His father, Alexander Low Bruce, was a son-in-law of David Livingstone and urged his two sons to use the landholding he had acquired for philanthropic purposes.
However, during over 40 years residence in Africa, Bruce represented the interests of European landowners and opposed the political, educational and social advancement of Africans.
After the death of his elder brother in 1915, Alexander Livingstone Bruce had sole control of the company estates: his management was harsh and exploitative, and one of the main causes of the uprising of John Chilembwe in 1915.
During the uprising, three of Bruce's European employees were killed and one of them, William Jervis Livingstone was held partly to blame for the revolt.
On his death on 1893, aged 54, title to his African assets passed under his will to the A L Bruce Trust, whose major beneficiaries were his two sons and, to a lesser extent, his daughter.
[7] As a result of his wartime injuries, he was only capable of walking by using two sticks, although he later attained the rank of Major in the King's African Rifles during the First World War.
Amy died in 1927, and they had one child, a daughter Diana Livingstone Bruce (born 1927), who in 1963 married the American visual effects creator and producer Ray Harryhausen.
[22] At the time of the uprising, Alexander Livingstone Bruce was serving with the King's African Rifles and was based at Karonga, but he returned to the south of Nyasaland in its aftermath and took part in the later phases of its suppression.
[26] In the Legislative Council, Alexander Livingstone Bruce noted that most of those who took part in the Chilembwe rising were mission educated, and he advocated the closure of all the schools in Nyasaland that had African teachers.
[27] Other planters giving evidence to the official enquiry into Chilembwe's uprising held in June 1915 also blamed the missionaries, without distinguishing between European-led and independent missions.
The official enquiry needed to find causes for the rising and it blamed Chilembwe for his mixture of political and religious teaching, but also the unsatisfactory conditions on the Bruce Estates and its unduly harsh regime of William Jervis Livingstone.
However, Alexander Livingstone Bruce led estate owners in threatening massive evictions if this change were implemented, and thangata remained.
After 1925, the company never again made a trading profit, and over the following 15 years, its cumulative deficit rose to over £72,000, which Alexander Livingstone Bruce met from his own resources.
[32] Livingstone Bruce's chosen instrument to turn round the estate's fortunes in the 1930s was Captain Kincaid-Smith, who negotiated a contract to supply its tobacco to West Africa.
In order to fulfil the contract, Kincaid-Smith resorted to preventing tenants from growing food crops and expelling those who failed to meet their quotas, both illegal actions, and to underpaying them for the tobacco grown.
After the departure of Kincaid-Smith, Bruce gave up the attempt to manage its estates actively, and by 1948 they were described as having many tenants who produced all its crops, as the owner was merely their broker.