ABSTRACT
The identity of pre-colonial Malawi centred on the Maravi Empire, a very loosely organised society covering a large expanse of territory which extended well beyond present-day Malawi1 and initially encompassed the Chewa and later the Tumbuka peoples. During the nineteenth century, the empire was subjected to multiple successful invasions by the Yao from the north, who became heavily involved in commercial slave trading as agents of the coastal Arabs on the East African seaboard, and by the warlike Ngoni from the south. Although the Chewa, Tumbuka, Yao and Ngoni form the basis of Malawi’s ethnic groups, the contemporary boundaries of Malawi owe as much to British, and especially Scottish, missionary activity along the Shire River and the shores of Lake Malawi as to the influence of ancient ethnic loyalties. Following David Livingstone’s arrival in the late 1850s, missionaries were highly active in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The pattern of endemic tribal conflict and disruption caused by the slave trade, however, to a great extent promoted social instability and even detribalisation in pre-colonial Nyasaland.
