liberation in black Africa'. ⁹

These broader, social issues, however, rest on a basis composed
of individuals: John Chilembwe, his supporters and enemies;
Joseph Booth, his supporters and enemies. Independent African
posed questions about the personalities of both of them; and, although
this book is not a psychobiography, subsequent writers have explored
-and others will undoubtedly explore further--the psychological
factors which shaped their lives.

What the contemporary authorities called the Native Rising within
the Nyasaland Protectorate had become, by the time of the Devlin
Report, 'the Chilembwe rising'. ¹⁰ Here, perhaps, Independent
African, with its emphasis on John Chilembwe, bears some responsi-
bility. Yet, as this book and more recent studies indicate, there were
other Africans in the Nyasaland of his day who responded to the
challenges of the new European order through the instruments of
Western-style education and religion. An African intelligentsia was
coming into being in Nyasaland; and not all of its members (for
example, Charles Domingo and Lewis Mataka Bandawe) were on
Chilembwe's side in 1915. John Chilembwe, perhaps, was primus
inter pares. But he is the one whose countenance is featured on a set
of four commemorative stamps issued in Malawi in 1965 to mark the
fiftieth anniversary of the Rising. ¹¹

Independent African has been published four times in hardcover:
in 1958, 1963, 1967 and 1969. This first paperback edition, with a
very few minor corrections, follows the text of these versions. To
have revised it in detail would have destroyed the value which it
possesses as a document of the times in which it was written: the
period of transition from colonialism to independence in Africa. It
is hoped that the supplementary bibliography will provide the
interested reader with clues enough to developments in the study of
John Chilembwe and his milieu since 1958. And, as his son, Charles
John Chilembwe, a few months before he died in 1971, wrote to one
of the authors, 'no doubt there will still be future research on the 1915
rising'.

In conclusion, the reader is reminded that, since Independent
African was first published, there have been changes in nomenclature
and spelling, both in Chilembwe's own country and in the African
Diaspora of which he was a part. For example, ' Nyasaland' has
become ' Malawi'; ' Lake Nyasa', ' Lake Malawi'; 'Cholo', 'Thyolo';
'Mlanje', 'Mulanje'; et cetera. And, if the book were to be published

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