Showing posts with label Sharpe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sharpe. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

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SIR ALFRED SHARPE AND THE IMPOSITION OF COLONIAL RULE ON THE NORTHERN NGONI

  • Wednesday, April 21, 2010
  • Samuel Albert
  • by R. B. Boeder, history lecturer, University of Zambia.

    The Yao and the Southern Ngoni under Chief Gomani resisted the imposition of colonial rule in Nyasaland with considerable violence while other groups such as the Lakeside Tonga and the Chewa accepted their new rulers with relative ease. But of all the peoples who were brought under British control in the country the Northern Ngoni of Mzimba District were unique in that they remained independent of formal administrative strictures until 1904 and thereafter retained considerable freedom of action until 1915. This was due to their own strength as an ethnic group and to careful preparation and close cooperation between the two most important Europeans in the country, Nyasaland's senior missionary, Reverend Doctor Robert Laws of Livingstonia Mission, and the Protectorate's first governor, Sir Alfred Shame. The life of Laws has been well documented by both his fellow missionaries and modern academic authors.1 But until now Alfred Sharpe has been ignored unjustly, overshadowed by his better known contemporaries, Sir Harry Johnston and Joseph Booth.2

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