Britain and Nyasaland

(1964) is a study of the political development of Nyasaland under British control. The author outlines the muddle of forces which resulted in the British assuming control of the area, and shows the entity of Nyasaland to have been, not the outcome of plan or design, but the leftovers of geography and treaties. He examines the emergence of nationalism from tribalism, and problems of administration in a plural society, in both early and later days, and the benevolent disinterest of British authority which sometimes descended to indifference. He describes the moves to establish the Federation, both in Britain and in Nyasaland, and demonstrates the hopelessness of the task set thereafter for British colonial government. He shows at the end that the British abandoned control as they assumed it, not for the good of the settlers or the Nyasas, and less because of anything that happened there than because to do so fitted in with policy elsewhere, and seemed the best way of avoiding inconvenience in dealing with an unconformable little country.