ABSTRACT
The experiences of the Great War in Malawi were part of the historical patterns that preceded them, yet another in a series of conflicts that had swept through the region for nearly a century. Government attempts to co-opt the powers of the chiefs and headmen—strengthen their rule was the euphemistic official colonial conception—had antedated the war. The knowledge that a money economy opened doors to the new world impinging upon African societies was accompanied by other war-inspired changes lessening fears of the future. Most important were altered African perceptions of Europeans. The experiences of Malawians in the First World War were clearly a major issue called up to advance the new cause, although they may have been then–and in some of the subsequent historiography of Malawi and Africa have been since—"unduly overshadowed by the influence of the Second World War."
