Blantyre and East Africa Ltd is a company that was incorporated in Scotland in 1898 and is still in existence. Its main activity was the ownership of estates in the south of what is now Malawi. The main estate crops it grew were tobacco until the 1950s and tea, which it continued to grow until the company’s tea estates were sold.
Blantyre and East Africa Ltd was one of four large estate-owning companies in colonial Nyasaland which together owned over of land, including the majority of the fertile land in the Shire Highlands.B Pachai, (1978). Land and Politics in Malawi 1875-1975, pp. 37-40. The company acquired most of its landholdings between 1898 and 1901 from several early European settlers, whose title to this land had been recognised by Certificates of Claim issued by the administration of the British Central Africa Protectorate.B Pachai, (1978). Land and Politics in Malawi 1875-1975, p. 41.
After the boom in Europeans growing tobacco ended around 1927, the company retained a single large estate in Zomba District where its tenants were encouraged to grow tobacco, and others where it grew tea. It also rented out a scattering of small estates to African tenants, which were crowded and unsupervised.M Vaughan (1987). The Story of an African Famine, p. 73. Many such estates, apart from the tea estates which it continued to manage directly, were sold to the colonial administration of Nyasaland between 1950 and 1955.C Baker, (1993) Seeds of Trouble, pp. 88-9, 135.
Corporate history Blantyre and East Africa Ltd is a company registered in Scotland number SC004070 which was incorporated in 1898 as a private company. The company still exists and has throughout its existence had its registered office in Scotland, although it has not traded since 1995.Company information from Open Corporates. http://opencorporates.com/companies/gb/SC004070/filings
The company was founded in 1898 a group of largely Scottish landowners headed by John William Moir and Robert Spence Hynde (both from Edinburgh), and it acquired the estates formerly owned by the three Buchanan brothers in 1901.W. H. J. Rangeley (1958). The Origins of the Principal Street Names of Blantyre and Limbe, pp. 41-2, 54J McCarthy, (2004). Connecting the Lakes: Two Scottish Pioneers, p. 1. Moir and John Buchanan were among the earliest European settlers in what is now Malawi, both arriving in the 1870s. Hynde and the other Buchanan brothers arrived in the 1880s, but all were present before the British Central Africa Protectorate was proclaimed in 1891. All these men had a Scottish background and had cooperated in forming the Nyasaland Planters Association.J McCraken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, p. 79.
The main trading operations if Blantyre and East Africa Ltd were carried out in what is now Malawi where it owned large estates, whose main products were tobacco and tea, through the first half of the 20th century. During the 1950s it sold many of its tobacco estates to the colonial administration of Nyasaland but retained its tea estates until after independence. The company has been referred to as Blantyre and East Africa Company Ltd,C Baker, (1993) Seeds of Trouble, p. 5. but according to its corporate records, it has never changed its name and has always been Blantyre and East Africa Ltd.Company information from Company Check http://companycheck.co.uk/company/SC004070
Predecessors John Buchanan (1855–96) was first apprenticed to a gardener at Drummond Castle. He was one of the original employees of the Blantyre Church of Scotland Mission when it was founded in 1876, working as a gardener, and in 1878 moved to open an outstation of the mission on the Mulunguzi River, which became the site of Zomba, the capital of Nyasaland. He was dismissed by the mission in 1881 for brutality, but by this time he had exchanged low-value trade goods for around 170,000 acres of land. This land was acquired in the name of Buchanan Brothers, a partnership of him and his two younger brothers David and Robert, who joined him in Central Africa in 1881. These land deals were probably made in the expectation that, with more settlers, land prices would rise. Buchanan also acted as broker for non-residents wishing to buy land, including Alexander Low Bruce, whose land formed the A L Bruce Estates. Buchanan Brothers experimented with a number of crops starting with coffee, which was being exported by 1891. In early 1890s, they had introduced Virginia-type tobacco, planted an experimental tea garden and built a sugar mill to produce sugar for the local market.Biography in JSTOR Plant Science http://plants.jstor.org/person/bm000036911J McCraken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, pp. 49-50, 77, 91. From being a disgraced missionary, John Buchanan became Acting British Consul to Central Africa from 1887 to 1891, and in that capacity declared a protectorate over the Shire Highlands in 1889 to pre-empt a Portuguese expedition that intended to claim sovereignty in that region. In 1891, this became part of the British Central Africa Protectorate. In 1892, he helped to form the Nyasaland Planters Association, which mainly represented the interests of Buchanan Brothers and the African Lakes Company. In 1895, this fused with a rival association to form the British Central Africa Chamber of Agriculture and Commerce, a powerful lobby group for settler interests. John Buchanan was the first Chairman, but he died suddenly early in 1896 and was succeeded by his brother Robert, who died a few months later. David Buchanan had already died in 1892. There were other family members, but none were resident in British Central Africa or involved in the business.F M Withers, (1949). Nyasaland in 1895–96, pp. 22-3. After the deaths of the three Buchanan brothers, the Buchanan Brothers Company was formed to take over the partnership assets, and it was run by a local manager until 1901.W H J Rangeley, (1957) A Brief History of the Tobacco Industry in Nyasaland (Part I), p. 67.
John William Moir (1851-1940) and his brother Frederick Moir (1852–1939) were recruited in 1878 as the first managers of the company known from 1881 as the African Lakes Company and as the African Lakes Corporation from 1894. On their arrival in Central Africa, they became involved in elephant hunting and ivory trading as ivory was the only commodity that it was economical to ship to Europe. John left Africa in March 1890 and was not re-appointed as manager. Frederick Moir left in June 1891, and was made secretary of African Lakes in Glasgow. John Moir returned to Nyasaland (then British Central Africa) in 1893 and became a pioneer tea planter, founding the Lauderdale estate in the Mlanje district; he retired to Edinburgh in 1900.Oxford Dictionary of National Biography http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/94727?&docPos=47&backToResults= R S Hynde originally came to Nyasaland in 1888 as a Church of Scotland lay missionary, but soon became a planter and from 1901 to 1918 was the General Manager of Blantyre and East Africa Ltd, remaining in Nyasaland for many years after this. He was particularly interested in tea planting.J McCraken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, p. 167.
The Buchanan Brothers partnership had been awarded title to 167,823 acres in three large and four smaller estates, all in the Shire Highlands, in 1893. John Moir had acquired 13,803 acres from the African Lakes Company on his return to British Central Africa in 1893 and both Moir and Hynde had made subsequent land purchases. However, there had also been sales and Blantyre and East Africa Ltd owned around 157,000 acres of land in 1901 which it had acquired from these predecessors.UK Government, (1938). Report of the Commission appointed to enquire into the Financial Position and Further Development of Nyasaland, p. 96.
Business operations in Nyasaland Buchanan Brothers had experimented with coffee, sugar-cane and tea at Zomba in the 1890s. John Moir had planted tea on the Lauderdale Estate in Mlanje from 1891,J McCracken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, p. 167 and R S Hynde started as a tobacco and coffee planter, but soon replaced coffee with tea on his estate near Limbe.A. Schwarz and R. S. Hynde (1983). Malawi's First Newspaper, the Central African Planter, p. 10. These crops continued to be grown by the company, but competition and overproduction in Brazil led to the abandonment of coffee by 1905. Tea was found to be more suited to the wetter Cholo and Mlanje districts, whereas in the drier areas of the Shire Highlands tobacco was the favoured estate crop. Both tobacco and tea growing developed significantly after the opening of the Shire Highlands Railway in 1908.J G Pike, (1969). Malawi: A Political and Economic History, pp. 173, 176-8, 183.
In the years shortly after the protectorate was founded in 1891, little of the land on European estates was planted, as few African workers were resident on estate lands at that time. Many of the Certificates of Claim issued to settlers contained “non-disturbance” clauses allowing these existing residents to continue to cultivate their existing fields rent-free J. A. K. Kandawire, (1977). Thangata in Pre-Colonial and Colonial Systems of Land Tenure in Southern Malawi, pp. 185-7.R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa, p. 18. Many of the new workers who moved onto estates were so-called "Anguru", migrants from Mozambique who were required to pay rent, usually satisfied by two months’ labour a year in the early years, under the system known as thangata although later many owners required a longer period of work.L White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 86-9. R S Hynde, the General Manager of Blantyre and East Africa Ltd, made an agreement with the headmen of villages on the company's estates in Cholo District under which the villagers were to give up their rights under the non-disturbance clause and become the company’s tenants, working for two months during the growing season in lieu of rent and Hut tax. If any of the villagers worked for another employer they were to pay their rent and taxes in cash, and those who could not work for it or pay rent were to be liable to be evicted. In 1903, the administration asked the High Court to cancel this agreement, as it contravened the non-disturbance clause. The court accepted that the villagers’ rights protected by the non-disturbance clause could not be exchanged for an insecure tenancy under an illegal thangata agreement.Clement Ng'ong'ola (1990). The State, Settlers, and Indigenes in the Evolution of Land Law and Policy in Colonial Malawi, pp. 35-6.