| The continuity of the slave trade and slavery in Malawi motivated an intense missionary campaign intended to convince Africans of the necessity of abolishing the trade in captives through the example of Christianity and legitimate trade. Once a group of missionaries from the Free Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) arrived in northern Malawi, the location and the pace of their activities in the area were determined by Africans, who were interested in having a mission station established in the midst for different political, economic, and religious reasons, as by the evangelists. As a result of the European interactions with northern Malawian Africans, the latter ended up labelled as either "enslavers" or "victims" of enslavement. These notions, which blurred the nuances within different African groups, were the beginning of the process of "tribalization" in northern Malawi. Through the use of diplomacy and by playing off the rivalries within the different African politics in the area, the Free Church group secured its permanence in a portion of northern Malawi. However, when the permanence of the mission station, and of the European traders who catered for it, was threatened by groups who continued to trade in slaves in the northernmost region of Malawi, the leaders of the Free Church, along with other Europeans in the area, asked for a British military intervention. A protectorate was declared over the territory. The British-led military force used a great deal of systematic violence against groups branded as "enslavers" as if all the inhabitants of villages ruled by slave-dealing chiefs were equally involved in the slave trade. On the other hand, groups branded as "victims" of slave raiding were spared by the violent military campaign when actually many people of all ethnic Malawian groups were, at least, partially involved in the trade in captives. Finally, the Scottish missionaries had conceived a project for the transformation of Africans into landed independent farmers producing staples for the European market. Such a class of farmers never emerged in northern Malawi. Many Africans, especially males, combined seasonal wage work at European-owned estates in southern Malawi, or at gold and diamond mines in South Africa, with local communal agricultural production thus resisting a complete proletarianization at the hands of European firms. |
