The name Karonga War is given to a number of armed clashes that took place between mid-1887 and mid-1889 near Karonga at the northern end of Lake Malawi in what is now Malawi between a Scottish trading concern called the African Lakes Company Limited and elements of the Ngonde people on one side and Swahili traders and their Henga allies on the other. In the 19th century, it was referred to as the “Arab War”, despite few actual Arabs being involved. Although these conflicts predate formal endorsement of a British Central Africa Protectorate west of Lake Malawi in 1891, European involvement, both by the African Lakes Company and by Germans attempting to prevent Swahili slave trading around Lake Tanganyika in German East Africa, had upset the previous balance between the Ngonde and their neighbours and created the conditions for this conflict. It was between the Tumbuka and Nyakyusa-Ngonde ethnic groups.
Situation before the conflict
The area to the west of northern Lake Malawi was occupied by two established indigenous peoples, the Tumbuka and Ngonde, and the recently arrived Ngoni. Although the Tumbuka were already involved in the East African ivory trade, in the 1820s and 1830s Swahili traders from the Indian Ocean coast entered the area and displaced the earlier local merchants. These traders, who were backed by Indian financiers in Zanzibar, were as much interested in slaves as ivory. Finally, in the late 1870s, the African Lakes Company began trading in ivory along the shores of Lake Malawi, establishing its trading posts there in the early 1880s.
Local peoples
The Tumbuka probably entered the area between the Luangwa valley and northern Lake Malawi in the 15th century. At the start of the 18th century, they formed a number of groups, of which that known as the Henga was an important one, and they lived in small, independent communities without a central organisation, that were spread thinly over this area. By the mid-18th century, traders dressed “as Arabs”, although coming from the Unyamwezi region of what is now Tanzania, were involved in trading for ivory and to some extent slaves as far inland as the Luangwa valley. They formed alliances with groups of Henga, and their leader established a dynasty ruling a federation of small chiefdoms around the lakeshore. By the 1830s, this Chikulamayembe (also called Chikuramaybe) dynasty was in decline and the area reverted to a state of political and military disorganisation.
The Ngonde (as they are known in Malawi) occupy the north-western shore of Lake Malawi south of the Songwe River are an offshoot of the Nyakyusa people, who live north of that river in Tanzania. The Ngonde probably moved into Malawi around 1600 and densely settled the area between the Songwe and North Rukuru rivers. Their political organisation involved with relatively strong local chiefs, and a paramount chief or Kyungu from one of two princely lineages. The Kyungu was primarily a religious leader with limited power over the local chiefs. Because the environment of the Karonga plain was favourable for their mixed farming practices, the Ngonde gradually extended the area they occupied, but were not involved in ivory trading networks before the late 19th century.
The Ngoni of Mbelwa (also known as M'mbelwa or Mombera) were a branch of Zwangendaba’s Ngoni, which began its migration from South Africa between 1819 and 1822, eventually reaching southern Tanzania and remained there until Zwangendaba’s death in the mid-1840s. After this, his followers split into several groups, one of which under his son Mbelwa settled permanently in what is now the Mzimba district of northern Malawi around 1855.
Mbelwa’s Ngoni treated the Henga as a subject population, exacting tribute and taking captives through raiding. These captives were rarely sold to the Swahili traders, but retained as unfree agricultural workers or enrolled in Ngoni regiments. Some Henga soldiers fled back to their original homeland around 1879 but were attacked by the Ngoni in 1881 and forced to move north into Ngonde territory, where the Ngonde settled them as a buffer against their enemies. Zwangendaba’s Ngoni had raided the Ngonde in the 1840s and Mbelwa’s Ngoni did so in the 1850s and 1870s. Each time, the Ngonde had been forced to surrender many cattle, so they feared further raids.