1915 — The Chilembwe Uprising

In the evening of January 23, 1915, rebels led by Baptist minister John Chilembwe attacked an estate at Magomero in Nyasaland, today's Malawi. The attack ignited the region's first major anti-colonial uprising. Chilembwe's followers killed three settlers and cut telephone lines, striking at the symbols of the order that oppressed them.

Chilembwe had been radicalized by forced labor, racial discrimination, and wartime demands on Africans. Colonial troops crushed the revolt within days; forty rebels were executed and 300 imprisoned. Yet defeat could not erase its meaning. The uprising became Malawi's founding moment of resistance, the first clear refusal from which a national story grew.