¹ As, for example, Rodney, Walter, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Dar es Salaam, 1972).Google ScholarBrett, E. A., Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa: the Politics of Economic Change, 1919–1939 (London, 1973)Google Scholar, has discussed the effects of railway financing in East Africa in a most stimulating fashion; see also O'Connor, A. M., Railways and Development in Uganda (Nairobi, 1965).Google Scholar

² See Wills, A. J., An Introduction to the History of Central Africa (London, 1964), 276Google Scholar; Pollock, Norman H., Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesia: corridor to the north (Pittsburgh, 1971), 512–15Google Scholar; and Frankel, S. Herbert, Capital Investment in Africa: Its Course and Effects (London, 1938), 179.Google Scholar

³ Hancock, Keith, Survey of British Commonwealth Affairs, II: Problems of Economic Policy, 1919–1939, part 2 (London, 1942), 120Google Scholar; Pachai, B., Malawi: The History of the Nation (London, 1973), 151.Google Scholar

⁴ F.O. 2/690,. Sharpe to Salisbury, , 27 12 1899.Google Scholar

⁵ The demand for such porterage was immense, as this was the principal route into Central Africa from the East Coast. There were generally too few porters to handle the task. Late in 1899, for example, 100,000 loads were lying in store on the lower Shire River awaiting transport up the escarpment (Capenny, S. H. F., ‘Railway Schemes in Relation to British Central Africa’, The Scottish Geographical Magazine, xvii [1901], 369).Google Scholar See also Sharpe, Alfred, ‘Trade and Colonisation in British Central Africa’, The Scottish Geographical Magazine, xvii (1901), 134.Google Scholar

⁶ The Central African Planter, II 11 1899.Google Scholar In 1903, however, recruitment for the Rand was permitted in response to an appeal by Milner. His request was granted after the failure of the local coffee plantations lessened the demand for labour. Because of the high mortality rate among the Africans recruited, however, the experiment was terminated in 1909.

⁷ The Central African Planter, 6 Jan. 1900.Google Scholar

⁸ Minute of the Church of Scotland Foreign Mission Committee, 20 Nov. 1900, enclosed in F.O. 2/691, McMurtrie to Balfour, , 7 12 1900.Google Scholar

⁹ F.O. 2/689, Sharpe to Salisbury, 27 Jan. 1897; Memorandum of H. H. Johnston, 20 Nov. 1896; Johnston, Harry, ‘England's Work’, Proceedings of the Royal Colonial Institute, XXVIII (1896–1897), 55.Google Scholar

¹⁰ F.O. 2/689, Memorandum of Stanmore, Lord, 18 11 1898.Google Scholar

¹¹ See F.O. 2/689, Moir (African Lakes Company) to Salisbury, 1 Dec. 1896, and also Memorandum of H. H. Johnston, 20 Nov. 1896. Johnston was harshly critical of the African Lakes Company's attitude towards the railway project, noting that ‘in the present state of the country the Lakes company reap very large profits from the very imperfection of the transport system that others deplore’. He viewed the Company's intervention as insincere and as designed to obscure the issue and postpone the construction of a railway that would compete with the Company's transport business.

¹² F.O. 2/689, Memorandum of H. H. Johnston, 20 Nov. 1896; Ommanney (Crown Agents) to Stanmore, 15 Dec. 1896; Stanmore to Johnston, 20 Jan. 1897. It should be noted that with the sole exceptions of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, all railways in British colonial Africa were owned and operated by the government concerned (Frankel, , Capital Investment in Africa, 377).Google Scholar That the Foreign Office, not the Colonial Office, formulated early railway policy for Nyasaland is important in understanding this anomaly.

¹³ The Central African Times, 10 11 1900 and 23 02 1901Google Scholar; F.O. 2/691, Ommanney to Hill, 30 Aug. 1899; F.O. 2/693, Blake (Crown Agents) to Lansdowne, 27 June 1902.

¹⁴ F.O. 2/693, Blake to Lansdowne, , 30 10 1902.Google Scholar

¹⁵ Malawi Railways Archives (Limbe, Malawi), Concession Decree of 11 Feb. 1891.

¹⁸ Malawi Railways Archives, Van Laun Contract, 12 Sept. 1891; d'Erlanger, Emile, The Construction and Financing of the Rhodesian Transport System (n.p., n.d. [London, 1938]), 40.Google Scholar

¹⁷ In 1892 Rhodes attempted to purchase or lease all of Portuguese East Africa south of the Zambezi, partly to ensure that Delagoa Bay would not fall into unfriendly hands, partly to encircle the Transvaal, and partly to secure unquestioned free egress to the sea for Rhodesia. Rhodes failed in his bid, but because of the area's great strategic importance both to Rhodesia and South Africa, British imperial interests remained alert. C.O. 537/501, Telegram from Rhodes to Merriman, 27 Jan. 1892.

¹⁸ Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher, with Denny, Alice, Africa and the Victorians (London, 1963), 446–8.Google Scholar See also Feis, Herbert, Europe: The World's Banker (New York, 1930), 251–2.Google Scholar

¹⁹ F.O. 63/1446, Minute of 10 Oct. 1902.

²⁰ F.O. 63/1446, Elphinstone (Director, Mozambique Company) to Clark, 17 Oct. 1902.

²¹ F.O. 63/1446, Antrobus to Lansdowne, , 20 10 1902.Google Scholar

²² In 1903 the British project faltered because the French government put pressure upon Lisbon not to yield to British requests that the purge be allowed and because of the anti-British feeling that developed in Lisbon after the publication of a remark by one of the British directors of the Mozambique Company that the ‘Portuguese had neither the money nor energy nor brains for developing the East African territories’. F.O. 63/1446, Gosselin (British Ambassador in Lisbon) to Lansdowne, , 5 10 1903.Google Scholar

²³ F.O. 63/1446, Minute of Clark, , 18 11 1904.Google Scholar

²⁴ C.O. 525/5, Elphinstone to Clark, , 4 05 1904Google Scholar, enclosed in Lansdowne to Lyttleton, , 13 05 1904.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ C.O. 525/5, Minute of 22 May 1904.

²⁷ C.O. 525/10, Enclosure in de Bunsen to Lansdowne, , 25 08 1905.Google Scholar

²⁸ C.O. 537/550, Harcourt to Gladstone, , 15 05 1911Google Scholar, and Minute of 9 Oct. 1911. On two separate occasions the Colonial Office thought the rumours serious enough to warrant its threatening the Company's officials against any such move in very strong terms.

²⁹ ‘Mr. Libert Oury's Life and Work’, East Africa and Rhodesia, 11 05 1939, 998.Google Scholar

³⁰ d'Erlanger, , Construction, 42/3.Google Scholar As time passed Oury acquired directorships in well over a dozen companies operating in south-east Africa.

³¹ C.O. 537/553. Minute of SirAnderson, J., 14 01 1913.Google Scholar

³² C.O. 537/S53, Memorandum of H.L., 9 Jan. 1913. A modern Rhodesian author has written that early in the century Rhodesians were brought up to believe that ‘Portuguese East could be “taken by telephone”’. Bate, H. Maclear, Report from the Rhodesias (London, 1953), 114.Google Scholar

³³ C.O. 537/553. Harcourt to Gladstone, , 10 01 1913.Google Scholar

³⁴ The first proposals regarding the new railway, the Central African Railway (CAR) had it running down the east bank of the Shire to the Zambezi. The Colonial Office, aware that this plan would leave the railway in territory pledged to Germany in the event of a partition of Portuguese East Africa, insisted that the railway be moved to the river's west bank, where it would be in the proposed British sphere. C.O. 525/39, Memorandum of Harcourt to Anderson, 25 Aug. 1911.

³⁵ C.O. 525/40, Harcourt to the Secretary of the British Central Africa Company, 5 Dec. 1911.

³⁶ C.O. 525/45, Maugham to Principal Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 28 Nov. 1911.

³⁷ C.O. 525/45, Minute of Barclay to Fiddes, , 10 01 1912.Google Scholar

³⁸ d'Erlanger, , Construction, 44.Google Scholar

³⁹ C.O. 525/52, Eyre-Crowe to Harcourt, , 18 03 1913.Google Scholar

⁴⁰ C.O. 525/52, Harcourt to Grey, , 19 03 1913.Google Scholar

⁴¹ C.O. 525/52, Grey to Hardinge, , 21 03 1913.Google Scholar

⁴² C.O. 525/52, Hardinge to Grey, , 13 05 1913.Google Scholar

⁴³ C.O. 525/64, Minute of Read, J., 28 04 1915.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Malawi National Archives (MNA), GOA 2/4/29, Oury to Smith, , 18 01 1917.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ C.O. 525/88, Bottomley (C.O.) to Buckley (Treasury), 19 Apr. 1919. The leading proponents of this new forward attitude were Smuts, Milner and Leopold Amery, all of whom took an active part in formulating imperial policies towards Portuguese East Africa. Smuts saw the move as one that would ensure that German commercial activity would not revive in the area and as highly advantageous to South Africa. Milner and Amery agreed with Smuts and pressed for British governmental intervention to extend British interests in the area. C.O. 525/77, Memorandum of J. C. Smuts, 15 Jan. 1918; C.O. 525/81, Philips to Read, , 11 09 1918Google Scholar; C.O. 525/88, Milner to Balfour, , 18 07 1918Google Scholar; Minute of Amery, L. S., 19 04 1919.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ C.O. 525/88, Milner to Balfour, , 18 07 1918.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ C.O. 525/64, Officer Administering the District of Quelimane to British Consul at Quelimane, 9 July 1914, enclosed in MacDonell to Grey, , 18 12 1914.Google Scholar

⁴⁸ Malawi Railways Archives, undated letter of Oury to the Mozambique Company.

⁴⁹ C.O. 537/844, Fiddes to Gilmour, , 2 05 1919.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ C.O. 537/844, Memorandum of Libert Oury, enclosed in Gilmour to Fiddes, , 19 04 1919.Google Scholar

⁵¹ C.O. 525/85, Read (C.O.) to Barstow (Treasury), 18 Aug. 1919.

⁵² C.O. 537/844, Confidential Memorandum of Libert Oury, enclosed in Gilmour to Milner, 19 April 1919; See also MNA. GOA 2/4/29, Gilmour to Smith, , 15 07 1919.Google Scholar

⁵³ C.O. 525/85, Read to Barstow, , 18 08 1919.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ The Colonial Office explained the position thus: ‘In view of the suspicions and susceptibilities of the Portuguese Government, it was recognized that any proposal for a direct guarantee by the Imperial Government would wreck the whole project, and it was in these circumstances decided, without preliminary consultation with the Government of Nyasaland, to arrange for a guarantee in the name of that Government as being likely to be less distasteful to the Government of Portugal.’ C.O. 525/85, Read to Barstow, , 18 08 1919.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ MNA. S2/44/19, Milner to Smith, , 17 07 1919.Google Scholar

⁵⁶ Treasury (T) 161/64/S.4625/1, Read to Treasury, , 13 08 1921.Google Scholar

⁵⁷ T 161/64/S.4625/1, Barstow to Read, , 9 09 1921.Google Scholar

⁵⁸ T 161/64/S.4625/1, Read to Barstow, , 8 10 1921.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ The Nyasaland Times, 29 04 1920.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ In 1921, for example, the Acting Governor wrote to Churchill that he did not consider that it could be held ‘that the TZR, in respect of the guarantees on which the Protectorate was not consulted, was built directly and only in the interests of Nyasaland’. He then asserted that with such a heavy debt charge ‘development cannot take place’ (C.O. 525/98, Rankine to Churchill, , 24 11 1921).Google Scholar In 1922, Governor Smith noted that there was a pressing need for an increase in expenditure on social welfare projects but that nothing could be done because of the TZR burden: ‘I foresee that all further effort will be in vain unless the Treasury can be moved to assume a different attitude towards the Trans-Zambesi guarantee and treat it as an Imperial obligation. With that load off our shoulders.… I am sanguine in my hope that we shall be able to balance our revenue and expenditure [and thus provide services to the African community]’ (MNA. S 1/380/21, Smith to Churchill, 12 June 1922).

⁶¹ MNA. S1/1644/23, Treasury to Colonial Office, 5 Mar. 1923, enclosed in C.O. to Governor, 19 Apr. 1923.

⁶² For a detailed discussion of the impact of the railways upon Nyasaland's domestic economy, see Leroy Vail, ‘Railway Development and Colonial Underdevelopment: the Nyasaland Case’, in Ann Seidman, Robin Palmer and Neil Parsons (eds.), The Roots of Rural Poverty: essays on the development of Underdevelopment in southern central Africa (forthcoming).

⁶³ MNA. GOA 2/4/29, Fiddes to Smith, , 28 12 1915.Google Scholar In 1915 Oury estimated the cost of a bridge over the Zambezi at £150,000. When it was finally completed, its cost exceeded £3,000,000.

⁶⁴ d'Erlanger, , Construction, 46/8.Google Scholar

⁶⁵ C.O. 525/100, Oury to Churchill, , 27 04 1921.Google Scholar

⁶⁶ Cmd. 2016. Report of the Committee on Private Enterprise in British Tropical Africa (London, 1923)Google Scholar (Ronaldshay Committee), and Cmd. 2387. Report of the East African Commission (London, 1924)Google Scholar (Ormsby-Gore Report).

⁶⁷ C.O. 525/110, Barstow to Read, 27 May 1924.

⁶⁸ A committee appointed to study railway development in Nyasaland saw the bridge was a possible way of freeing the Protectorate from the TZR guarantee responsibilities by its allowing the profitable shipment of coal from Moatize over the TZR; Governor Bowring agreed. MNA. S1/874/24, ‘Report of the Stevenson Committee’, in Thomas to Bowring, 25 Oct. 1924, and Bowring to Amery, 21 Jan. 1925.

⁶⁹ C.O. 525/110, Petition of the Nyasaland Planters, May 1924. See also East Africa, 19 03 1925.Google Scholar

⁷⁰ C.O. 525/113, Minute of F. Green, 29 May 1925.

⁷¹ Cmd. 2701. Report of the East African Guaranteed Loan Committee (London, 1926), 107.Google Scholar

⁷² C.O. 525/115, Memorandum of Gilmour to the Colonial Office, 26 July 1926.

⁷³ General Hammond had had considerable experience in similar work in Nigeria, East Africa and Rhodesia and was considered the best man available for such a task.

⁷⁴ C.O. 525/115, Minute of 27 July 1926.

⁷⁵ C.O. 525/115, Memorandum of Gilmour to Amery, , 26 03 1926.Google Scholar

⁷⁶ The Report on the Nyasaland Railways and the Proposed Zambezi Bridge [Hammond Report] Col. Office No. 27 (London, 1929), 7.

⁷⁷ Ibid. 13. This assumed that the imperial authorities would allow cheap exports, such as maize, to be produced in Nyasaland. In fact, when the opportunity arose, Whitehall refused to countenance such exports.

⁷⁸ Ibid. 46/56.

⁷⁹ A critical point left untouched, because it was explicitly excluded from the Commission's terms of reference, was the potential of the Moatize coal-fields, which were generally accepted as the only thing that could make the bridge a financially feasible proposition. Although nothing was published about these, General Hammond wrote a ‘secret’ report to Amery to make the point that the Moatize coal-fields were highly speculative, that Natal coal would almost surely undercut Moatize coal, and that the British South Africa Company, with its very large influence in the Port of Beira, would surely use its influence there to block the improvements that would help Nyasaland at the expense of the coal industry at Wankie. By this time, Rhodesian Railways, controlled by the British South Africa Company, was a dominant influence in the Beira Works Company, which now held the port development concessions in Beira. C.O. 525/117, Hammond to Amery, 17 June 1927; C.O. 525/122, Paterson (Vice Consul at Beira) to Consul, Lourenço Marques, 22 Nov. 1927; d'Erlanger, , Construction, 49.Google Scholar

⁸⁰ C.O. 525/122, Bowring to Amery, , 11 04 1928.Google Scholar

⁸¹ C.O. 525/122, Schuster to Amery, , 21 06 1928.Google Scholar

⁸² C.O. 525/122, Minute of 26 June 1928.

⁸³ T 161/742/S.28440/4, Amery to Churchill, , 18 07 1928.Google Scholar

⁸⁴ T 161/291/S.33978, Memorandum of Oct. 1928.

⁸⁵ T 161/291/S.33978, Amery to Churchill, , 26 11 1928.Google Scholar

⁸⁶ T 161/291/S.33978, Memorandum of Hopkins to Churchill, , 21 01 1929.Google Scholar

⁸⁷ See speech of J. H. Thomas introducing the bill, Hansard, fifth series, ccxxix, col. 1255, 12 07 1929.Google Scholar

⁸⁸ C.O. 525/131, Memorandum of SirWilson, Horace, 19 03 1929.Google Scholar

⁸⁹ C.O. 525/135, Bottomley to Treasury, , 11 04 1930.Google Scholar

⁹⁰ C.O. 525/139, Passfield to Thomas, , 6 07 1931Google Scholar; C.O. 525/143, Hamilton to Officer Administering the Government (Hall), 28 July 1932.

⁹¹ Speech of SirMosley, Oswald, Hansard, fifth series, ccxxx, col. 694, 18 07 1929.Google Scholar

⁹² C.O. 525/147, Minute of Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister, 2 Mar. 1933.

⁹³ C.O. 525/162, Kittermaster to Ormsby-Gore, 8 Oct. 1936. In 1936 Nyasaland tobacco cost o·97d per pound to transport from Limbe to Beira by rail, while Rhodesian tobacco cost only o·17d per pound over the same distance to Beira.

⁹⁴ C.O. 525/152, Calder (C.O.) to Grieve (Treasury), 1 Oct. 1935.

⁹⁵ T 161/8.28440/08, Memorandum of Grieve, 1935.

⁹⁶ C.O. 525/155, Calder to the Treasury, , 10 04 1935.Google Scholar

⁹⁷ C.O. 525/154, Minute of Greenhill, , 25 07 1934.Google Scholar

⁹⁸ Speech by Mr Hall, Chief Secretary to the Nyasaland Protectorate, reported in East Africa, 25 01 1934.Google Scholar

⁹⁹ C.O. 525/155, Hall to Cunliffe-Lister, , 31 08 1934.Google Scholar See also MNA. S2/4 11/31, Minute of 20 Aug. 1934.

¹⁰⁰ C.O. 525/158, Kittermaster to Cunliffe-Lister, 1 Feb. 1935. See also The Report of the Committee Appointed by His Excellency the Governor to Enquire into Emigrant Labour, 1935 (Zomba, 1936)Google Scholar [Lacey Report].