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. Buchanan came to Central Africa as an ambitious artisan: his character was described as dour and devout but also as restlessly ambitious, and he saw in Central Africa a gateway to personal achievement. He started a mission farm on the site of Zomba, Malawi but was dismissed from the mission in 1881 for brutality. From being a disgraced missionary, Buchanan first became a very influential planter owning, with his brothers, extensive estates in Zomba District. He then achieved the highest position he could in the British administration as Acting British Consul to Central Africa from 1887 to 1891. 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. In 1891, the Shire Highlands became part of the British Central Africa Protectorate. John Buchanan died at Chinde in Mozambique in March 1896 on his way to visit Scotland, and his estates were later acquired by the Blantyre and East Africa Ltd.
Family Background
John Buchanan was born in Muthill, Perthshire on 15 May 1855. 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. 1851), Mary (b. 1853), John (b. 1855), David (b. 1858), Christina (b. 1860) and Robert (b. 1862). 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. Two of his brothers died at Blantyre in the protectorate, David in 1892 and Robert in 1896, a few months after John's death. His son, John Buchanan (1896–1976) was a doctor who worked in the colonial medical services of Tanganyika, Somaliland and Aden between 1925 and 1940 and, after war service with the Royal Army Medical Corps in East Africa and the South Pacific, joined the Colonial Office Medical Service becoming its Chief Medical Officer in 1960.
Missionary Activities
John had been apprenticed as a gardener at Drummond Castle as a youth, and in 1876 traveled to Blantyre in what is now Malawi to work as a horticulturist and gardener. He was one of the original party under the leadership of Henry Henderson that founded the Church of Scotland Blantyre Mission. This mission was founded 15 years before a British protectorate was declared over the whole country.
Background to the Mission
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. Livingstone was himself at least partly responsible for some of this disruption as, on his Zambezi expedition, he brought with him from Barotseland a number of porters who are usually described as Makololo, and left them near Chikwawa on the Shire River in 1864 when the expedition ended. These men had firearms, and they soon attracted dependents and formed several small chieftaincies along the Shire River.
In the middle of the 19th century, there were several major population movements in Central Africa. One was the Yao migration into what became Nyasaland. The Yao people originally lived south of the Ruvuma River in what is now Mozambique, from where successive Yao groups moved to settle west of Lake Chiuta. The leaders of two major divisions of the Yao there were Malemia and Kawinga: these fought against one another and also against the Ngoni or Angoni, another migrant group. The Ngoni left South Africa in the 1820s under their leader Zwangendaba as part of the great migration called the mfecane, caused at least in part by rise of the Zulu Kingdom. 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.