John Buchanan (1855–1896), was a Scottish horticulturist who went to Central Africa, now Malawi, in 1876 as a lay member of the missionary party that established Blantyre Mission. Buchanan came to Central Africa as an ambitious artisan: his character was described as dour and devout but also as restlessly ambitious, and he saw in Central Africa a gateway to personal achievement.J McCracken, (2008). Politics and Christianity in Malawi, p. 64. He started a mission farm on the site of Zomba, Malawi but was dismissed from the mission in 1881 for brutality. From being a disgraced missionary, Buchanan first became a very influential planter owning, with his brothers, extensive estates in Zomba District. He then achieved the highest position he could in the British administration as Acting British Consul to Central Africa from 1887 to 1891. In that capacity he declared a protectorate over the Shire Highlands in 1889 to pre-empt a Portuguese expedition that intended to claim sovereignty over that region. In 1891, the Shire Highlands became part of the British Central Africa Protectorate. John Buchanan died at Chinde in Mozambique in March 1896 on his way to visit Scotland, and his estates were later acquired by the Blantyre and East Africa Ltd.F M Withers, (1949). Nyasaland in 1895–96, pp. 22–5.W. H. J. Rangeley (1958). The Origins of the Principal Street Names of Blantyre and Limbe, pp. 41–2.
Family background John Buchanan was born in Muthill, Perthshire on 15 May 1855. His father, John Buchanan, was a skilled worker at Drummond Castle who married Helen (née Gilbert) in 1844; they had six known children: Duncan (b. 1851), Mary (b. 1853), John (b. 1855), David (b. 1858), Christina (b. 1860) and Robert (b. 1862). John Buchanan was married in 1893 and died at Chinde in Mozambique on his way from the British Central Africa protectorate to Scotland in March 1896. Two of his brothers died at Blantyre in the protectorate, David in 1892 and Robert in 1896, a few months after John's death.Perthshire Local Archives http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/PERTHSHIRE/2008-03/1205860723 His son, John Buchanan (1896–1976) was a doctor who worked in the colonial medical services of Tanganyika, Somaliland and Aden between 1925 and 1940 and, after war service with the Royal Army Medical Corps in East Africa and the South Pacific, joined the Colonial Office Medical Service becoming its Chief Medical Officer in 1960.Dix Noonan Webb http://www.dnw.co.uk/medals/auctionarchive/viewspecialcollections/itemdetail.lasso?itemid=56861
Missionary activities Buchanan had been apprenticed as a gardener at Drummond Castle as a youth, and in 1876 traveled to Blantyre in what is now Malawi to work as a horticulturist and gardener. He was one of the original party under the leadership of Henry Henderson that founded the Church of Scotland Blantyre Mission. This mission was founded 15 years before a British protectorate was declared over the whole country.Biography in JSTOR Plant Science http://plants.jstor.org/person/bm000036911K Stahl, (2010). Some Notes on the Development of Zomba, p. 39.
Background to the mission The Scottish missions in Central Africa owed their origin to the activities of David Livingstone, who first explored the area in 1858-9 and described it as a suitable field for missionary enterprise and European settlement. However, his optimistic assessment was overtaken by a major famine in 1861-2, by the expansion of the Yao, who displaced existing inhabitants, and by war and slave raiding, all of which severely disrupted what Livingstone had described as a near-idyllic society. Livingstone was himself at least partly responsible for some of this disruption as, on his Zambezi expedition, he brought with him from Barotseland a number of porters who are usually described as Makololo, and left them near Chikwawa on the Shire River in 1864 when the expedition ended. These men had firearms, and they soon attracted dependents and formed several small chieftaincies along the Shire River.J McCracken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859–1966, pp. 37–41.
In the middle of the 19th century, there were several major population movements in Central Africa. One was the Yao migration into what became Nyasaland. The Yao people originally lived south of the Ruvuma River in what is now Mozambique, from where successive Yao groups moved to settle west of Lake Chiuta. The leaders of two major divisions of the Yao there were Malemia and Kawinga: these fought against one another and also against the Ngoni or Angoni, another migrant group.J C Mitchell, (1951). An Outline of the Social Structure of Malemia Area, p. 21. The Ngoni left South Africa in the 1820s under their leader Zwangendaba as part of the great migration called the mfecane, caused at least in part by rise of the Zulu Kingdom. Four Ngoni groups settled in parts of what today is Malawi in the 1850s, and expanded by raiding their neighbours and forcibly incorporating captives into their communities.J McCracken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859–1966, pp. 29–30.
In the period after 1860, many people in what is now southern Malawi suffered insecurity because of warfare and slave raiding: this led to the widespread abandonment fertile land. Local chiefs tried to gain protection from European settlers who entered the area by granting them the right to cultivate vacant land, without intending to cede its ownership permanently.B. Pachai, (1978). Land and Politics in Malawi, 1875–1975, p. 36. One example of this process was when the Rev. Duff MacDonald and John Buchanan, both of Blantyre Mission, met Malemia in August 1879 to request land for a farming outstation of the mission on the Mulunguzi River. The site of this mission station was later occupied by the Government headquarters in Zomba, the colonial capital of Nyasaland. The mission station itself moved to Domasi at the end of the 19th century.J C Mitchell, (1951). An Outline of the Social Structure of Malemia Area, pp. 25–6.K Stahl, (2010). Some Notes on the Development of Zomba, pp. 39–40. From 1878 until 1880, Buchanan worked as an agriculturalist for the mission at Zomba as well as at Blantyre, assisted by a small staff of Africans. He received permission from Malemia to plant coffee seedlings imported from the botanical garden at Edinburgh at Zomba.J. Watson, (1973). Some Notes on the History of the Zomba District, The Society of Malawi Journal, Vol. 26, No. 1 p. 51.
The Blantyre atrocities In the late 1870s, Blantyre Mission and its outstation were poorly organised. Duff Macdonald, the leading clergyman after 1878, refused to become involved in its daily administration and control was largely exercised by Dr Thomas Macklin and three artisans: John Buchanan (who divided his time between Blantyre and Zomba), John Walker and George Fenwick. An increasing number of robberies at the mission led to arbitrary violence against suspected thieves, which was later called the "Blantyre atrocities". Corporal punishment involved up to 200 lashes from a buffalo hide whip, sometimes with little evidence of wrongdoing. In February and March 1879, one man died after a severe flogging for having thrown away a chest of tea he was ordered to carry and another, accused of murder, was killed in a botched execution by a firing-squad.J McCracken, (2011). Class, Violence and Gender in Early Colonial Malawi, pp. 3–4.
Although a small minority within the Church of Scotland attempted to defend Blantyre Mission's actions on the grounds that there was no civil authority to protect it, the prevailing view was that the mission had no legal or moral right to inflict these punishments. However, it was only after the publication of a pamphlet exposing these outrages in early 1880 that the Church's Foreign Mission Committee sent the Rev. James Rankin to Blantyre to investigate charges of inhuman treatment of Africans there. Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary appointed Alexander Pringle, a lawyer, to accompany Rankin on behalf of the British government. Rankin and Pringle took depositions at Blantyre in September 1880, which Rankin used to prepared a report on the Blantyre cases. This was considered in March 1881 by the Foreign Mission Committee, which concluded that the Rev. Macdonald should be removed for failure to supervise Buchanan and Fenwick, the two workers deemed most responsible for the two deaths and illegal floggings, and that Buchanan and Fenwick should be summarily dismissed.J McCracken, (2008). Politics and Christianity in Malawi 1875–1940, pp. 98–9.The James Rankin Collection, (1880–81) Special Collections, University of Virginia Library http://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uva-sc/viu03801.xml
Landowning By the time Buchanan was dismissed by the mission in 1881, he had exchanged guns, calico, and some low-value trade goods for a total of of land in the Shire Highlands. His land deals were dubious, as the agreements were signed by chiefs who had no understanding of English concepts of land tenure. This land was acquired in the name of Buchanan Brothers, a partnership of John and his two younger brothers, David and Robert, who joined him in Central Africa in 1881. These land deals were probably made in the expectation that, when more settlers arrived, land prices would rise and some of the land the brothers held could be profitably sold. Buchanan also acted as broker for non-residents wishing to buy land, including Alexander Low Bruce, whose land later formed the A L Bruce Estates.J McCracken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859–1966, pp. 49–50, 77-8. After the establishment of the British Central Africa Protectorate, the Buchanan Brothers' claims were recognised by the colonial administration, which issued Certificates of Claim (in effect the registration of freehold title) for all the separate areas of land they had acquired.B. Pachai, (1973). Land Policies in Malawi: An Examination of the Colonial Legacy, pp. 682–3, 685.
The Buchanan Brothers, led by John, experimented with a number of crops, starting with coffee, sugar-cane and tea at Zomba in the early 1890s and they built a sugar mill to produce sugar for the local market.J McCracken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859–1966, p. 77.F M Withers, (1949). Nyasaland in 1895–96, pp. 22–3. Buchanan himself described progress in coffee planting as slow before the declaration of the protectorate, but he began exporting in 1891, and in 1892–93 about ten million coffee seedlings were planted in the Shire Highlands. The first coffee grown was Coffea arabica but Blue Mountain coffee was also found to be suitable at the heights of about 3,000 feet usual in the highlands.J Buchanan, (1893). The Industrial Development of Nyasaland, p. 252. Cultivating coffee as a major crop in Central Africa had a short and disappointing history. In 1896 there were over 10,000 acres under coffee in the Protectorate and 160 tons were exported, gaining high prices in London in 1896 and 1897. However, this coincided with a period of sustained coffee development in Brazil which lowered coffee prices on the world market, and the Nyasaland coffee industry never recovered from this.C. A. Baker (1962) Nyasaland, The History of its Export Trade, p. 10. In early 1890s, Buchanan introduced Virginia-type tobacco. This became the favoured estate crop in drier areas of the Shire Highlands after the failure of coffee, but tobacco growing only developed significantly after the opening of a railway in 1908 to export the crop.J G Pike, (1969). Malawi: A Political and Economic History, pp. 176–8, 183.J McCracken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859–1966, p. 91.