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William Jervis Livingstone

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William Jervis Livingstone was the manager of the Magomero Estate in Nyasaland owned by A L Bruce Estates Ltd and was killed in 1915 during the uprising against colonial rule led by John Chilembwe. Livingstone was born in Argyllshire, Scotland in 1865 and appointed as manager of Magomero in 1893. Although he experimented with growing coffee and later cotton, the estate was not a financial success and Livingstone imposed increasingly harsh labour demands on the estate workers there. He was also accused of the brutal treatment of those workers, but both the excessive work demands and his brutality were the results of the pressures for financial success originating from Alexander Livingstone Bruce, a director and major shareholder in A L Bruce Estates Ltd, who also lived in Nyasaland. Bruce considered independent African churches were subversive, and instructed Livingstone to destroy the churches and schools that Chilembwe built on the Magomero estate. Chilembwe's grievances about colonial rule and the oppression of African estate workers came to focus on William Jervis Livingstone and, when he initiated his revolt on 23rd January 1915, Chilembwe ordered some of his men to attack the A L Bruce Estates, to kill all European men and to return with Livingstone's head. Livingstone and three others, including an African servant were killed at Magomero but the women and children were unharmed. In the aftermath of uprising, Livingstone alone was blamed for the harsh and unsatisfactory conditions on the A L Bruce Estates and Alexander Livingstone Bruce escaped censure. More recently, Livingstone's character has been re-examined and, although undoubtedly a violent man, he is also regarded as reacting to the impossible demands made by Bruce.

Birth and family

William Jervis Livingstone was born on 8th March 1865 at Bachuil, Argyllshire, in Scotland. His father, Alexander Livingstone (1815-1906), was a Baptist minister and his mother Jessie (nee McPherson, 1824-99) was Alexander’s second wife. Alexander Livingstone had seven children, of whom three died as infants and two, including William’s older half-brother, in their twenties. Only William and his younger brother Thomas survived into the 20th century. In 1908, William married Katherine (nee MacLachlan) and they had three children, one of whom died as an infant.

Both Alexander Livingstone and later his son William claimed the title of Baron of Bachuil, although this dignity was not formally recognised until 2004 and it did not imply ownership of any land. William Jervis Livingstone considered that he was related to David Livingstone, but no direct connection has been proven. It has been claimed that David Livingstone’s daughter Agnes called on William Jervis Livingstone to manage the Magomero Estate after the death of her husband, Alexander Low Bruce, on account of this relationship. However, it is more probable that Alexander Low Bruce made the appointment shortly before his death. Livingstone was 28 years old when he was appointed to manage Magomero and 49 when he was killed there on 23rd January 1915: most of what is known of him concerns his 21 years as manager of that estate.

Magomero

Agnes (b. 1847), the daughter of David Livingstone married Alexander Low Bruce (b. 1839) in 1875. They had four children including two sons, David Livingstone Bruce (b. 1877) and Alexander Livingstone Bruce (b. 1881). Alexander Low Bruce was a master brewer who supported African commercial and missionary organisations and, after his marriage to Agnes Livingstone, he became a director of the African Lakes Company. He never visited Nyasaland, but obtained title to some 170,000 acres of land there through his association with the African Lakes Company and the agency of John Buchanan, a planter who also brokered land sales by local chiefs. Of this land, 162,000 acres formed the estate that he named Magomero, situated south of Zomba. On his death in 1893 aged 54, title to his African assets passed under his will to the A L Bruce Trust, whose main beneficiaries were his two sons, then aged 16 and 12.

Shortly before his death, Alexander Low Bruce had appointed a manager for each of his two estates in Nyasaland. William Jervis Livingstone took control of the main estate of Magomero in Chiradzulu District and D.B. Ritchie was charged with the smaller Likulezi Estate near Mlanje. Initially, Agnes assumed oversight of the A L Bruce Trust until Bruce's heirs, David and Alexander, could take over when they came of age. The provisions of their father's will expected them to run the estates:

"…not on account of any pecuniary advantage…but in the hope and expectation that they will take an interest in the opening up of Africa to Christianity and Commerce on the lines laid down by their grandfather the late David Livingstone."

However, after their mother’s death, and as the Magomero estate showed potential, David Livingstone Bruce and Alexander Livingstone Bruce purchased the assets of the A L Bruce Trust in 1913, paying just over £41,000 for its two estates. They then incorporated A L Bruce Estates Ltd in 1913 as a commercial venture with a share capital of £54,000, largely held by the two sons and one of the daughters of Alexander Low Bruce.

When Magomero was acquired, it was largely unoccupied and uncultivated, and William Jervis Livingstone needed to find suitable crops and workers. At first, he tried unsuccessfully to grow coffee, then turned first to cotton and later to tobacco. Most workers at Magomero were not local people but "Anguru", a term used to describe a number of different Lomwe speaking migrants from Mozambique. These Lomwe workers came to Magomero as tenants; initially the men had to work for one month a year in lieu of rent: single women were exempt. Livingstone ordered the planting of about 70,000 bushes of Arabica coffee in 200 to 300 acres as the first estate crop at Magomero in 1895, but after poor crops in 1898 and 1899 because of frost and a collapse in world coffee prices in 1903, he looked for more profitable crops.

Livingstone turned to cotton from 1903: growing Egyptian cotton was unsuccessful as it was more suitable for hotter areas, but from 1906, he developed a hardier variety of Upland cotton called Nyasaland Upland, and in 1908 planted 1,000 acres at Magomero with it; this was increased to 5,000 acres by 1914. Cotton required intensive labour over a long growing period, and Livingstone ensured that 3,000 to 5,000 workers were available throughout its five or six month growing season by exploiting the obligations of the labour tenancy system called thangata. This word originally meant help, such as one neighbour might give another, but it came to mean the work that a tenant on a European-owned estate had to undertake in lieu of rent. Tenants were also required to undertake additional work on account of the Hut tax which the owner paid on behalf of tenants. Other men worked for wages: they were often unpaid, underpaid or given tobacco instead of cash, and violently coerced by the owners. Alexander Livingstone Bruce was said to have pioneered the thangata system, and once Magomero started to grow cotton, Bruce, who lived in Nyasaland and had control of the estate operations, instructed Livingstone, his manager, to exploit thangata rigorously. When cotton growing started, the Bruce estates increased the labour demand to four or five months a year, mainly in the growing season, leaving tenants little time to grow their food. Single women tenants were now also required to work.

One of the main reasons that William Jervis Livingstone was killed in the 1915 Chilembwe uprising was the severity of his management. Following the uprising, the protectorate government tried to replace thangata by cash rents. However, Alexander Livingstone Bruce, as a major planter, led estate owners in threatening massive evictions if this change were implemented, and thangata remained. Even after Livingstone’s killing, the work obligation on the A L Bruce Estates was little modified, sometimes amounting to six months for thangata and Hut tax. However, as the Crown lands nearest to the estates were already crowded, and as most of the estate tenants had no claim to settle there, they had little option but to stay.

William Jervis Livingstone was quick-tempered and his actions, including arbitrarily increasing tenants’ workloads and ordering them to be beaten, worried officials of Blantyre District as the first decade of the 20th century progressed. As early as 1901, Livingstone was fined for aggravated assault, and there was testimony from fellow planters that he frequently beat his field workers and domestic servants with little provocation. However, several headmen from the Bruce Estates confirmed that Livingstone had distributed food in times of famine.

Chilembwe’s mission was the closest one to Magomero, and built schools and churches on the estate. Livingstone has been justifiably accused of destroying them, but Chilembwe provoked confrontation by erecting churches on private estate land, and it is clear that Livingstone acted under orders from Alexander Livingstone Bruce. Unlike the alternatively brutal and generous William Jervis Livingstone, Bruce (who had absolute control over estate policy) had the consistent aim of making a profit from its operations. Bruce, whose view was that educated Africans had no place in colonial society and opposed their education, recorded his personal dislike for Chilembwe as an educated African. He considered Chilembwe's churches were centres for agitation, and that by building them on the estate, Chilembwe was making a claim to part of its land. As Livingstone carried out the work of destruction, he rather than Bruce became a focus for Chilembwe’s grievances.

John Chilembwe

John Chilembwe (1871 – 1915) was a Baptist minister who attended a Church of Scotland mission around 1890, and became a servant of the radical missionary Joseph Booth in 1892. Chilembwe left Nyasaland in 1897 to be educated at the Virginia Theological Seminary and College, (now Virginia University of Lynchburg). He was ordained as a Baptist minister at Lynchburg in 1899 and returned to Nyasaland in 1900. Chilembwe started his Providence Industrial Mission in Chiradzulu district: in its first decade, it developed gradually, helped by donations from his American backers, and it founded several churches and schools. Initially, Chilembwe avoided any criticism that the colonial authorities might think was subversive, but by 1913, he had become more politically militant and openly criticised the government over African land rights and the conditions of tenants, particularly on the Magomero estate, on which many of his mission congregation worked.

Although in his first decade in Nyasaland Chilembwe had had reasonably success, after 1910 the mission faced rising debt, just when support from its American backers was drying up. His personal life was clouded by the death of a daughter, his asthma attacks and his declining eyesight and general health. These problems increased Chilembwe's bitterness toward Europeans in Nyasaland, and moved him towards thoughts of revolt. However, the outbreak and effects of the First World War was the key factor in moving him from merely thinking to planning action, which he believed would lead to the deliverance of the African people of Nyasaland.

Following a battle at Karonga in September 1914, Chilembwe wrote an impassioned letter to the "Nyasaland Times" newspaper, saying some of his countrymen, "have already shed their blood", others were being "crippled for life" and were "invited to die for a cause which is not theirs". By December 1914, Chilembwe was regarded with suspicion by the colonial authorities and the Governor decided to deport him and some of his followers. The war-time censor had stopped publication of Chilembwe’s letter. This, and the possibility that he learnt of his intended deportation, prompted him to bring forward his revolt, which made its success unlikely. Chilembwe gathered a small group of mission-educated Africans as his lieutenants, and in December 1914 and early January 1915, planned to attack British rule in Nyasaland.

The aims of the rising remain unclear, as Chilembwe and many of his leading supporters were killed, and as many relevant documents in Nyasaland were destroyed in a fire in 1919. However, his use of the theme of “Africa for the Africans” suggests a political motive rather than a purely religious one. Chilembwe is said to have likened his rising to that of John Brown, and stated his wish to "strike a blow and die". His plan had three parts, first to attack government centres in the Shire Highlands on the night of the 23rd to the 24th of January 1915 to obtain arms and ammunition and, second, to attack European estates in that area during the same night. These two parts relied on a force of about 200 men, mainly from Chilembwe's congregations or other independent African churches. The third part of the plan involved men from a simultaneous uprising planned for the Ncheu District to move south and link up with Chilembwe’s force. The first and third parts of the plan failed almost completely: few planned attacks were carried out, so few arms were obtained, and the Ncheu rising was abortive.

The Death of William Jervis Livingstone

On Saturday 23rd January, Chilembwe claimed to have received information that the Europeans would begin killing all Africans on 25rd January. He gathered his followers in Mbomwe church, the first he had built after his return from the United States, to give them final instructions for the rising. He did not accompany his men on their attacks, but divided them into several groups with different tasks. Two groups were sent north to attack the A L Bruce Estates with orders to kill all European men and bring back the head of William Jervis Livingstone, but not to harm any women. Most of the remaining men were to head south towards Blantyre, the commercial centre of the protectorate.

One of the two groups sent north led by Wilson Zimba was to attack the headquarters of the Magomero estate, which also stored rifles for part of the Nyasaland Volunteer Reserve. The other group under Jonathon Chigwinya was to attack the Mwanje plantation, a part of the Magomero estate some distance from the headquarters. There would normally have been three European men at the headquarters, William Jervis Livingstone, his assistant Duncan MacCormick and J T Roach, the estate engineer, but Roach was absent. There were also four European women and five children there. Zimba’s men surrounded Livingstone’s house and waited until the family retired for the night at around 9 pm, when several of them broke in, attacked Livingstone with spears and severely wounded him while he attempted to defend himself, using his rifle as a club. He was apparently still alive when he was decapitated with an axe in front of his wife. Duncan MacCormick lived alone in a small cottage a few hundred yards from Livingstone's main estate house. His cottage was not surrounded before the attack on Livingstone, but when MacCormick became aware of the commotion, he ran to investigate without arming himself with his rifle and was speared to death. Roach’s house was attacked after the deaths of Livingstone and MacCormick. When he was found to be absent, two rifles and ammunition he kept there were taken. The whole attack on the headquarters was over by 9.30 pm.

Meawhile, the Mwanje plantation had been attacked around 8 pm. One of the two European men and his servant were speared to death, but the other European fought off his attackers with rifle fire. Two other Africans were killed by the groups sent south, and a European-run mission was set on fire and a missionary was severely wounded.. On Sunday 24th January, Chilembwe conducted a service Mbomwe church next to a pole impaling Livingstone's head, but by 26th January he realised that the uprising had failed. After avoiding early attempts to capture him and apparently trying to escape into Mozambique, he was tracked down and killed on 3rd February.

Livingstone’s Reputation

Despite having the name Livingstone and a claim to a notable ancestry, William Jervis Livingstone had no money of his own and was an employee with an uncertain status among landowning planters. After his death, many found it convenient to blame him for the Chilembwe revolt. His main failing was that he never made a commercial success of Magomero, but A L Bruce Estates Ltd was undercapitalised and almost never made a profit except in the few boom years for tobacco just after the First World War. His employers expected results and, although Livingstone may have acted reasonably in the early years of being manager at Magomero, once the estate turned to cotton planting, enforcing the heavy demands it made on workers brought out his brutality. Unlike some landowner-planters, who made money and exercised their authority without having problems with the colonial authorities, Livingstone’s actions worried officials from early in the first decade of the 20th century. Livingstone was caught between the demands of his employers and treating the African workers and tenants he supervised fairly and reasonably: his employers usually won. Although most attention had been given to Livingstone, Alexander Livingstone Bruce, who was a director and major shareholder of A L Bruce Estates Ltd had charge of the company’s operations in Nyasaland. Bruce used Livingstone and other European employees to enforce his policies, and tacitly approved of their methods.

At the official enquiry into Chilembwe’s uprising held in June 1915, the planters blamed missionary activities, while European missionaries emphasised the dangers of the teaching and preaching of African-led churches like Chilembwe's. African members of European-led churches complained about the treatment of workers on estates. The official enquiry needed to find causes for the rising and it blamed Chilembwe for his mixture of political and religious teaching, but also the unsatisfactory conditions on the Bruce Estates and the unduly harsh regime of William Jervis Livingstone. In this enquiry, the Resident at Chiradzulu told the Commission appointed to consider the revolt that the conditions imposed on the A L Bruce Estates were illegal and oppressive, including paying workers poorly or in kind (not in cash), demanding excessive labour from tenants or not recording the work they did, and whipping and beating both workers and tenants. The abuses were confirmed by Magomero workers and tenants questioned by the Commission in 1915.

Oral tales, not recorded until much later, include the widely reported and possibly mythical one that Livingstone used to beat corpses at funerals with his walking stick to make sure they were dead and not simply shamming. His wife defended him passionately, claiming he was charitable to the hungry and sick. Her defence is quite plausible: Livingstone was quick-tempered and may have been violent and kind at different times. Her defence was that Livingstone was good master, not a bad one as the commission claimed. The concept of the master-servant relationship was at the heart of colonial society, but this concept was precisely what Chilembwe was fighting with his schools and self-help schemes, and ultimately why Livingstone was killed.


References

  1. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 77-3, 88-90, 127-33, 133-7.
  2. Information from Geni, http://www.geni.com/people/Baron-William-Jervis-Livingstone/6000000000987913269
  3. N Livingstone of Bachuil, (2004). The MacLeas or Livingstone and their allodial Barony of the Bachuil http://www.baronage.co.uk/2006a/Bachuil.pdf
  4. Clan Livingstone website http://www.clanlivingstone.info/forum/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=1151&hilit=Nyasaland&start=70
  5. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 82-3.
  6. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~swilson/livingstone/descendants.htm
  7. http://www.nls.uk/catalogues/online/cnmi/inventories/acc11777.pdf
  8. J McCraken, (2012). A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, pp. 77-9.
  9. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, p. 82.
  10. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 110-11
  11. L. White, (1984). 'Tribes' and the Aftermath of the Chilembwe Rising, pp. 513-8.
  12. J McCraken, (2012).A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, pp. 129-30.
  13. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 100-1.
  14. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 82-4.
  15. J McCraken, (2012).A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, pp. 130-2.
  16. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 88-90.
  17. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, p. 133.
  18. J McCraken, (2012).A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, p. 146.
  19. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 133, 146.
  20. J McCraken, (2012).A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, pp. 129-30.
  21. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 127-9, 133.
  22. L White, (1984). 'Tribes' and the Aftermath of the Chilembwe Rising, pp. 524.
  23. R Tangri, (1971). Some New Aspects of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915, p.307.
  24. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, p. 133.
  25. G. Shepperson and T. Price, (1958). Independent African, pp. 36-8, 47-53, 67- 79, 85-92, 118-23.
  26. R. Tangri, (1971). Some New Aspects of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915, pp. 306-7.
  27. R. I. Rotberg, (1970). Psychological Stress and the Question of Identity: Chilembwe's Revolt Reconsidered, pp. 365-6.
  28. G. Shepperson and T. Price, (1958). Independent African, pp. 234-5, 263.
  29. R Tangri, (1971). Some New Aspects of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915, pp. 308-9.
  30. R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa, pp. 81-3.
  31. R Tangri, (1971). Some New Aspects of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915, pp.309-11.
  32. R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa, p. 84.
  33. G. Shepperson and T. Price, (1958). Independent African, p. 239, 504-5.
  34. R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa, pp. 84-6,
  35. R Tangri, (1971). Some New Aspects of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915, pp. 312-13.
  36. R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa, pp. 86-7.
  37. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 135-6.
  38. R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa, pp. 87-8.
  39. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, pp. 136-7.
  40. G MacCormick, (2004). Duncan MacCormick, 1888 - 1915 Planter at the Magomero Estate, p. 36.
  41. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, p. 137.
  42. R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa, pp. 89-90
  43. R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa, pp. 90-91,
  44. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, p. 138.
  45. L. White, (1987). Magomero: Portrait of an African Village, p. 83, 127-9, 133, 154.
  46. J McCraken, (2012).A History of Malawi, 1859-1966, pp. 130-1.
  47. L White, (1984). 'Tribes' and the Aftermath of the Chilembwe Rising, pp. 523-4.
  48. R. I. Rotberg, (1965). The Rise of Nationalism in Central Africa, pp. 78-9.
  49. L White, (1984). 'Tribes' and the Aftermath of the Chilembwe Rising, pp. 524-5.

Sources

See Also

Clan MacLea

A L Bruce Estates

Thangata

John Chilembwe

Category:History of Malawi

Category:Nyasaland

Category:Colonialism





References

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