African Lakes Company

Opposition from missionaries and the African Lakes Company ensured that the region around Lake Nyasa and the Shire River valley was separated from the BSAC sphere; it was declared the British Central African Protectorate in 1891, with Johnston as commissioner. Even before Johnston’s arrival the British had been embroiled in…

…all land belonged to the African Lakes Company until 1930, when it reverted to customary use. The plantations remained poor and inefficient until the 1920s and ’30s, when tobacco and tea replaced coffee and cotton. Low pay, forced-labour practices, and squalid working conditions meant the plantations depended on labour tenants,…