The company was incorporated in 1902 to acquire the business interests that Eugene Sharrer, an early settler and entrepreneur, had developed in the British Central Africa Protectorate.
For most of the colonial period, its extensive estates produced cotton, tobacco or tea but the British Central Africa Company Ltd developed the reputation of being a harsh and exploitative landlord whose relations with its tenants were poor.
[2][3] In 1962, shortly before independence, the company sold most of its undeveloped land to the Nyasaland government,[4] but it retained some plantations and two tea factories.
[10] Eugene Sharrer, who was described as an archetypal colonial outsider, arrived in Central Africa in 1888 and soon began working in the ivory trade.
These rivers formed the main route into British Central Africa, and to improve transport links, he promoted the development of the first railway in the country, whose construction was agreed in 1902.
After the First World War, Kubula Stores was the main rival to Mandala but it largely failed to penetrate the rural areas.
The company had long fought to retain its landholdings, much of which was undeveloped, claiming that soil exhaustion and erosion, deforestation and poor husbandry would result if the land were resettled by smallholders.
[31] Following a serious famine in 1949, Geoffrey Colby, the Governor of Nyasaland from 1948 to 1956, attempted to get the major estate companies to sell the under-used parts of their land to the government for resettlement.
By ruling compulsion out, he gave unintended encouragement to the British Central Africa Company's plans to retain its estates.
[32] In 1955, the Nyasaland government agreed to purchase almost 36,470 acres in Cholo District with 24,600 residents from the British Central Africa Company for resettlement.
[5] The Central Africa Company Ltd, with its remaining agricultural assets, was sold by Lonrho to African Plantations Corporation June 1997.
The Natives on Private Estates Ordinance 1928 formalised this arrangement by allowing landlords to receive rents in cash, in a fixed quantity of acceptable crops or by direct labour.
Its tenants had to perform labour thangata or grow cotton for sale to the company, but in general there was plenty of land available for food production.
[38] In 1902, Sharrer's landholdings in Cholo district were sold to the British Central Africa Company Ltd. For the first two decades of the 20th century, the area remained undeveloped and relatively under-populated.
[40] At the end of the First World War, the company started a scheme for settling ex-servicemen on its undeveloped land as tobacco growers.
[44] The company had formerly relied on labour tenants for much of its workforce, but in 1946, its local Manager complained that thangata was virtually unenforceable, as the workers ignored their contracts with impunity.
The company had a very poor relationship with the tenants on its two estates of in northern Cholo and was unable to enforce unpopular thangata agreements or Sunday working.
There was a further crisis in 1952 and 1953 when a collapse in world tea prices put the British Central Africa Company into a financial deficit.
A number of tenants resisted the increase, and the company issued eviction notices, which the government was legally obliged to enforce, but was reluctant to do.
Many local people refused to pay taxes or attend courts, and riots broke out in Cholo in August 1953, leading to eleven dead and seventy-two injured.
Following these riots, Governor Colby urged that another 300,000 acres, including much British Central Africa Company land, should be acquired through voluntary purchase, but the Colonial Office did not support this, so little happened.