Livingstone Bruce Plantation Raid

The Livingstone Bruce Plantation was situated at Magomero. The plantation spanned about 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) and grew both cotton and tobacco.[1] Around 5,000 local Africans worked on it as part of their thangata obligations.[2] The plantation had a reputation locally for the poor treatment of its workers and for the brutality of its managers,[3] who closed local schools, beat their workers and paid them less than had been promised.[3]

At the time Magomero was acquired, it was largely unoccupied and uncultivated, and it was necessary to find a suitable crop and workers. Between 1895 and 1925, the company had tried growing coffee, cotton and flue-cured tobacco: they all failed. Instead of local people, workers at Magomero were generally "Anguru", a term employed by Europeans to describe as a number of different Lomwe speaking migrants from the parts of Mozambique east of the Shire Highlands.[4] These Lomwe were welcomed at Magomero as tenants, and initially the men had no obligation to work in lieu of rent for their first two years, and after this for only one month a year: single women were exempt. By 1915, Lomwe migrants made up almost half the 4,926 hut owners at Magomero.[5][6]

Arabica coffee was the first estate crop grown in much of the Shire Highlands, and was quite widely planted in the 1890s, until a world-wide collapse in coffee prices in 1903. About 200 to 300 acres of coffee bushes were planted at Magomero from 1895, but after poor crops in 1898 and 1899, the management looked for a more suitable crop.[7] Following the collapse of coffee prices, the Shire Highlands estates next turned to cotton from 1903. Growing Egyptian cotton in the Shire Highlands was at first unsuccessful: it was more suitable for the hotter Shire Valley. However, from 1906, W. J. Livingstone developed a hardier variety of Upland cotton called Nyasaland Upland, and by 1908 had planted 1,000 acres at Magomero, increased to 5,000 acres by 1914. Cotton required intensive labour over a long growing period, and this resulted increasing labour demands on the tenants.[8]

Modern-day view of a tea plantation at Mlanje

The rebels moved into Magomero in the early evening, while Livingstone and his wife were entertaining some dinner guests. The estate official, Duncan MacCormick, was in another house nearby.[12] A third building, occupied by Emily Stanton, Alyce Roach and five children, contained a small cache of weapons and ammunition belonging to the local rifle club.[12] The insurgents quietly broke into the Livingstone's house and injured him during hand-to-hand fighting, prompting him to take refuge in the bedroom, where his wife attempted to treat his wounds. The rebels forced their way into the bedroom, and after capturing his wife, decapitated Livingstone.[14][15] MacCormick, who had been alerted, was killed by a rebel spear.[16] The attackers took the women and children of the village prisoner but shortly released them unhurt, having reportedly treated them well.[14][17] It has been suggested that Chilembwe may have hoped to use the women and children as hostages, but this remains unclear.[16] Mwanje had little military value but it has been proposed that the rebels may have hoped to find weapons and ammunition there.[14] Led by Jonathan Chigwinya, the insurgents stormed one of the houses and killed the plantation's stock manager, Robert Ferguson, with a spear as he lay in bed reading a newspaper.[14][13] Two of the colonists, John Robertson and his wife Charlotte, escaped into the cotton fields and walked 6 miles (9.7 km) to a neighbouring plantation to raise the alarm.[18] One of the Robertsons' African servants, who remained loyal, was killed by the attackers.[18]

The attack on Magomero, and in particular the killing of Livingstone, had great symbolic significance for Chilembwe's men.[19] The two Mauser rifles captured from the plantation formed the basis of the rebel armoury for the rest of the uprising.[19]