This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Federation to New Nationhood The Development of Nationalism in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1950-64 Power, Robert William Leonard Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). 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Oct. 2021 Federation to New Nationhood The Development of Nationalism in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1950-64 Robert William Leonard Power DPhil History Page | 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 4 Synopsis 7 List of abbreviations 9 Maps 11 Introduction 14 Chapter 1 The Origins of African Politicisation: Britain, Settlers and 38 African Opposition to the Central African Federation 1945-1953 Chapter 2 The African Response to Federation: African ‘National’ 77 Protest and the Congress Parties of Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, 1953-1958 Chapter 3 British Anti-Colonialism and the Development of 132 Nationalism in Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland 1953- 1958 Chapter 4 African Nationalism and the Transition to Independence 171 in Nyasaland, 1959-64 Chapter 5 African Nationalism and the Transition to Independence 221 in Northern Rhodesia, 1959-64 Chapter 6 The Diplomacy of Nationalism: British Anti-colonialism 276 and the International Dimension to the National Struggle, 1959-64 Conclusion 325 Page | 2 Appendices Chronological Table of Principal Events 343 Election Results for Nyasaland, 1961-64 and Northern Rhodesia, 1962-64 346 Biographical Information 349 Bibliography 358 Page | 3 Acknowledgements One of the joys of completion is to look over the journey past and remember all the friends and family who have helped and supported me along this long but fulfilling road. Firstly, I would like to take the opportunity to thank the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their very generous funding throughout the durations of my studies. Above all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr Sarah Stockwell, who has been both my supervisor and mentor. She has been supportive and patient through some difficult periods, for which I shall always remain thankful, and her careful and instructive comments about my work have provided a constant source of encouragement. I would also like to thank Professor Richard Drayton, my secondary supervisor, whose thoughtful comments on early chapters of this thesis played an important role in shaping its future direction. Living outside of London, King’s College London has not always been my ‘home’, but whenever I have needed the support of staff, especially within the Department of History, their help and assistance has been greatly appreciated. I would especially like to thank my dear friend and colleague, Ben Bankhurst, whose advice, support, unswerving kindness and generosity helped me through my final year whilst also undertaking significant teaching responsibilities at KCL. Page | 4 This thesis would not have been completed, of course, without the assistance and patience of staff at several libraries and archives. Special thanks are due to the staff of the Maughan Library, King’s College London, the Library of the London School of Economics, Senate House Library, the staff at the Library of the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, the staff of the National Archives, Kew, to the staff of Churchill College Archives Centre, Cambridge and to the staff of the Bodleian Library, Oxford. I would especially like to thank Lucy McCann and her staff at Rhodes House Library for showing a genuine interest in my research and for their patience in supplying me with the materials and resources needed to complete this thesis. Over the course of my studies, I have been privileged to meet many interesting and inspiring people. I owe a particular debt to the work of Giacomo Macola whose ideas and research have continued to inspire my interest in a fascinating topic. During my visit to Malawi and Zambia in the summer of 2011, I conversed with many individuals who kindly shared with me their personal memories and their experiences. They not only stirred within me a deep, personal attachment to these beautiful countries but their recollections helped also to inform my knowledge of African politics. To my friends Paul Abale, Guy Botha, George Chiluba, William Chulu, Chibesa Kampo, Mildred Mpundu, Michael Monk, Soloman Mwamba and Nate Ngoma in Zambia, and to Papi Wina, Pete Tana, George Nyondo, John Mwanse, David Gondwe and Abikanile George in Malawi, thank you. Thank you also to Paul Lihoma and his staff in Malawi’s National Archives centre in Zomba for their assistance and cooperation in rather difficult Page | 5 circumstances owing to my own ineptitude as a researcher conducting fieldwork abroad for the first time. Finally, I would like to thank my former supervisor, friend and mentor at the University of East Anglia, Dr Larry Butler, whose unswerving support has been a constant source of encouragement throughout my studies. I am most appreciative to him for sharing his ideas with me, and sparing the time to discuss, often at great length, my historical interests. My greatest thanks are due to my family. This thesis would not have been completed without their love, support, encouragement and humour. The past three years have been hugely enjoyable, but not without problems, and it is thanks to my parents, who instilled within me a love of creative pursuits and history, my brothers, Mike and Chris, and my Nan, Doris, that this work has been completed. I simply would not be in this position, however, if not for my wife, Naomi. She has travelled every inch of this long and sometimes demanding journey by my side. She has tolerated late nights, frequent mood swings and occasional loneliness, all the while remaining steadfast in her support. Words cannot express my sincere, heartfelt thankfulness for all that she has done. As a token of my appreciation, it is to her that this thesis is dedicated. Robert Power November 2012 Page | 6 Synopsis This thesis aims to contribute to our understanding of the development and significance of anti-colonial nationalism within Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland between 1953 and 1964. Reappraising the work of David Mulford and Robert Rotberg, the thesis will focus upon the means by which Kenneth Kaunda’s United National Independence Party and Hastings Banda’s Malawi Congress Party came to dominate the national agenda in the 1950s and 60s. Emphasis will be placed upon the extent to which African politicians successfully mobilised the African people against the Federation, translating complex political arguments and winning support for their own, exclusive, national ideal. Galvanised by the imposition of the Central African Federation, the political elite embarked upon an ambitious programme to politically educate the African masses. The initial objective was to win African advancement within the Federal context in the hope that this might eventually translate into African majority government. When such changes were not forthcoming, and when the Nyasaland and Northern Rhodesian governments embarked upon a campaign to suppress African political parties in 1959, nationalist objectives subsequently changed. As the British appeared blind to African politicisation, political leaders turned away from Page | 7 Britain as the supposed ‘protector’ of African interests and instead came to call for African self-government in an independent Zambia and Malawi. In so doing they drew upon the support of powerful pan-African, and international, allies who encouraged MCP and UNIP politicians to accept nothing less than their desired goal of independence and helped to place pressure upon the British government to resolve an increasingly untenable situation in Central Africa. The thesis will contribute to the historiography in two principal ways. In the first instance, the thesis will seek to contemporise accounts of the rise of nationalism that emerged in the immediate post-independence period, proposing that the rise of UNIP and the MCP was not always as inevitable as such accounts would imply. Rather, it depended upon the initiative, foresight, and abilities of African politicians in winning the confidence and support of the African masses. It depended also, after 1959, upon the ability of nationalist leaders to forge links between party and nation and, crucially, upon an expanding network of pan-African and international anticolonial allies. It is here that the thesis will hope to make an original contribution to the prevailing historiography by demonstrating that the development of nationalism did not solely occur within an exclusively Zambian- Malawian context. The success of mobilisation campaigns, and indeed the independence struggle, rested heavily upon the support of external allies who proved vital in both pressuring the British and lending moral and financial support to African politicians. By such means, it is hoped that the thesis will go some way to emphasising the importance of extending the study of Zambian and Malawian independence beyond the traditional metropolitan-peripheral axis.