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3 unusual facts about Abrahams Commission


Abrahams Commission

John Chilembwe (1871 – 1915) was a Baptist minister, who returned to Nyasaland after education at the Virginia Theological Seminary and College, (now Virginia University of Lynchburg) in 1900 and founded the Providence Industrial Mission.

In the period before a British protectorate was proclaimed 1891, the African Lakes Company and several individuals, notably Eugene Sharrer, Alexander Low Bruce (the son-in-law of David Livingstone) and John Buchanan and his brothers claimed that they had made treaties of protection or purchase agreements with various chiefs, under which they had become owners of large areas of land.

When the legality of the Certificates of Claim system was challenged in 1903 on the basis that the agreements made by the chiefs breached the rights of their community members, the Appeals Court upheld their validity.



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