiefs and headmen, and African customs and laws were recognised as the governing law. [24]

The aims of the 1936 Native Trust Land Order included reassuring the African people of Nyasaland of their rights in the land they occupied, and relieving them of fears of its alienation without their consent. These aims were incompatible with the view that the African people of Nyasaland had only a limited entitlement to as much land as was deemed sufficient for them: the view of the 1920 Land Commission. From 1936, Native Treasuries created under the Native Authorities Courts Treasuries Ordinance were to receive 25% of all leasehold rents collected for Native Trust Land from leases in their Native Authority area. The remaining 75% of rents went to a central fund that topped-up the Treasuries of districts in deficit. [19] In the late colonial period, a major part of post-war colonial policy was the creation of a class of independent smallholders with a secure but negotiable title to their land. This was the aim of the Master Farmer Scheme, which had limited success, producing only 282 Master Farmers after four years. Most Africans continued to farm Native Trust Land. [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nyasaland</span> British protectorate from 1907 to 1964

Nyasaland was a British protectorate located in Africa that was established in 1907 when the former British Central Africa Protectorate changed its name. Between 1953 and 1963, Nyasaland was part of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland. After the Federation was dissolved, Nyasaland became independent from Britain on 6 July 1964 and was renamed Malawi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Central Africa Protectorate</span> British protectorate from 1893 to 1907

The British Central Africa Protectorate (BCA) was a British protectorate proclaimed in 1889 and ratified in 1891 that occupied the same area as present-day Malawi: it was renamed Nyasaland in 1907. British interest in the area arose from visits made by David Livingstone from 1858 onward during his exploration of the Zambezi area. This encouraged missionary activity that started in the 1860s, undertaken by the Universities' Mission to Central Africa, the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland, and which was followed by a small number of settlers. The Portuguese government attempted to claim much of the area in which the missionaries and settlers operated, but this was disputed by the British government. To forestall a Portuguese expedition claiming effective occupation, a protectorate was proclaimed, first over the south of this area, then over the whole of it in 1889. After negotiations with the Portuguese and German governments on its boundaries, the protectorate was formally ratified by the British government in May 1891.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Harry Johnston</span> British explorer (1858–1927)

Sir Henry Hamilton Johnston was a British explorer, botanist, artist, colonial administrator, and linguist who travelled widely across Africa to speak some of the languages spoken by people on that continent. He published 40 books on subjects related to the continent of Africa and was one of the key players in the Scramble for Africa that occurred at the end of the 19th century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Northern Rhodesia</span> 1911–1964 British protectorate in Southern Africa

Northern Rhodesia was a British protectorate in Southern Africa, now the independent country of Zambia. It was formed in 1911 by amalgamating the two earlier protectorates of Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia and North-Eastern Rhodesia. It was initially administered, as were the two earlier protectorates, by the British South Africa Company (BSAC), a chartered company, on behalf of the British Government. From 1924, it was administered by the British Government as a protectorate, under similar conditions to other British-administered protectorates, and the special provisions required when it was administered by BSAC were terminated.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British South Africa Company</span> 1889–1965 British mining and colonial enterprises company

The British South Africa Company was chartered in 1889 following the amalgamation of Cecil Rhodes' Central Search Association and the London-based Exploring Company Ltd, which had originally competed to capitalize on the expected mineral wealth of Mashonaland but united because of common economic interests and to secure British government backing. The company received a Royal Charter modelled on that of the British East India Company. Its first directors included The 2nd Duke of Abercorn, Rhodes himself, and the South African financier Alfred Beit. Rhodes hoped BSAC would promote colonisation and economic exploitation across much of south-central Africa, as part of the "Scramble for Africa". However, his main focus was south of the Zambezi, in Mashonaland and the coastal areas to its east, from which he believed the Portuguese could be removed by payment or force, and in the Transvaal, which he hoped would return to British control.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Chilembwe</span> Independence leader in Malawi (1871–1915)

John Nkologo Chilembwe was a Baptist pastor, educator and revolutionary who trained as a minister in the United States, returning to Nyasaland in 1901. He was an early figure in the resistance to colonialism in Nyasaland (Malawi), opposing both the treatment of Africans working in agriculture on European-owned plantations and the colonial government's failure to promote the social and political advancement of Africans. Soon after the outbreak of the First World War, Chilembwe organised an unsuccessful armed uprising against colonial rule. Today, Chilembwe is celebrated as a hero of independence in some African countries, and John Chilembwe Day is observed annually on 15 January in Malawi.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Shire Highlands</span> Plateau in southern Malawi

The Shire Highlands are a plateau in southern Malawi, located east of the Shire River. It is a major agricultural area and the most densely populated part of the country.

Thangata is a word deriving from the Chewa language of Malawi which has changed its meaning several times, although all meanings relate to agriculture. Its original, pre-colonial usage related to reciprocal help given in neighbours' fields or freely-given agricultural labour as thanks for a benefit. In colonial times, between 1891 and 1962, it generally meant agricultural labour given in lieu of a cash rent, and generally without any payment, by a tenant on an estate owned by a European. Thangata was often exploited, and tenants could be forced to work on the owners' crops for four to six months annually when they could have cultivated their own crops. From the 1920s, the name thangata was extended to situations where tenants were given seeds to grow set quotas of designated crops instead of providing cash or labour. Both forms of thangata were abolished in 1962, but both before and after independence and up to the present, the term has been used for short-term rural casual work, often on tobacco estates, which is considered by workers to be exploitative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alfred Sharpe</span>

Sir Alfred Sharpe was Commissioner and Consul-General for the British Central Africa Protectorate and first Governor of Nyasaland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Agriculture in Malawi</span>

The main economic products of Malawi are tobacco, tea, cotton, groundnuts, sugar and coffee. These have been among the main cash crops for the last century, but tobacco has become increasingly predominant in the last quarter-century, with a production in 2011 of 175,000 tonnes. Over the last century, tea and groundnuts have increased in relative importance while cotton has decreased. The main food crops are maize, cassava, sweet potatoes, sorghum, bananas, rice, and Irish potatoes and cattle, sheep and goats are raised. The main industries deal with agricultural processing of tobacco, tea and sugar and timber products. The industrial production growth rate is estimated at 10% (2009).

The Natives on Private Estates Ordinance, 1928 was a colonial ordinance passed by the Legislative Council of the Nyasaland Protectorate. The body was composed mainly of senior colonial officials, with a minority of nominated members, to represent European residents. The ordinance regulated the conditions under which land could be farmed by African tenants on estates owned by European settlers within that protectorate. The legislation corrected some of the worst abuses of the system of thangata under which tenants were required to work for the estate owner in lieu of paying rent.

Eugene Charles Albert Sharrer was a British subject by naturalisation but of German descent, who was a leading entrepreneur in what is now Malawi for around fifteen years between his arrival in 1888 and his departure. He rapidly built-up commercial operations including wholesale and retail trading, considerable holdings of land, cotton and coffee plantations and a fleet of steamers on the Zambezi and Shire rivers. Sharrer was prominent in pressure groups that represented the interests of European planters and their businesses to the colonial authorities, and was responsible for the development of the first railway in what had become the British Central Africa Protectorate, whose construction was agreed in 1902. In 1902, Sharrer consolidate all his business interests into the British Central Africa Company Ltd and became its principal shareholder Shortly after this he left British Central Africa permanently for London, although he retained his financial interests in the territory. Very little is known of his history before he arrived in Central Africa but he died in London during the First World War.

Certificates of Claim were a form of legal instrument by which the colonial administration of the British Central Africa Protectorate granted legal property titles to individuals, companies and others who claimed to have acquired land within the protectorate by grant or purchase. The proclamation of the British Central Africa Protectorate was endorsed by the British Foreign Office in May 1891, and Harry Johnston as Commissioner and Consul-General examined and adjudicated on all claims to the ownership of land said to have been acquired before or immediately after that date. Between late 1892 and March 1894, Johnston issued 59 Certificates of Claim for land, each of which was equivalent to a freehold title to the land claimed. Very few claims were disallowed or reduced in extent, and around 3.7 million acres, or 15% of the land area of the protectorate, was alienated, mainly to European settlers. No Certificates of Claim were issued after 1894, but this form of land title was never abolished, and some land in Malawi is still held under those certificates.

Blantyre and East Africa Ltd is a company that was incorporated in Scotland in 1898 and is still in existence. Its main activity was the ownership of estates in the south of what is now Malawi. The main estate crops it grew were tobacco until the 1950s and tea, which it continued to grow until the company’s tea estates were sold. Blantyre and East Africa Ltd was one of four large estate-owning companies in colonial Nyasaland which together owned over 3.4 million acres of land, including the majority of the fertile land in the Shire Highlands. The company acquired most of its landholdings between 1898 and 1901 from several early European settlers, whose title to this land had been recognised by Certificates of Claim issued by the administration of the British Central Africa Protectorate. After the boom for Europeans growing tobacco ended in about 1927, the company retained one large estate in Zomba District where its tenants were encouraged to grow tobacco and others where it grew tea. It was also left with a scattering of small estates that it neither operated nor effectively managed but obtained cash rents from African tenants on crowded and unsupervised estates. Many of its estates, excluding the tea estates which it continued to manage directly, were sold to the colonial administration of Nyasaland between 1950 and 1955.

The British Central Africa Company Ltd was one of the four largest European-owned companies that operated in colonial Nyasaland, now Malawi. The company was incorporated in 1902 to acquire the business interests that Eugene Sharrer, an early settler and entrepreneur, had developed in the British Central Africa Protectorate. Sharrer became the majority shareholder of the company on its foundation. The company initially had trading and transport interests, but these were sold by the 1930s. For most of the colonial period, its extensive estates produced cotton, tobacco or tea but the British Central Africa Company Ltd developed the reputation of being a harsh and exploitative landlord whose relations with its tenants were poor. In 1962, shortly before independence, the company sold most of its undeveloped land to the Nyasaland government, but it retained some plantations and two tea factories. It changed its name to The Central Africa Company Ltd and was acquired by the Lonrho group, both in 1964.

The Abrahams Commission was a commission appointed by the Nyasaland government in 1946 to inquire into land issues in Nyasaland. This followed riots and disturbances by tenants on European-owned estates in Blantyre and Cholo districts in 1943 and 1945. The commission had only one member, Sir Sidney Abrahams, a Privy Counsellor and lawyer, the former Attorney General of the Gold Coast, Zanzibar and Uganda, and the former Chief Justice, first of Uganda and then Ceylon. There had been previous reviews to consider the uneven distribution of land between Africans and European, the shortage of land for subsistence farming and the position of tenants on private estates. These included the Jackson Land Commission in 1920, the Ormsby-Gore Commission on East Africa in 1924 and, most recently, the Bell Commission on the Financial Position and Development of Nyasaland in 1938, but none of these had provided a permanent solution. Abrahams proposed that the Nyasaland government should purchase all unused or under-utilised freehold land on European-owned estates, which would then become Crown land, available to African farmers. The Africans on estates were to be offered the choice of remaining on their current estate as paid workers or tenants, or of moving to Crown land. These proposals were not implemented in full until 1952. The report of the Abrahams Commission divided opinion. Africans were generally in favour of its proposals, as were both the governors in post from 1942 to 1947, Edmund Richards, and the incoming governor, Geoffrey Colby. Estate owners and managers were strongly against it, and many European settlers bitterly attacked it.

John Buchanan (1855–1896), was a Scottish horticulturist 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 and devout but also 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.

The name Karonga War is given to a number of armed clashes that took place between mid-1887 and mid-1889 near Karonga at the northern end of Lake Malawi in what is now Malawi between a Scottish trading concern called the African Lakes Company Limited and elements of the Ngonde people on one side and Swahili traders and their Henga allies on the other. In the 19th century, it was referred to as the “Arab War”, despite few actual Arabs being involved. Although these conflicts predate formal endorsement of a British Central Africa Protectorate west of Lake Malawi in 1891, European involvement, both by the African Lakes Company and by Germans attempting to prevent Swahili slave trading around Lake Tanganyika in German East Africa, had upset the previous balance between the Ngonde and their neighbours and created the conditions for this conflict. It was between the Tumbuka and Nyakyusa-Ngonde ethnic groups.

Since 1933, various traditional chiefs in Nyasaland have been designated as Native Authorities, initially by the colonial administration, and they numbered 105 in 1949.. They represented a form of the Indirect rule which had become popular in British African dependencies in the second quarter of the 20th century, although Nyasaland's Native Authorities had fewer powers and smaller incomes than similar institutions in other African colonies. The Native Authority system worked reasonably effectively until after the Second World War, when they were obliged to enforce unpopular government agricultural policies and, in some cases, their support for the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland made Native Authorities unpopular with many of their people. After 1953, many of the powers of individual chiefs were transferred to councils which became the Native Authorities, although the chiefs sat on these councils. After independence, the authorities were renamed Traditional Authorities and continued to operate, and the status and influence of many of the chiefs revived through their cooperation with the Malawi government of Hastings Banda.

William H J Rangeley (1910-1958) was an officer in the colonial administration of Nyasaland and a scholar of the oral history and ethnography of the peoples of what is now Malawi.

References

Citations
  1. 1 2 Pachai (1973), p. 685.
  2. ↑ Pachai (1978), pp. 36 & 151–157.
  3. ↑ McCracken (2012), pp. 77–78.
  4. ↑ Johnston (1897), p. 85.
  5. ↑ Ng'ong'ola (1990), pp. 28–29.
  6. ↑ Pachai (1973), pp. 682–683.
  7. ↑ Galbraith (1974), pp. 230–233.
  8. ↑ Johnston (1897), pp. 112–113.
  9. ↑ Pachai (1973), pp. 682–683 & 685.
  10. 1 2 Cross (2002), p. 5.
  11. ↑ Pike (1968), p. 127.
  12. ↑ Pachai (1973), p. 684.
  13. ↑ Johnston (1897), pp. 107–108 & 112–113.
  14. ↑ Pachai (1978), p. 41.
  15. ↑ Moore & Vaughan (1994), pp. 22 & 30–32.
  16. ↑ Cross (2002), pp. 5–6.
  17. ↑ Baker (1993), pp. 11–13 & 42–44.
  18. ↑ Ng'ong'ola (1990), pp. 30–31.
  19. 1 2 Power (1992), p. 330.
  20. ↑ Nysaland Government (1920), pp. 14–15 & 23–24.
  21. 1 2 Cross (2002), pp. 6–7.
  22. ↑ Mathew & Jennings (1947), pp. 667–673.
  23. ↑ Ibik (1971), p. 6.
  24. ↑ Ng'ong'ola (1990), p. 51.
Bibliography
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.