British Central Africa Protectorate - Origin of The Protectorate

Origin of The Protectorate

After the Shire Highlands south of Lake Nyasa (now Lake Malawi) and the lands west of the lake were explored by David Livingstone in the 1850s, several Anglican and Presbyterian missions were established in the area in the 1860s and 1870s. In 1878 The African Lakes Company Limited, predecessor to the African Lakes Corporation Limited was established in Glasgow by a group of local businessmen with links to the Presbyterian missions. Their aim was to set up a trade and transport concern that would work in close cooperation with the missions to combat the slave trade by introducing legitimate trade, to make a profit, and to develop European influence in the area. A small mission and trading settlement was established at Blantyre in 1876 and a British consul (representative) took up residence there in 1883.

Concessionaires holding prazo estates from the Portuguese crown were active in the lower valley of the Shire River from the 1830s and the Portuguese government claimed suzerainty over much of Central Africa without effective occupation. However in 1879 they formally claimed the area south and east of the Ruo River (which currently forms the southeastern border of Malawi), and in 1882 occupied the lower Shire valley as far as the Ruo. In 1885-86 Alexandre de Serpa Pinto undertook an expedition which reached Shire Highlands but which failed make any treaties of protection in territories west of Lake Malawi.

As late as 1888, the British Foreign Office declined to accept responsibility to protect the rudimentary British settlements in the Shire Highlands, despite claims by the African Lakes Company of Portuguese interference with their trading activities. However, it also declined to negotiate with the Portuguese government on their claim that the Shire Highlands should be considered part of Portuguese East Africa, as it was not under their effective occupation. In order to prevent Portuguese occupation, the British government sent Henry Hamilton Johnston as British consul to Mozambique and the Interior, with instructions to report on the extent of Portuguese rule in the Zambezi and Shire valleys and the vicinity, and to make conditional treaties with local rulers beyond Portuguese jurisdiction. These conditional treaties did not amount to the establishment of a British protectorate, but prevented those rulers from accepting protection from another state.

Also in in 1889, Serpa Pinto organised an expedition to secure the Shire Highlands for Portugal. He met Johnston in August 1889 east of the Ruo, when Johnston advised him not to cross the river into the Shire Highlands. In September, following minor clashes when Serpa Pinto's force advanced, Johnston's deputy declared a Shire Highlands Protectorate, despite the contrary instructions . Johnston’s proclamation of a further protectorate, the Nyasaland Districts Protectorate, west of Lake Malawi was contrary to his instructions, but was endorsed by the Foreign Office in May, 1891. These actions led to an Anglo-Portuguese Crisis in which a British refusal of arbitration was followed by the 1890 British Ultimatum. This demanded that the Portuguese gave up all claims to territories beyond the Ruo River and west of Lake Malawi. The Portuguese government accepted under duress, and an 1891 Anglo-Portuguese treaty fixed the southern borders of what had been renamed British Central Africa Protectorate . The northern border of the protectorate was agreed at the Songwe River as part of an Anglo-German Convention in 1890. Its western border with Northern Rhodesia was fixed in 1891 at the drainage divide between Lake Malawi and the Luangwa River by agreement with the British South Africa Company, which governed what is today Zambia under Royal Charter until 1924.