Slavery, evangelism, imperialism and identity construction: Malawi (Nyasaland) during the era of the partition of Africa (1875-1900)
Keywords:
slavery, 19th century, industrial capitalism, abolitionism, Africa, Malawi, missionary campaigns, identities, armed struggle, British imperialism, colonialismAbstract
Slavery became a moral and conceptual problem during the 19th century. The idea of a workforce tied to only one owner contradicts the basic needs of capitalism. The abolitionist discourse focuses on Africa during that stage. The presence of slavery in that continent during the late 19th century motivated some missionary campaigns that not only planned to eradicate that old institution but also planned to transform the life and the economy of African peoples according to the principles of industrial capitalism. Malawi or Nyasaland is a good example of those territories where those evangelical campaigns were carried out. Scottish missionaries converted many Malawians to Christianity and, at the same time, created several identities in terms of slavers and slaves. Missionaries, on the other hand, became immersed in African political conflicts to the point in which they had to take up arms to protect their converts from slave hunters. A British military intervention took place in Malawi in the middle of that struggle and, as a consequence, that territory was annexed to the British Empire. Therefore, evangelism, abolitionism, industrial capitalism, British imperialism, and the creation of colonial identities converged on the problem of slavery in late 19th Century Malawi.References
Anti Slavery Reporter and Aborigines Friend. Series 3.a y 4.a, 1876-1896. Brown, Christopher Leslie (2006). Moral Capital: Foundations of British Abolitionism. Chapel Hill, N. C.: University of North Carolina Press.
Cain, P. J., y Hopkins, A. G. (2002). British Imperialism, 1688-2000. Londres: Longman.
Cairns, H., y Alan C. (1965). Prelude to Imperialism: British Relations to Central African Society, 1840-1890. Londres: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Conrad, Robert E. (1972). The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-1888. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Davidson, B. (1984). The Story of Africa. Londres: Mitchell Beazley Publishers.
Davis, D. B. (1984). Slavery and Human Progress. Nueva York: Oxford University Press.
Elmslie, W. E. (1970). Among the Wild Ngoni. Londres: Cass. Publicado originalmente en 1899.
Fotheringham, L. M. (1987). Adventures in Nyassaland: A Two Years’ Struggle with Arab Slave-Dealers in Central Africa. Blantyre, Malawi: Press Corporation. Publicado originalmente en 1891.
Glave, E. J. (1896). «Glave in Nyassaland: British Raids on the Slave Traders». The Century 52, pp. 599-625.
Hobsbawm, E. (1987). The Age of Empire: 1875-1914. Londres: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Holt, T. C. (1992). The Problem of Freedom: Race, Labor, and Politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Jack, J. W. (1969) Daybreak in Livingstonia: The Story of the Livingstonia Mission: British Central Africa. Nueva York: Negroes’ Universities Press. Publicado originalmente en 1900.
Johnston, H. H. (1897). British Central Africa: An Attempt to Give Some Account of a Portion of the British Territories North of the Zambezi. Londres: Methuen.
Livingstone, D. (1875). The Last Journals of David Livingstone in Central Africa. Ed. por Horace Waller. Nueva York: Harper Brothers.
Livingstone, D. (1865). Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries, and of the Lakes Shirwa and Nyassa, 1858-1864. Nueva York: Johnson Reprint Corp.
Mandala, E. C. (1990). Work and Control in a Peasant Economy: A History of the Lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi, 1859-1960. Madison, Wisc.: University of Wisconsin Press.
Minute Book of the Sub-Committee on the Livingstonia Mission. National Library of Scotland, MS 7912.
Moir, F. L. M. (1986). After Livingstone: An African Trade Romance. Londres: Hodder and Stoughton. Publicado originalmente en 1923.
Nkomazana, F. (1998). «Livingstone’s Ideas of Christianity, Commerce and Civilization». Pula: Botswana Journal of African Studies, 12, pp. 44-57.
Oliver, R. (2000). The African Experience: From Olduvai Gorge to the 21.st Century. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.
Painter, N. I. (2010). The History of White People. Nueva York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Rice, C. D. (1981). The Scots Abolitionists, 1833-1861. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press.
Sola-Garcia, C. J. (2009). Slave Emancipation and Colonialism: The British Missionary and Military Campaigns and African Societies in Northern Malawi, 1875-1900. Colonia, Ale.: Lambert Academic Publishing.
Stanley, B. (1983). «‘Commerce and Christianity’: Providence, Theory, the Missionary Movement, and the Imperialism of Free Trade, 1842-1860». The Historical Journal 26, pp. 71-94. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/s0018246x00019609
Thomas, H. (1997). The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440-1870. Londres: Picador.
Vail, L. (1989). «Introduction: Ethnicity in Southern African History», en The Creation of Tribalism in Southern Africa. Ed. por Leroy Vail. Berkeley: University of California Press.
White, L. (1989). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village. Cambridge, G.B.: Cambridge University Press.
Wolf, E. R. (1999). Envisioning Power: Ideologies of Dominance and Crisis. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
The authors of articles published in Miscelánea Comillas retain the intellectual property rights over their works and grant the journal their distribution and public communication rights, consenting to their publication under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivates 3.0 Unported. Authors are encouraged to publish their work on the Internet (for example, on institutional or personal pages, repositories, etc.) respecting the conditions of this license and quoting appropriately the original source.
