This book focuses on the late colonial history of Zambia and Malawi,
which between 1953 and 1963 were part of the Federation of Rhodesia and
Nyasaland. Although there were many links in their history and between
their populations, the two territories (British protectorates under
Colonial Office control) contrasted greatly in power structures, in
their economies, and in their development. Europeans living in Northern
Rhodesia, with a power base in the mining economy, were able to
establish a dominant position in the territory after the Second World
War. By the 1950s it looked as though they would have, with Southern
Rhodesian Europeans, a long hegemony, gaining independence from Britain
as a new Dominion, which would mean control over both Northern Rhodesia
and Nyasaland through the Federation. Thus, white ethnicity and ideology
are essential factors in this book relating to the struggle for power
from just before the Second World War up to the 1960s. However, crises
in 1959 and 1960 led to the collapse of the Federation. A second focus
is on issues of social and economic development. For Africans in
Nyasaland, and in rural parts of Northern Rhodesia, there was a
relatively weak economy in this period, a pattern of limited cash crop
production, while many people became caught up in labour migration,
subordinate to powerful European-dominated economic forces within
southern Africa. This meant that colonial policies aimed at rural
development were fundamentally flawed. The book also looks at the actual
nature of rural economic change (as opposed to colonial policies) and
discusses alternative visions of the future which were put forward. The
argument is put that historians have often concentrated on the
activities of the main nationalist movements in Nyasaland and Northern
Rhodesia, seeing them as bringing progress away from colonialism and
towards independence. Here there is an attempt to draw out the
complexities of life, and a variety of responses in the colonial
situation, progress coming in a number of forms, but not always being
achieved.
