Harry Johnston - North-Eastern Rhodesia and Nyasaland

North-Eastern Rhodesia and Nyasaland

Johnston realised the strategic importance of Lake Tanganyika to the British, especially since the territory between the lake and the coast had become German East Africa forming a break of nearly 900 km in the chain of British colonies in the Cape to Cairo dream. However the north end of Lake Tanganyika was only 230 km from British-controlled Uganda, and so a British presence at the south end of the lake was a priority.

With Belgian, German and Portuguese frontiers to contend with, Johnston ensured that British bomas were established (in addition to those in Nyasaland) east of Luapula-Mweru at Chiengi and the Kalungwishi River, at the south end of Lake Tanganyika at Abercorn, and at Fort Jameson between Mozambique and the Luangwa valley. At these bomas he helped set up and oversee the British South Africa Company's administration in the territory which became North-Eastern Rhodesia (the north-eastern half of today's Zambia). Although he missed out in Katanga, altogether he helped to consolidate an area of nearly half a million square kilometres - say nearly 200,000 square miles (520,000 km2), or twice the area of the United Kingdom in 2009 - lying between the lower Luangwa River valley and lakes Nyasa, Tanganyika, and Mweru into the British Empire.