Blantyre Mission and the Making of Modern Malawi

C. Ross

Description

When a thousand leading members of the Nyasaland African Congress were detained under the emergency regulations imposed by the Federation government in 1959, the Presbyterian chaplains who ministered to them at Kanchedza Camp in Limbe were the late Rev Jonathan Sangaya and Rev Andrew C. Ross. They soon discovered that around 700 of the thousand men were members of the Church of Central African Presbyterian. This raised a question in the mind of the recently arrived Scottish missionary: how may we account historically for the fact that so many national leaders were Presbyterians? The quest to answer that question led him to produce the thorough examination of the foundation and early history of the Blantyre Mission of the Church of Scotland which is found in this book. Written in the mid-1960s, it remains today an indispensable work of reference for understanding the history of both church and nation in Malawi.

Informations

• Publié par: Luviri Press
• Date de parution: 16 mai 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9789996060557
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

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Blantyre Mission and the Making of Modern Malawi Blantyre Mission and the Making of Modern Malawi

Andrew C. Ross

Andrew C. Ross

Luviri Reprints no. 1

Blantyre Mission and the Making of Modern Malawi

Copyright 2018 Andrew C. Ross All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any from or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission from the publishers. Published by Luviri Press P/Bag 201 Luwinga Mzuzu 2 Malawi ISBN 978-99960-60-56-4 eISBN 978-99960-60-55-7 Luviri Reprints no. 1 Luviri Press is represented outside Malawi by: African Books Collective Oxford ([e-mail]) www.mzunipress.blogspot.com www.africanbookscollective.com Editorial assistance and cover: Daniel Neumann Printed in Malawi by Baptist Publications, P.O. Box 444, Lilongwe

Blantyre Mission and the Making of Modern Malawi Andrew C. Ross Luviri Press

Luviri Reprints no. 1 Mzuzu 2018

Luviri Reprints

Many books have been published on or in Malawi that are no longer available. While some of these books simply have run their course, others are still of interest for scholars and the general public. Some of the classics have been reprinted outside Malawi over the decades, and during the last two decades, first the Kachere Series and then other publishers have achieved "never out of stock status" by joining the African Books Collective's Print on Demand approach, but there are still a good number of books that would be of interest but are no longer in print. The Luviri Reprint Series has taken up the task to make those books on or from Malawi, which are out of print but not out of interest, available again, through Print on Demand and therefore worldwide. While the Luviri Reprint Series concentrates on Malawi, it is also inter- ested in the neighbouring countries and even in those further afield. Luviri Reprints publish the books as they originally were. Usually a new Foreword is added, and where appropriate, new information has been added. All such additions, mostly in footnotes, are marked by an asterisk (*). The Editors

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Foreword Blantyre Mission and the Making of Modern Malawiby Andrew C. Ross is a book that should always remain in print in Malawi. It is the authorita- tive account of a component of Malawi’s history that has been highly influential in making it the country that it is today. While other scholars will doubtless consider various aspects of the role of the Church of Scotland Blantyre Mission, no one will ever again occupy the position that Andrew Ross did in the late 1950s and early 1960s when he was able to interact with elderly people whose memories stretched back to the th early beginnings of the Mission in the late 19 century. Andrew was able to talk at length, for example, with Rev Harry Kambwiri Matecheta, the first Malawian to be ordained to the ministry in 1911. By the time Andrew met him he was a very elderly man but he could remember as a 10-year old boy witnessing the arrival of the group of Scots who founded Blantyre Mission in 1876. Andrew thus had oral sources available to him that will not be accessible in the future. He also had a particular motivation for researching the early history of Blantyre Mission. Living through the State of Emergency in 1959-60, Andrew had to face the question of what kind of country Malawi was or should be. Should it find its future in the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, under the authority of a Parliament in Salisbury dominated by white settlers or did it have a fundamentally different character and destiny? This question sent Andrew back to the late nineteenth century when the modern nation of Malawi took shape as he sought to uncover the vision that had inspired those involved at the time, particularly at the Blantyre Mission.

Another good reason for this book to remain always in print is that it contains the best available study of David Clement Scott, the head of Blantyre Mission during its most creative and ground-breaking period. In an age of many extraordinary missionaries, Scott stands out for the

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original and radical nature of his vision for the territory and the people among whom he was working. In particular, the tension between Scott and the fledgling British administration in the 1890s brought out the contrast between the colonialism then coming into the ascendency and the confidence in African leadership and African culture that marked Scott’s leadership of the Blantyre Mission. This was a tension that came to a head in the 1950s with the movement that achieved independence for Malawi. Yet colonialism has cast a long shadow and many of the issues with which Scott was struggling are yet to be fully resolved. The relevance of Scott’s thinking is underlined also by the preoccupation of modern African theology with questions of inculturation. The first generation of African theologians who were publishing in the later part of the twentieth century were greatly concerned with the question of how to be both truly African and truly Christian. Remarkably, Scott had anticipated this concern a hundred years earlier and was far ahead of his time in grappling, in collaboration with his Malawian colleagues, with the question of what a truly African Christianity would be like. Inculturation is a perennial point of concern for mission studies and it will always be instructive to turn to the thinking of an extraordinarily creative thinker who was engaged this question during the first generation of the appropriation of the Christian faith in southern Malawian communities. Another point that, sadly, proves to be of continuing relevance is the struggle to counter racism. This looms large in the early history of the Blantyre Mission since the Mission provided the voice of resistance to the advance of Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company, which aimed to include Malawi within its sphere of influence. Scott was alert to the racist ideology that guided Rhodes’ operations and determined that this should not come to hold sway in Malawi. For Andrew Ross this provided inspiration when the question of racism had to be confronted again in the context of the State of Emergency in Malawi in 1959-60. As John McCracken commented on the work of Andrew Ross: “Many academic historians see publication primarily as a means of enhancing their careers. Ross, by contrast, looked to the past to uncover examples of individual Scots whose struggles against racism and injustice could

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1 inspire those committed to similar campaigns in the present.” He saw Clement Scott and the Blantyre Mission as falling into this category. In an age when racism and xenophobia are resurgent in many different parts of the world, such inspiration is sorely needed. The lessons that can be learned from this book therefore have wide application and will repay study in many different contexts. To end on a personal note, I owe a great debt to Andrew Ross. He was my doctoral supervisor at the University of Edinburgh in the 1980s, mentor and adviser when I was teaching at the University of Malawi in the 1990s, and fellow activist in rejuvenating Scotland-Malawi relations in the early 2000s. His death in 2008 deprived international scholarship of a distinctive voice and Malawi of an indefatigable champion. It is much to be welcomed that his contribution will continue to be made through this seminal book. It is an excellent choice to be the first in the projected series of Luviri Reprints that will keep important books in print for the benefit of the Malawian public and the global scholarly community. Kenneth R. Ross Argyll, Scotland May 2018

1 John McCracken, “Andrew Ross and the Radical Strand in Scotland’s Missionary Tradition”, in Kenneth R. Ross ed., Roots and Fruits: Retrieving Scotland’s Missionary Story, Oxford: Regnum, 2014, 86.

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Abbreviations ALC The African Lakes Company, after 1895, the African Lakes Corporation BCA British Central Africa BSA British South Africa BSACo British South Africa Company CCAP Church of Central Africa Presbyterian CMS Church Mission Society EUL Edinburgh University Library FMC Foreign Mission Committee, the title of the General Assembly Committee with executive authority for the work of overseas missions in both the Church of Scotland and the Free Church of Scotland. FO ForeignOffice HMFR Home and Foreign Mission Record LMS The London Missionary Society LWBCA Life and Work in British Central Africa.This was the monthly magazine published by the Blantyre Mission of the Church of Scotland and must not be confused with the entirely separate magazine of kindred name in Scotland. It was first published asThe Blantyre Mission Supplementin February 1888, but soon in 1890 it took the above title. The words British Central Africa were replaced by Nyasaland, when the name of the Protectorate was changed by the British Government in 1907, and the periodicalbecame Life and Work in Nyasaland. Mal Arch Malawi Archives Sal Rhod Arch Salisbury Rhodesia Archives - now the Zimbabwe National Archives NLS National Library of Scotland UMCA The Universities' Mission to Central Africa ZIM Zambezi Industrial Mission

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Contents Preface Introduction Chapter 1: The Scottish Base Chapter 2: The Failure at Blantyre Chapter 3: A New Beginning under David Clement Scott, 1881 - 1891 Chapter 4: The Need for a Protectorate Chapter 5: Mission and Boma, 1889 - 1914 Chapter 6: The Growth of the Church: D.C. Scott as Leader Chapter 7: Growth of the Church: Hetherwick as Leader Chapter 8: The War and the Beginning of a New Day Table of Sources

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11 13 19 49 80 111 138 190 224 242 262