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Shepperson Memorial

no question in his mind other than that this developing field of history was to feature
prominently in the department that he was about to lead. Inevitably such planning
would include a Malawi history course or courses.
For the first few years of the department’s existence George Shepperson was
its adviser and, in this capacity, visited the university not long after teaching
commenced in October 1965. The obvious advantage of this role is that he was
already the leading historian of the country, was based at the University of Edinburgh,
a world class institution with a long tradition of teaching history and was familiar with
developments in new institutions of higher learning in emerging African countries. I
should add that Shepperson was also the department’s external examiner during the
first decade. Again, besides his wide teaching and research experience, he was
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certainly one of most suitable persons to invite for this major role.
Although designing a university level course in African history was a
challenging exercise because of the state of research in this field at the time, there was
adequate literature on which to base syllabi. However, this task was particularly
daunting with Malawi history, primarily because of the paucity and unevenness in the
quality and quantity of the published or printed material with which to teach. Primary
sources were available in the shape of oral traditions or oral history which could be
accessed through the long-term prospect of interviewing people. There were also
published memoirs of early missionaries, adventurers, traders and administrators but,
even then, the problem was that the library had to acquire them first. The Society of
Malawi Journal served as a starting point for research into the precolonial era, and the
period of the establishment of British rule was to some extent covered by A.J.
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Hanna’s and Roland Oliver’s books.
It is the colonial period where George Shepperson’s work was particularly
helpful. His Independent African was invaluable, of course. What is not always
appreciated, however, is that before October 1965 when the university started,
Shepperson had published numerous important articles, most of which were central to
the foundation of a history of Malawi course. I will highlight three of them briefly.
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The first is “The politics of African separatist movement, in British Central Africa,”
the subject of which he had, in a way, discussed in the Independent African, it
established one of the enduring themes in Malawian history on which many scholars
were to work in later years, His 1958 piece, “The literature of British Central Africa: a
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review article,” is a long commentary on three recently published books, two
specifically on Nyasaland (Malawi), and the other on Northern Rhodesia. Those on
Nyasaland are A. J. Hanna, the Beginnings of Nyasaland and North-eastern Rhodesia
and Frank Debenham, Nyasaland: the Land of the Lake, 6 which is basically an
account of his travels in the British colony after World War II. The article is highly
critical of both books because of the antiquated views on colonialism and of African
peoples expressed in them, and he attributes this in large part to the nature of sources
that informed both authors. His most scathing comments are on Hanna, a fellow

2 It should mention that in the 1968/1969 academic year, John D Fage, Professor of History and Director of the
Center of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham, spent a week at Chancellor College advising the
department. Also, perhaps because he was not available in July 1969, Professor J D Omer-Cooper, then of the
University of Zambia was the external examiner that year.
3 A. J. Hanna, The Beginnings of Nyasaland and North-Eastern Rhodesia, 1859-1895, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1959; The Story of the Rhodesias and Nyasaland, London: Faber, 1960; Roland Oliver, Sir Harry Johnston and the
Scramble for Africa, London: Chatto & Windus, 1957, has chapters on the establishment of colonial rule in what
became Nyasaland. Hanna’s books are discussed in greater detail below.
4 Africa, 24, 3 (1954), 233-246
5 Rhodes-Livingston Journal, xxxiii (1958), 12-46
6 London: HM. Stationery Office, 1955
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