John Buchanan (1855–1896), was a Scottish horticulturist who went to Central Africa, now Malawi, in 1876 as a lay member of the missionary party that established Blantyre Mission.
[2] In that capacity declared a protectorate over the Shire Highlands in 1889 to pre-empt a Portuguese expedition that intended to claim sovereignty over that region.
His father, John Buchanan, was a skilled worker at Drummond Castle who married Helen (née Gilbert) in 1844; they had six known children: Duncan (b.
John Buchanan was married in 1893 and died at Chinde in Mozambique on his way from the British Central Africa protectorate to Scotland in March 1896.
[7][8] The Scottish missions in Central Africa owed their origin to the activities of David Livingstone, who first explored the area in 1858-9 and described it as a suitable field for missionary enterprise and European settlement.
However, his optimistic assessment was overtaken by a major famine in 1861-2, by the expansion of the Yao, who displaced existing inhabitants, and by war and slave raiding, all of which severely disrupted what Livingstone had described as a near-idyllic society.
Four Ngoni groups settled in parts of what today is Malawi in the 1850s, and expanded by raiding their neighbours and forcibly incorporating captives into their communities.
[11] In the period after 1860, many people in what is now southern Malawi suffered insecurity because of warfare and slave raiding: this led to the widespread abandonment fertile land.
Local chiefs tried to gain protection from European settlers who entered the area by granting them the right to cultivate vacant land, without intending to cede its ownership permanently.
An increasing number of robberies at the mission led to arbitrary violence against suspected thieves, which was later called the "Blantyre atrocities".
In February and March 1879, one man died after a severe flogging for having thrown away a chest of tea he was ordered to carry and another, accused of murder, was killed in a botched execution by a firing-squad.
Lord Granville, the Foreign Secretary appointed Alexander Pringle, a lawyer, to accompany Rankin on behalf of the British government.
[17][18] By the time he was dismissed by the mission in 1881, Buchanan had exchanged guns, calico, and some low-value trade goods for a total of 167,823 acres of land in the Shire Highlands.
In 1895, this fused with a rival association to form the British Central Africa Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce, a powerful lobby group for settler interests.
O'Neill's visit was made in the aftermath of the Blantyre atrocities, and he recommended that a consul should be appointed for the Lake Nyasa area.
[28] The first consul to "the Kings and Chiefs of Central Africa in the territories adjacent to Lake Nyasa", Captain Foot, was appointed in 1883.
[29] In 1887, the Buchanan Brothers completed a new consulate building on the slopes of Zomba Mountain, near the Mlunguzi stream, for Captain Hawes.
O'Neill returned to Mozambique, but Hawes also quarrelled with the African Lakes Company representative, who was supported by most of the European settlers.
When hostilities continued in 1887 against his advice, Hawes felt obliged to leave the area although he retained the post of Consul until 1889, and he was later reassigned to Zanzibar.
He later refused to authorise Captain Frederick Lugard, who was visiting the area in a hunting trip, to lead a further expedition against them, because this was against the instructions that Hawes had left.
Despite Buchanan's refusal to give the expedition official backing, he did not oppose the African Lakes Company, supported by most of the European settlers and the Scottish missionaries, organising a force led by Lugard, which attacked the Arabs at Karonga from May 1888 onwards.
[37] After the arrival of Johnson, who made a treaty with the Swahili to end the conflict in October 1889, he sent his assistant, Buchanan, to Karonga in March 1891 to monitor how its terms were being observed.
Buchanan reported to Johnston that the Ngonde were still being driven out, and the Swahili traders were building more fortified villages and restricting the African Lakes Company’s activities.
[45] The Makololo who had remained on the Shire north and west of the Ruo River when Livingstone's Zambezi expedition ended and formed chieftaincies there claimed to be outside Portuguese control.
Serpa Pinto's expedition was, in part, a response to a request from the Portuguese resident on the lower Shire for assistance in dealing with disturbances he claimed were caused by the Makololo.
He had decided to make no appointments before he arrived in Nyasaland, as he believed he would find men there with knowledge of the country and its people, and who were physically and mentally tough.