Harry Johnston
Sir Henry Hamilton Johnston GCMG KCB (12 June 1858 – 31 July 1927) was a British explorer, botanist, artist, colonial administrator, and linguist who travelled widely across Africa to speak some of the languages spoken by people on that continent.
[1] On the expedition, Johnston concluded treaties with local chiefs (which were then transferred to the British East Africa Company), in competition with German efforts to do likewise.
[1][3] In October 1886, the British government appointed him vice-consul in Cameroon and the Niger River delta area, where a protectorate had been declared in 1885, and he became acting consul in 1887,[4] deposing and banishing the local chief Jaja.
[5] The original proposal for a Cape to Cairo railway was made in 1874 by Edwin Arnold, the then editor of the Daily Telegraph, which was joint sponsor of the expedition by H. M. Stanley to Africa to discover the course of the Congo River.
[7] Johnston later acknowledged his debt to Stanley and Arnold and when on leave in England in 1888, he revived the Cape-to-Cairo concept of acquiring a continuous band of British territory down Africa in discussion with Lord Salisbury.
[9] In November 1890, to justify his claim, Johnston sent Alfred Sharpe (who would become his successor in Nyasaland) to act for Rhodes and the British South Africa Company (BSAC), to obtain a treaty with Msiri, a move which had the potential to precipitate an Anglo-Belgian crisis.
When Leopold again protested to Salisbury in May 1891, the latter had to admit Msiri had not signed a treaty asking for British protection and left Katanga open to Belgian colonisation.
[12] However, in 1885–86, Alexandre de Serpa Pinto had undertaken an expedition which reached Shire Highlands, which had failed to make any treaties of protection with the Yao chiefs west of Lake Malawi.
[14] On his way to take up his appointment, Johnston spent six weeks in Lisbon attempting to negotiate an acceptable agreement on Portuguese and British spheres of influence in southeastern Africa.
[15] Among several pressing problems was the Karonga War, a dispute between Swahili traders in slaves and ivory with their Henga allies on one side and the African Lakes Trading Company and factions of the Ngonde people on the other which had broken out in 1887.
[18] In late 1888 and early 1889, the Portuguese government sent two expeditions to make treaties of protection with local chiefs, one under Antonio Cardoso set off toward Lake Malawi, the other under Alexandre de Serpa Pinto moved up the Shire valley.
[20] In September, following minor clashes between Serpa Pinto's force and local Africans, Johnston's deputy declared a Shire Highlands Protectorate, despite the contrary instructions.
They included Alfred Sharpe (Johnston's Deputy Commissioner), Bertram L. Sclater (surveyor, roadmaker, and Commandant of the Constabulary), Alexander Whyte (a zoologist who was to discover several new species in Nyasaland), Cecil Montgomery Maguire (military commandant), Hugh Charlie Marshall (Customs Officer, Collector of Revenues and Postmaster for the Chiromo district), John Buchanan (an agriculturalist who had been in Nyasaland since 1876, and was appointed Vice Consul by Johnston), and others.
As the Yao people had no central authority, Johnston was able to defeat one group at a time, although this took until 1894, as he left the most powerful chief, Makanjira, until almost last, starting an amphibious operation against him in late 1893.
[32] In November 1895, Johnston embarked with a force of more than 400 Sikh and African riflemen, with artillery and machine guns on steamers, to Karonga and surrounded the traders' main stockaded town, bombarding it for two days and finally assaulting it on 4 December.
Portugal and the Congo Free State, Johnston ensured that British bomas were established (in addition to those in Nyasaland) east of Luapula-Mweru at Chiengi and the Kalungwishi River, at the south end of Lake Tanganyika at Abercorn, and at Fort Jameson between Mozambique and the Luangwa valley to demonstrate effective occupation.
In 1896, in recognition of this achievement, Johnston was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB), but afflicted by tropical fevers, he transferred to Tunis as consul-general.
[36] In 1899, Sir Harry was sent to Uganda as special commissioner to reorganize the administration of that protectorate after the suppression of the mutiny of the Sudanese soldiers and to end an ongoing war with Unyoro.
