MSCE History cheat sheet

Primary sources are produced at the time by participants or witnesses (letters, diaries, official records, photographs); secondary sources interpret them later.

Evaluate a source by provenance (author, date, place), purpose, audience and context before using its evidence.

Oral tradition preserves genealogies, praise songs and migration accounts; test reliability by corroboration with other versions and with archaeology or documents.

Archaeology supplies evidence where writing is absent: pottery sequences, settlement patterns, graves and radiocarbon dates.

Relative dating orders finds by stratigraphy; absolute dating gives calendar ages through radiocarbon, dendrochronology or written dates.

Bias is not the same as lying: selective emphasis, silence and audience pressure shape all sources.

Historiography changes: colonial-era Hamitic hypotheses attributed Great Zimbabwe to outsiders, while later archaeology showed local Shona construction.

Cross-checking independent sources is the basic rule for deciding which account to trust when they conflict.

Trans-Saharan caravans exchanged West African gold and Saharan salt; camels, oasis towns and Islamic merchants linked Ghana, Mali and Songhai to North Africa.

Ghana Empire controlled trade routes and taxed gold and salt from about the 8th to 11th centuries; its capital was Kumbi Saleh.

Mali Empire (c.1235-1600) was founded by Sundiata Keita; Mansa Musa's 1324 pilgrimage displayed wealth and promoted Timbuktu as a scholarly centre.

Songhai Empire under Sunni Ali and Askia Muhammad controlled the Niger bend; it fell to Moroccan forces at Tondibi in 1591.

Great Zimbabwe (11th-15th centuries) was a Shona dry-stone capital whose gold and ivory trade via Sofala supported a powerful state.

Swahili coast city-states such as Kilwa, Mombasa and Zanzibar blended African and Islamic culture and linked the interior to Indian Ocean trade.

The Kingdom of Kongo traded copper, cloth and ivory with Portugal from the 1480s and adopted Christianity under Afonso I.

Stateless or segmentary societies such as the Igbo and Tiv governed through lineage councils, age grades and religious authorities rather than kings.

Maravi Confederation emerged around the 15th-16th centuries among Chewa-speaking clans; the Phiri clan supplied the kalonga and controlled ivory and iron trade.

Mankhamba, near Lake Malawi, was a major Maravi capital and trading centre; archaeologists have found imported glass beads and locally made iron.

The kalonga ruled with subordinate chiefs such as Undi and Lundu; tribute and trade rather than a standing army held the confederation together.

Iron smelting was politically important: Phiri rulers controlled smiths who produced hoes and weapons for exchange.

Yao traders entered the region in the 18th-19th centuries, dealing in ivory and slaves and spreading Islam; centres included Makanjira and Mataka.

The Ngoni arrived from South Africa in the 1830s-40s under Zwangendaba; their settlements included Mzimba and Ntcheu and they raided neighbours for cattle.

Nyau, a secret Chewa society, performed masked dances at funerals and initiations and reinforced religious and social authority.

The 19th-century slave trade routed captives from the Lake Malawi region to Kilwa; Livingstone's expeditions and missionary reports publicised it.

Britain declared the British Central Africa Protectorate in 1891; it was renamed the Nyasaland Protectorate in 1907.

Harry Johnston, first commissioner, used treaties and military force to suppress slave trading and establish colonial authority in the 1890s.

The 1891 Anglo-Portuguese treaty fixed Nyasaland's boundaries; later commissions adjusted borders with German East Africa and Northern Rhodesia.

Hut tax forced adult men into cash employment; thangata required tenants on European estates to work for rent, often without fair pay.

The 1892 Certificate of Claim recognised large European landholdings in the Shire Highlands, displacing Africans from fertile land.

Colonial administration used district commissioners and chiefs, making chiefs tax collectors and local judges under indirect rule.

The plantation economy relied on tobacco, tea and cotton; the Shire Highlands Railway reached Blantyre in 1908 and improved export transport.

Missions such as Livingstonia (1875) and Blantyre (1876) provided Western education and Christianity, producing early African clerks and critics.

The 1915 Chilembwe Rising protested forced labour, conscription and racial injustice; John Chilembwe was killed and the revolt was crushed, but it inspired later nationalists.

Native Associations from 1912, such as the North Nyasa Native Association, petitioned on land, education and labour but remained elite and regional.

The Nyasaland African Congress was founded in 1944 by uniting Native Associations and demanded greater African representation.

Mass opposition to the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1953) united urban workers, peasants and chiefs against settler rule.

In March 1959 the colonial government declared a state of emergency and arrested nationalist leaders; the crackdown became known as Operation Sunrise.

The Devlin Commission criticised the emergency as a police state and increased British pressure for reform.

The NAC was banned in 1959 and replaced by the Malawi Congress Party, which mobilised mass support under Banda.

Hastings Kamuzu Banda returned in 1958 and became leader of the Malawi Congress Party, advocating immediate majority rule.

The 1960 Monckton Commission reviewed the Federation; African testimony in Nyasaland overwhelmingly demanded secession.

The 1961 elections gave the MCP a large majority; Banda became Minister of Agriculture and later Prime Minister in 1963.

Nyasaland achieved self-government in 1962, and the Federation was dissolved at the end of 1963.

Malawi became independent on 6 July 1964 and a republic in 1966, with Banda as president.

The 1964 Cabinet Crisis saw Banda dismiss ministers who challenged his style; the purge entrenched one-party rule.

Malawi joined the Organisation of African Unity (1963) and supported majority rule in southern Africa rhetorically while maintaining economic ties with apartheid South Africa.

Banda ruled a one-party state from 1964 to 1994, using the Malawi Congress Party, Young Pioneers and censorship to suppress opposition.

The economy depended on estate agriculture, especially tobacco, tea and sugar, plus foreign aid; land scarcity and rural poverty persisted.

In 1992 Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter criticising the regime, and donors suspended aid, forcing political opening.

The 1993 referendum ended one-party rule, and Bakili Muluzi's UDF won the 1994 multi-party elections.

Malawi returned to multi-party politics; presidents included Muluzi (1994-2004), Bingu wa Mutharika (2004-12), Joyce Banda (2012-14), Peter Mutharika (2014-19) and Lazarus Chakwera (2019-).

The 2019 presidential election was annulled by the courts, and Chakwera won the 2020 rerun under the Tonse Alliance.

Structural adjustment loans in the 1980s-90s required liberalisation, privatisation and subsidy cuts, with mixed social effects.

Malawi reached HIPC debt relief in 2006; recurring shocks include drought, Cyclone Freddy (2023) and cholera outbreaks.

The French Revolution (1789) spread ideas of citizenship, nationalism and popular sovereignty that influenced later decolonisation.

The Industrial Revolution created steamships, railways, telegraphs and mass production, giving European powers technological advantages in imperial expansion.

The Berlin Conference (1884-85) set rules for the Scramble for Africa, including effective occupation, without African participation.

World War I (1914-18) weakened European empires and promoted mandates; World War II (1939-45) hastened decolonisation.

The Cold War (1947-91) divided the world into US-led and Soviet-led blocs; African states faced pressure to align or join the Non-Aligned Movement.

The Bandung Conference (1955) promoted Afro-Asian solidarity against colonialism and racism.

The Year of Africa (1960) saw seventeen states gain independence, including Nigeria, Senegal and the Congo.

The United Nations (1945) and its decolonisation declarations legitimised anti-colonial claims, though great-power interests limited enforcement.