Annual report on Nyasaland / Colonial Office.

  • Great Britain. Colonial Office.
Date:
[1946]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Annual report on Nyasaland / Colonial Office. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/68 (page 3)
    INTRODUCTION Progress between 1939 and 1945 IN outward appearance the Nyasaland Protectorate changed but little during the war. It remained a predominantly agricultural country; the fact that many of its sons were in the fighting services was not unduly disturbing to a society accustomed to the regular absence of nearly a third of its fit adult males, and the undoubted political progress of these years was achieved quietly and without agitation or upheaval. Anyone returning to Nyasaland from an absence which covered the war years could be forgiven for concluding on first inspection that the territory was an island of changelessness in a chaotic world. He would be wrong. Social, political, and economic progress were all considerable, retarded only by shortages of supervisory staff and materials, and schemes made possible by the generosity of Great Britain, expressed in the Colonial Development and Welfare Act of i94®> were already in operation when hostilities ended. Time had also been found, by a committee consisting mainly of unofficial members, for the formula¬ tion of numerous and far-reaching plans for the future development and welfare of the country. The individual African soldier, impressed by what he had seen during his service, was writing to his family from Madagascar or India descanting upon the value of education and enclosing sketches of the neat brick cottage he proposed to build on his return home, and this changed attitude had to be taken into account by the Development Committee in formulating its plans. Important psychological changes were also taking place. One effect of the war was to make the serviceman, European, Yao, Ngoni, Nyanja, or Nguru, think of himself as a “Nyasa”. By that name he was known to his comrades from the rest of the Empire, and under it he maintained a military reputation which for fifty years has been foremost among African troops. On the home front there was increasing realisation that the country formed part of a larger whole, while internally the formation of African Provincial Councils and of the Nyasaland African Congress was leading to an appreciation of social and political horizons wider than those of the village and the tribe. On the social side, the European found in the African soldier sur¬ prisingly rich material for training, and the African new pride in his ability to learn and practise what he had been taught; it remains to ensure that the benefits thus won are not lost in peacetime. Apart from actual military contribution to the war, which in man¬ power comprised nearly a third of the fit African male population, a quarter of the European men and a considerable proportion of the European women, Nyasaland’s task was mainly agricultural, the aims