After the withdrawal of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa those Makololo remaining in the Shire valley used firearms provided by the Europeans to attract dependants seeking protection, to seize land and to establish a number of chieftainships.
[2][3] From Sekeletu's perspective, establishing a secure route to the Atlantic or Indian Ocean, rather than relying on the dangerous and insecure one southward to the Cape Colony was well worth the loan of these men and they contributed significantly to Livingstone's success.
[7] Although on one level, the individuals involved were working for both Sekeletu's and Livingstone's goals, those that the Makololo contemptuously dismissed as Makalaka, vassals or serfs, saw the expedition as a way to gain, wealth, authority, and power that their social position denied them in their homeland.
[8] The Makololo conquest had been completed barely a decade before Livingstone's arrival and the senior Makololo indunas had gained control of the traditional sources of the country's wealth, making emigration or association with new sources of wealth the Europeans promised and the firearms that they provided the best options for the young men of the subject populations seeking advancement.
However, by this time Sekeletu was facing increasing opposition from the Lozi majority, and a number of porters decided to remain on the middle Zambezi.
These incursions disrupted agriculture and caused widespread famine in the Shire Highland in the early 1860s as the local people abandoned their farms.
At that time, pressure from supposedly subordinate chiefs controlling other shrines and attacks from Afro-Portuguese chikunda raiding for slaves left the Lundu state with little real power over what had become a loose confederation of local chiefdoms.
[17] In the early 1860s, members of Livingstone's expedition or UCMA missionaries described the Mang'anja as being ruled by a hierarchy of chiefs and headmen of varying power and influence.
[21][22] Even thirty years later at the start of the colonial period, large areas of the Shire Highlands were underpopulated and remained so until the large-scale immigration of Lomwe people fleeing famine and forced labour in Mozambique at the end of the 19th century.
The other ten became chiefs or headmen: two of these, Kasisi and Mloka, were said to be true Makololo rather than coming from subject peoples, and these were the first leaders of the group.
[30] The Mang'anja put up little resistance to Kasisi, Mloka and their men and, apart from the deaths of the Lundu and Kaphwiti paramounts and a few followers, the takeover was relatively bloodless.
[32] Until the death of their leader, Paul Marianno II in 1863, the Afro-Portuguese chikunda had considerable power and influence in the Lower Shire valley.
[38] Apart from Mlauri, most of the Makololo chiefs valued their former connection with Livingstone and were favourably disposed to British missionaries and traders entering their area.
[39] The Makololo had a virtual monopoly over the collection of ivory in the lower Shire valley, which they sold to the African Lakes Company as they were unable to use the Shire-Zambezi route to the coast through Portuguese territory.
[47] In 1933, a form of Indirect rule was introduced by the governor of Nyasaland, Sir Hubert Young, who appointed chiefs as local government officials with wider powers than in 1912, but with no jurisdiction over European-owned estates and no financial responsibilities.
[49] The Native Authority scheme generally worked well until the mid-1940s, but in the post-Second World War period, most chiefs lost legitimacy by enforcing unpopular government policies.