1 ‘Planter, ’, ‘Comments on climatic, agricultural and labour conditions in Nyasaland’, in Wilson, Smithett & Co., Tea Estates in Africa (London, 1962), 24.Google Scholar The archival sources used here are the Public Record Office, London (files prefixed C.O.), the National Archives of Malawi, Zomba (various prefixes) and, thanks to the generosity of Landeg White, the archives of Blantyre and East Africa Ltd, Lauderdale Estate, Mulanje, Malawi. I have also used the evidence to the Hilton Young, Bledisloe and Land Commissions, which is to be found in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library, London. I am grateful to Barbara Morrow for locating some material in Zomba subsequent to my departure from Malawi and to John McCracken, Forbes Munro, Leroy Vail, Megan Vaughan and Landeg White for their comments on an earlier version of this article.

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12 The government was particularly concerned to protect tenants from eviction. Harry Johnston's ‘non-disturbance clause’ theoretically offered protection to tenants resident on estates at the time (1892–5) when he ratified the settlers' land claims. Shifting cultivation and Lomwe immigration combined to obscure the issue and ensure that vast amounts of time and energy were devoted to determining who was, and who was not, entitled to protection under Johnston's clause.

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14 Official ideology asserted that the Lomwe ‘are welcomed by the planting community for they are industrious as temporary resident workers on an estate, and they are preferred in this capacity to the indigenous native, who is liable to allow himself to be too much distracted by his home and family ties to exhibit that concentration of effort which is a desirable attribute even in the unskilled labourer. Unfortunately, the Nguru does not content himself with entering the Protectorate for the purpose of seeking temporary employment; in increasing numbers he is settling both on Crown and on privately owned land, and as soon as he finds himself comfortably established with a place in the village community he also begins to find his distractions to be an obstacle to the continuance of his former industry.’ Nyasaland Protectorate, Report on Native Affairs for the Year Ended 31st December, 1932 (Zomba, 1933), 5.

15 White, , ‘Tribes’, 519.Google ScholarSee also Ntonga, Alfred V., ‘The Lomwe of Chief Nkanda: their intrusion into and adaptation to the Malawian environment’, University of Malawi, Chancellor College History seminar paper (1985).Google Scholar

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26 Workers interviewed in 1941 raised the issue of posho for wives. This provoked from the Blantyre and East Africa's General Manager in Edinburgh the response that ‘Whilst we are all here very anxious to improve labour relations, if that is possible, there is a limit and to our mind the Labour Commissioner is carrying matters much too far, especially if the companies are now to be asked not only to feed the worker himself but also his wife and family’. Blantyre and East Africa Archives, Lauderdale Estate, Mulanje, Tait Bowie papers, Report by Chief Mwase of tour of Mlanje and Cholo tea estates, 6 and 7 Oct. 1941; ibid., Head Office file 1941–3, Stark to Tait Bowie, 9 Dec. 1941.

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28 On the three Blantyre and East Africa estates in Mlanje, Lauderdale, Glenorchy and Limbuli, pluckers were paid a basic wage of 6s. in 1941 plus a bonus of I d. per 10 Ib picked above 35 Ib, with Lauderdale offering a graduated scale, ‘so that the more plucked the bigger the bonus’: BEA Archives, Tait Bowie papers, Leslie to Tait Bowie, 4 March 1941.

29 In 1939 the D.C., Cholo, reported that 60 per cent of the labour ori the tea estates came from outside the district: National Archives of Malawi, NSE 5/1/6, Report of the D.C., Cholo, for the year 1939.

30 Lindeirey, Patrick D., ‘The tea industry in southern Malawi: its introduction, growth and contribution to the exports of the country up to independence in 1964’, University of Malawi, Chancellor College History seminar paper (1985), 18.Google Scholar

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34 S 1/79c/36, Report of the D.C., Cholo, for 1935.

35 The Acting Governor told the Colonial Office that ‘both the Governor and myself have seen the children at work and they appear to like it. The work is simple, consisting principally of picking out defective leaves and stalks from partially manufactured tea. Were they not so employed they would doubtless be less wholesomely occupied in their insanitary villages, and the money they receive from the estates is a help to their parents’. C.O. 525/137/33418/30, Davidson-Houston to Passfield, 15 March 1930.

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40 The Provincial Commissioner for the Southern Province responded to his proposals by hoping that it would ‘not be found necessary to harass the Managers of Tea Estates with a great number of rules and regulations’, while the Governor was reported to be ‘reluctant to put the firms to inconvenience and expense by a number of vexatious regulations’: NS 1/13/1, P.C., Southern Province, to Chief Secretary, 29 Jan. 1930; ibid., P.C., Southern Province, to D.C., Mlanje, 12 Feb. 1930.

41 BEA Archives, Tea Association file, Memo by Laycock, Director, Tea Research Station, Mlanje, Dec. 1964.

42 S 1/43c/33, Report of the D.C., Cholo, for 1932.

43 ‘It was foreign to me’, wrote ‘An Itinerant Engineer’, ‘to see the local labour force, termed “boys” and consisting chiefly of hefty coloured gentlemen all plucking leaf, instead of women and children being employed for this work as is customary in other tea growing countries’: An Itinerant Engineer, ‘ Notes upon a visit paid to tea estates in the Nyasaland Protectorate’, Nyasaland Tea Association Quarterly Journal, III, I (1938), 6.Google Scholar

44 In 1973 the Manager of the Glenorchy Estate in Mulanje noted that ‘During the past season women increased their share of the crop to approximately 2/5 of the daily intake, and they are now a vital element in the estate's plucking force’: BEA Archives, Estate Reports, Glenorchy Estate, Manager's Annual Report for the year ending 30th September, 1973.

45 NS 1/13/1, D.C., Mlanje, to P.C., Southern Province, 28 Feb. 1930.

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48 Hist. MSS. NY 11/1/5, Minutes of Meeting of the Board of Directors [henceforth MMBD], Nyasaland Tea Association [henceforth NTA], 28 Nov. 1941.

49 Ibid., MMBD, NTA, 5 Nov. 1948; ibid., MMBD, NTA, 7 Jan. 1957.

50 On hearing of this increase, the Edinburgh Board of Blantyre and East Africa Ltd. observed: ‘We would welcome this legislation if it meant additional work from the natives but each successive increase has not brought any additional effort on the worker's part and the whole policy of wage increases without further efforts stands condemned. We shall have to get good prices to offset the rise in costs’: BEA Archives, General letters from Edinburgh 1949–52, Stark to General Manager, Blantyre, 2 Aug. 1950.

51 Vail, Leroy and White, Landeg, Capitalism and Colonialism in Mozambique (London, 1980), 331.Google Scholar

52 The wage figures cited here were obtained from the Cholo and Mlanje annual reports, from the records of the Nyasaland Tea Association, from the Labour Department annual reports and from estate records in the Blantyre and East Africa Archives. It is clear that the wage levels cited in the published Labour Department reports were inflated.

53 NSE 5/1/5, Report of the D.C., Cholo, for 1938.

54 Labour Department Annual Report, 1941, 5.

55 BEA Archives, Tail Bowie papers, Hadden to Tait Bowie, 26 March 1941.

56 Vail, , ‘The state’, 50.Google Scholar John McCracken categorizes the wages of the early 19305 as being ‘surely among the lowest wages in the world’: McCracken, John, ‘Peasants, planters and the colonial state: the case of Malawi, 1905–1940’, Journal of Eastern African Research and Development, XII (1982), 31.Google Scholar

57 Bledisloe Commission, Evidence of M. P. Barrow, 25 June 1938, 1035. The 1948 Labour Report bemoaned the fact that ‘The incentive which will turn the African villager into a steady regular wage-earner when living in his own country has yet to be discovered’. Annual Report of the Labour Department for the Year Ending 31st December, 1948 (Zomba, 1949), 4.Google Scholar

58 In 1941 Colonial Secretary Moyne read ‘with some concern’ reports of the lack of interest shown by some Mlanje tea planters ‘in the life and welfare of their labourers after working hours’, and added that ‘It is most desirable in their own interest that employers should be encouraged to do everything possible to create a contented labour force, and it should be possible for every employer to show, by providing inexpensive benefits such as simple recreational facilities, that he does not regard the labourer merely as a machine’: BEA Archives, Tait Bowie papers, Moyne to Mackenzie-Kennedy, 26 June 1941.

59 NSE 5/1/5, Note by P.C., Southern Province, on the Report of the D.C., Cholo, for 1937.

60 Colonial Office, Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Financial Position and Further Development of Nyasaland, Colonial no. 152 (London, 1938), 75.Google Scholar

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63 S 1/66c/37, Report of the D.C., Cholo, for 1936.

64 NSE 5/1/7, Report of the D.C., Cholo, for 1940.

65 Ibid., Report of the D.C., Cholo, for 1943.

66 NSE 5/1/8, Report of the D.C, Cholo, for 1944.

67 Ibid., Report of the D.C, Cholo, for 1945.

68 Foreign and Commonwealth Office Library, Land Commission 1946, Volume 2, Evidence of E. Snel!, 31 July 1946, 153. [Henceforth Land Commission, Evidence.] The fact that Mlanje escaped the troubles of the early 1950s might be cited as supporting evidence for this contention.

69 NSM 3/1/8, Report of the D.C, Mlanje, for 1943.

70 NSM 3/1/8, Report of the D.C, Mlanje, for 1946.

71 Annual Report of the Labour Department of the Provincial Administration for the Year Ending yist December, 1940 (Zomba, 1941), 2Google Scholar; Labour Department Annual Report, 1941, 4Google Scholar; Labour Department Annual Report, 1944, 2.

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73 Hist. MSS. NY 11/1/4, Minutes of 9th AGM, NTA, 17 Apr. 1945.

74 As early as 1904 there were 11,470 people working on the six estates then established in Mlanje: Mlanje District Book, 1904–7.

75 NSE 5/1/5, Report of the D.C, Cholo, for 1938. The D.C. conceded that some of the planters might be described as ‘irritable’, adding that all planters were short of labour, ‘the irritable ones more so’.

76 S 1/96/37, Record of a discussion... on emigrant labour, 15 Nov. 1938.

77 They had tried earlier, in 1934, but the results had proved ‘most disappointing’. Only 100 of 201 recruited in South Nyasa actually started work, ‘the remainder either deserted or failed to reach their destination. No volunteers were forthcoming from the Upper Shire District and very few from Chiradzulu’: Annual Reports of the Provincial Commissioners for the Year Ended 31st December, 1934 (Zomba, 1935), 15.Google Scholar

78 The official order of priorities was stated to be: (i) to keep the East African Army up to strength; (2) to concentrate on foodstuffs for local use and for neighbours; (3) to assist the production of economic crops; (4) to assist local planters, Southern Rhodesia and the Rand in the matter of labour: C.O. 525/189/44053/23, Nyasaland Government, Circular No. 15, 20 March 1942, citing a 1940 circular.

79 Hist. MSS. NY 11/1/3, Minutes of 5th AGM, NTA, 24 Apr. 1941.

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82 NSE 5/1/5, Report of the D.C., Cholo, for 1938.

83 Hist. MSS. NY 11/1/4, Minutes of Special General Meeting, NTA, 7 Jan. 1947; ibid., Minutes of the 12th AGM, NTA, 16 June 1948.

84 Ibid., Minutes of Extraordinary General Meeting, NTA, 6 Feb. 1952.

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88 Hist MSS. NY 11/1/5, MMBD, NTA, 17 Apr. 1957.

89 BEA Archives, Estate Reports, Acting General Manager, Blantyre, General Report No. 5, June-July 1954.

90 Protectorate, Nyasaland, Land Commission 1946, Volume I, Report by the Rt. Hon. Sir Sidney Abrahams, P.C. (Zomba, 1946), 17. [Henceforth Land Commission Report.]Google Scholar

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99 Annual Report of the Labour Department for the Year Ending 31st December, 1946 (Zomba, 1947), 4.Google Scholar In the years 1941–4 ‘the pruning task... has been reduced, to take one example, from 85 bushes per day to 55 bushes. Employers have found that the reduction has been forced upon them by the apparent inability of the labour to finish a larger task and the risk of losing their men altogether if they are pressed’: Labour Department Annual Report, 1944, 2.

100 Hist. MSS. NY 11/1/2, Minutes of 4th AGM, NTA, 2 Apr. 1940.

101 A 3/2/246, A. R. Westrop, ‘Report on tea in Nyasaland’, 12 March 1934.

102 A hundred workers at the Lauderdale tea factory refused to work overtime on Sundays unless the rate of is. per 8½ hours was doubled. The management refused this demand, preferring not to work the factory on Sundays. NS 3/1/17, Report of the D.C., Mlanje, for 1948; Labour Department Annual Report 1948, 16.Google Scholar

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105 Ibid., Report of the D.C., Mlanje, for 1945.

106 NSE 5/1/8, Report of the D.C, Cholo, for 1946.

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111 NSE 5/1/8, Report of the D.C., Cholo, for 1946.

112 The population of Cholo (624 square miles) rose from 59,154 in 1931 to 119,746 in 1945, the population density thus rising from 94.8 to 191.9 per square mile. The comparable figures for Mlanje (1,511 square miles) were: population rising from 134,431 to 209,522 and density from 87.8 to 138.7 per square mile. In 1945 there were 74,465 Africans (38,066 men and 36,399 women) living on private estates in Cholo, compared to only 16,207 (8,717 men and 7,490 women) in Mlanje. The total number living on private estates in the whole country was 211,394. Land Commission Report, 4; Central African Statistical Office, Statistical Handbook of Nyasaland, 1952 (Salisbury, 1952), 14.Google Scholar

113 In 1948 the British Central Africa Company owned 329,353 acres in Nyasaland, 103,957 of them in Cholo. In 1949 it agreed to sell 182,493 acres to the government at 12s. 6d. per acre. C.O. 525/208/44332/3, ‘History of the British Central Africa Company’, 15; C.O. 1015/773, Minute by Nield, 20 July 1953.

114 C.O. 525/208/44332/3, ‘History of the British Central Africa Company’, 19.

115 There were also earlier incidents on the Blantyre and East Africa's Limbuli Estate, Mlanje in 1942, in which the estate's General Manager was severely censured for his behaviour towards tenants, and in 1943 in Blantyre, when ‘several hundreds’ refused to obey eviction orders. BE A Archives, Labour disputes Limbuli file 1942–3, Tait Bowie to Dunn, 17 Jan. 1942; ibid., Tait Bowie to Stark, 7 Feb. 1942; Land Commission Report, 14.Google Scholar

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121 Ibid., Colby to Lyttelton, 9 July 1953.

122 Ibid., Minute by Nield, 26 March 1953.

123 Ibid., ‘Report on unrest on Cholo estates’.

124 Ibid., Minute by Reed, 15 June 1953.

125 Ibid., Minute by Marnham, 17 June 1953.

126 Ibid., ‘Report on unrest on Cholo estates’.

127 Ibid., Colby to Lyttelton, 10 Aug. 1953.

128 Protectorate, Nyasaland, Report of a Commission of Inquiry Appointedby the Governor on the 20th August, 1953, under the Commissions of Inquiry Ordinance (Zomba, 1953), 3.Google Scholar

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136 C.O. 1015/473, Minute by Marnham, 28 Nov. 1953.

137 C.O. 1015/470, Colby to Gorell Barnes, 22 Sept. 1953. For the various demands to send out a British commission, see the files C.O. 1015/458, 459, 470–474.

138 C.O. 1015/470, Colby to Lyttelton, 19 Oct. 1953.

139 C.O. 1015/470, Colby to Lyttelton, 19 Oct. 1953; C.O. 1015/773, ‘Report on unrest on Cholo estates’.

140 C.O. 1015/773, Colby to Lyttelton, 2 Sept. 1953.

141 Ibid., ‘Report on unrest on Cholo estates’.

142 C.O. 1015/707, Minute by Marnham, 14 Oct. 1953. This involved the imposition of soil conservation and other measures which had the effect of making the Native Authorities extremely unpopular. As McCracken has recently written, ‘government intervention into peasant production took place in Nyasaland with an energy and conviction surpassed only in Kenya among British African colonies’: John McCracken, ‘Introduction’, in Centre of African Studies, University of Edinburgh, Malawi: An Alternative Pattern of Development (Edinburgh, 1985), xiii.Google Scholar

143 ‘Unfortunately, it is a problem as intractable as it is of long standing. It has baffled generations of Governors and Secretaries of State since the beginning of the century’: C.O. 1015/707, Minute by Marnham, 14 Oct. 1953.

144 Ibid., Colby to Lyttelton, 23 Nov. 1953. This left some 887,000 acres remaining in private ownership, of which 100,000 acres were under cultivation and a further 200,000 acres were either forest land or incapable of economic development. Of the remaining 587,000 acres it was deemed practicable to acquire only about 300,000 acres in large blocks.

145 C.O. 1015/707, Colby to Gorell Barnes, 20 Nov. 1953.

146 Ibid., Colby to Gorell Barnes, 2 Oct. 1953.

147 Ibid., Gorell Barnes to Colby, 24 Oct. 1953.

148 Ibid., Minute by Williams, 27 Nov. 1953.

149 Ibid., Minute by Marnham, 27 Nov. 1953.

150 Ibid., Minute by Marnham, 12 Dec. 1953.

151 Ibid., Colby to Gorell Barnes, 2 Oct. and 20 Nov. 1953.

152 Ibid., Colby to Gorell Barnes, 22 Dec. 1953.

153 By May 1956 the amount of land bought by the government since 1946 had risen to 461,474 acres, and by the end of 1958 to 526,000 acres. Pachai, , Land and politics, 144Google Scholar; Report of an Economic Survey of Nyasaland, 40.Google Scholar