Chiengi

History

Chiengi and the area just to its north were ravaged by the slave trade and related ivory trade in the 18th century. Numerous Arab and Swahili slave traders such as Tippu Tib operated around the north end of Lake Mweru, around Lake Mweru Wantipa and over to Lake Tanganyika. Chiengi boma was established during the race between Belgian King Leopold II's Congo Free State and the British South Africa Company (BSAC) of Cecil Rhodes to seize Katanga from its king, Msiri, in 1890–91. Alfred Sharpe was sent to obtain a treaty from Msiri by the BSAC from the British Commissioner's office at Zomba in Nyasaland in 1890, but he failed. On his way back to Nyasaland in early 1891 he passed the Chiengi rivulet and, since Chief Puta Chipalabwe who reigned as a Chief of the Bwile people between 1879 and 1909. Bwile people, to the south, was amenable to a treaty, Sharpe decided to set up a boma there to secure the territory east of Mweru for the BSAC, and to act as a forward base for another attempt to wring a treaty out of Msiri. He left his second-in-command, Captain Crayshaw, with some African troops to build and staff the boma. However, Leopold sent the Stairs Expedition to secure Katanga which they achieved in December 1891 after killing Msiri. On the way back to the east coast of Africa, the Stairs Expedition passed close to Chiengi and exchanged messages with Crayshaw regarding the position of the border dividing CFS and BSAC territory between Lake Mweru and Lake Tanganyika. Chiengi Boma was probably the first colonial post in what was to be called North-Eastern Rhodesia (it was still referred to as part of 'Zambezia' at the time), and was one of the most remote outposts of the British Empire, a lonely posting which sent more than one colonial officer mad. For a number of…