1 Malawi National Archive (MNA), E 1/2/1, Governor's Opening Address, Minutes of the First Session of the Advisory Committee on Education, Zomba, 24June 1930, 1.

2 Ibid., 5.

3 MNA, E 1/2/1, Governor's Opening Address, Minutes of the Seventh Meeting of the Advisory Committee on Education, Zomba, 24 June 1936, 5.

4 A good example of an organisation to which the colonial state devolved activities was the Native Tobacco Board. As John McCracken has shown, this organisation was dominated by European settlers who used the N.T.B.'s autonomous status to their own ends. This ended when the Agricultural Department became concerned by the numbers of (white) ex-tobacco planters the N.T.B. employed, and the use of its large profits for projects that did not benefit of the African Grower. McCracken, K.J., ‘Planters, Peasants and the Colonial State: The Impact of the Native Tobacco Board in the Central Province of Malawi’, Journal of Southern African Studies (JSAS) 9/2 (1983) 172–192CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 For example, African headmen and Native Authorities and the educated elite in Native Associations were among those groups with which the colonial government communicated. The latter, however, were increasingly marginalized as the administration empha-sised tribal authority and ruled that Native Associations could only communicate with it through the former, not in their own right.

6 An interest group could be loosely defined as a particular industry or group of people with common interests, such as education or farming. They could make common cause together either through the press or letters of protest, to the Legislative Council (in the case of European groups), or through the various boards with unofficial representation. In the case of Africans, protest was often made to the District Commissioner or, rarely, to the local Native Authority, through direct action, and through protest. In other words, they could make their voices heard.

7 Even before the Depression, and the Zambesi debt that drained its revenues, the colonial administration was unable to muster much of a show. It had always been an ‘imperial backwater’, to which officials came to serve out their years until retirement, or to ‘prove’ themselves capable of higher office in a larger colony. Treasury control, imposed in the 1930s because of the enormous Imperial Exchequer grants required to maintain the railway debt, stifled what little initiative grappled for a foothold. The district administration, lacking in officers and energy, could do little more than keep control and raise taxes. The Secretariat was filled with men who either just wanted to serve out their time, or were destined for a brighter future elsewhere. In this stultifying atmosphere, the idea that certain areas could be devolved to ‘interest groups’, such as the Missions, or the European estate owners, and thereby maintain the pax imperium, was an attractive one. Moreover, it worked, although it meant that there was little development, or latitude for independent action.

8 Committee Report on Emigrant Labour (Zomba 1935).Google Scholar Lacey's report made a point of the poor economic and social conditions for the local population where many were forced to work abroad for lack of better prospects at home. He suggested that there were villages where only children, the old and infirm were left and that this had a deleterious effect on the health and welfare of the Protectorate's villages and tribal authority. He stated that the Protectorate as a whole was suffering economically by the migration of a great part of its strongest and most productive population, and that socially, the effect of so many machona (lost ones) on tribal cohesion was the breakdown of local society.

9 ‘Leader’, Nyasaland Times (Blantyre, 9 April 1936).Google Scholar It was the paper of the Europeans, though a few elite Africans also read it. Its leader column generally reflected the majority unofficial European view.

10 The Secretary of State observed in an open despatch, published in the Nyasaland Times, that ‘In the present state of development of the Nyasaland Protectorate such opportunities [of paid employment] are restricted. […] In the north where practically no development or European settlement has yet taken place, and where communications are difficult and transport costs inevitably heavy, the natives have, generally speaking, no opportunity of earning wages or growing moneycrops for export.’ Public Record Office (PRO), CO 525 161/44053, Secretary of State to Governor of Nyasaland, 24 September 1936, 5.

11 J.A. Calder minuted in July 1936: ‘The composition of this Committee - the Director of Education in the Chair, three settlers and a missionary - was unfortunate. The settlers have always been opposed to the emigration of labourers, as they know it reflects on the low wages they pay and they feel it will eventually cause a rise in local wage rates. The missionary has a paternal interest in his flock and hates to see young men escaping from his control. Hence is not surprising that we get a sensational and unbalanced report.’ PRO, CO 525 161/44053, Minute by J.A. Calder, 28July 1936.

12 PRO, CO 525 166/44053, Acting Governor to Secretary of State, 11 May 1937. Particularly as Nguru immigration to the estates of Southern Province had caused overcrowding on both private estates and Native Trust Lands.

13 PRO, CO 525 161/44053, Governor to Secretary of State, 17 March 1936, 2. ‘On this point that I wish for a clear and early expression of your opinion. If you feel that the liberty of the individual is of paramount importance and that it must not be restricted even in the interests of the community you will obviously be unable to agree to statutory control […] and it will be useless of me to introduce legislation to implement the Committee's report.’

14 PRO, CO 525, 161/44053, Secretary of State to Governor, 10 August 1936.

15 PRO, CO 525 161/44053, Minute by Sir John Maffey, 10 August 1936. Maffey observed that, ‘emigration to lands of greater economic opportunity can never be held in check. It is a process by which history has been made.’ There were previous minutes by W.A. Greenhill dated 16 May and 23July 1936, and by J.A. Calder, 28 July 1936 on this subject that agreed with the impossibility of ending migration, and the self-serving protests of the Europeans.

16 For examples of the Missions' response, see MNA, NNM 1/6/2, Rev. D Campbell to the District Commissioner, Mzimba, 3 August 1935; and MNA, LB 2/2/1, P.A. Rens, Dutch Reformed Church Mission, Dzenza to President, Nyasaland Northern Province Association, 18 March 1939.

17 They argued for restricting the right of Africans to leave the country, justifying their low rates of pay by anecdotal evidence that African labourers did not work hard enough in Nyasaland. They complained that the Governments of Southern Rhodesia and South Africa were offering migrants inducements in the form of free transport, and the Nyasa-land Government was complicit in encouraging emigration. Mr Kaye-Nicol, the managing director of the Blantyre and East Africa Company (B.E.A.C.) wrote in a memorandum in 1938: ‘I cannot see why the natives should be encouraged by the Permission of Recruiting. Why should our natives be used to bolster up the industries ofother territories? Why should this Protectorate subsidise the Tobacco Industry of Southern Rhodesia for example at the expense of our own Tobacco and Tea Industries? This is what we are doing in fact.’ Memorandum on Emigration of Natives to Work in Rhodesia and South Africa, 1938, MNA, S 1/96/37, 1.

18 Both these agreements were extensively condemned by the unofficial community. The Salisbury Agreement attempted to impose minimum standards on Southern Rhodesian farm employers, and to restrict migrants to those in possession of a Labour Certificate. The Agreement never worked properly, was suspended on the outbreak of war, very briefly, and then revised in 1942. The Johannesburg Agreement was with a private company – the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association (Wenela) - sponsored by the mining companies. It offered contracts, free transport to South Africa, deferred pay, and repatriation after two years. In return, the Nyasaland Government allowed it to recruit a certain quota of men every year in certain districts of the Protectorate.

19 As early as August 1931, the Director of Education complained to the Chief Secretary that ‘sectarian rivalry […] exists as gaily as ever in spite of the outward manifestations of co-operation’. MNA, SI 1588^II/27, Director of Education to Chief Secretary, 14 August 1931, 2.

20 Tribal authorities in at least two districts expressed concern that there might be an outbreak of civil disorder between the followers of two local churches. MNA, NC 1/7/ 13, District Commissioner (D.C.), Kota Kota to Director of Education, 5 May 1934; and D.C., Dedza to Provincial Commissioner Northern Province (P.C.N.P.), 5 November 1937, 2. The D.C.s also pointed out that when the headman of one village was a member of the dominant religious sect, he was biased against any other mission trying to open a school, whether or not it entailed a risk to tribal authority.

21 MNA, SI 1588^II/27, Governor to Secretary of State, 16 March 1938, 4.

22 MNA, NC 1/7/10, Parents and Guardians Association Memorandum, Blantyre, 30 September 1942. Their complaint was a result of the pursuit by many teachers of better-paid jobs abroad because of Mission failure to pay competitive wages.

23 Ibid., Summary of the Previous and Present Minutes by C.W. Mlanga and J.F. Sangala, c. October 1942.

24 MNA, NC 1/7/11, Notes for Interview with the Assistant Director of Education, 9 February 1946, 1. The notes also complained about other restrictive mission school practices: ‘Others from outside or African controlled schools find difficulty as the door is not opened as before. Time for primary education in these schools is much too long with repeated fees for the same class. This may probably be due to the employment of teachers who themselves have not enough education. Efficient teachers are a necessity in all schools.’

25 The Provincial Commissioner, Northern Province had written to the Chief Secretary in 1940: ‘I am afraid […] that I formed the […] impression that the Livingstonia Mission has entered a period of decline as compared with its more virile days, or indeed as compared with the more recent times of W.P. Young. […] Allowance must be made for their various difficulties, for example, financial, but even the In feel that there is a lack of grip or drive.’ MNA, GOB/G 141^A, P.C.N.P. to Chief Secretary, 21 December 1940.

26 Post-war Development Committee Reports (Zomba 1946).Google Scholar

27 MNA, LB 3/3/1, Minutes of the First Meeting of the C.L.A.B., Zomba, 7 August 1940, 4-5.

28 Ibid., 4. Mr Barron (another unofficial member of Legislative Council) felt that inspectors might create the friction between employers and employees they were supposed to prevent.

29 The new Governor was acerbic in his criticism of the ‘hasten slowly’ attitude he found in the Protectorate from all sections of the community: ‘I note reference here and there to “hasty legislation”. What in Nyasaland is regarded as a reasonable time for consideration of legislative measures? Some of these matters have been under consideration in the Colonial Empire (in other countries effective consideration) for ten years or more. However, as you may have observed I am personally in no hurry!’ MNA, LB 3/3/1, Minute by Mackenzie Kennedy, 18 August 1941. Less than a year later (a very brief period for action by the bureaucracy), the machinery for inspection was in place.

30 MNA, LB 3/3/1, Memorandum by the Unofficial Members of th e C.L.A.B., 14 August 1941, 3.

31 With, for example, a Minimum Wage Ordinance in 1942, and discussions concerning trade union legislation in the C.L.A.B. and Labour Legislation Committee, 1942–1944, i n MNA, LB 7/1/1.

32 For further discussion of the ideas which powered the growth of the self-confident colonial state, see Berman, B., Control and Crisis in Colonial Kenya: The Dialectic of Domination (London 1990)Google Scholar.