Nyasaland

In the later decades of the 19th century, as the Scramble For Africa established many new borders across the continent, three European powers acquired protectorates in the lands that flanked Lake Nyasa. The territories held by German East Africa, Portuguese East Africa and The Nyassaland (sic)Districts Protectorate established an uneasy truce that allowed them to exploit natural resources around the lake. The British slice of the cake changed its name to The British Central Africa Protectorate in 1893; then to the Nyasaland Protectorate in 1907 – the name it retained until 1964 when it gained independence and established the Republic of Malawi.

At the outset it must have appeared to the British Colonial Office that the protectorate offered excellent prospects of self-sufficiency, even profits. The highlands of the