Records of the Zambesi Mission

Minutes, publications and other records of the Zambesi Industrial Mission, later renamed as the Zambesi Mission

The Zambesi Industrial Mission was founded in 1892 by Joseph Booth, an Australian missionary in Nyasaland (now Malawi). It began as an Industrial Mission, with the objective of teaching local people such skills as carpentry and bricklaying and its ventures included the establishment of coffee and cotton plantations. Work later expanded to include a printing works in Blantyre, an orphanage, schools and health centres. The first mission station was established at Mitsidi near Blantyre in Nyasaland and, as the work expanded, stations were opened at Chipande, Ntonda, Chiole, Dombole and Gowa. Gowa was subsequently handed over to the Baptists Industrial Mission and then to the Churches of Christ in the 1930s. Attempts were also made to establish mission work in Portugese East Africa, but without success. The industrial programme was largely phased out in the 1930s and the word 'industrial' was dropped from the Mission's title in 1939. After the second world war, the mission's field work was strengthened by the recruitment of more missionaries, particularly teachers and nurses, and not just from the British Isles but also from Australia, South Africa, USA, Holland and West Germany.

Nyasaland was granted independence in Malawi in 1964 and some of the activities of the Zambesi Mission, principally the schools, were taken over by the government. Its health centres came under the direct control of the Zambesi Evangelical Church. The Zambesi Evangelical Church had been established as a result of the Zambesi Mission and the Zambesi Mission in the UK now works in partnership with the Zambesi Evangelical Church, assisting the church with its continued development and supporting the Likubula Bible Institute, Blantyre.

The Society's headquarters were based in London for many years and most of the archives were lost in the Blitz 29 December 1940 when the office was at 83 Fore Street EC2.

Source: The archives of the Zambesi Mission

The archives have been catalogued and arranged into series in accordance with the classification scheme used in the cataloguing of the archives of the Church Mission Society:

ZM/C: Committee work;
ZM/E: Editorial;
ZM/EL: Literature;
ZM/F: Finance;
ZM/FL: Legal;
ZM/P: Personnel;
ZM/Y: Overseas;
ZM/Z: Miscellaneous

Access to parts of the collection is restricted. In accordance with Data Protection regulations, personal files and other records which include personal data are closed for the lifetime of the individual where known, or 100 years. Financial records containing information about specific individuals have been closed for 30 years.

The bulk of the collection was deposited by the Trustees of the Zambesi Mission in May 2007; further deposits were received in 2011 and 2015.

Please see full catalogue for more information.

The catalogue was compiled by Rosemary Keen, former CMS archivist and expanded to include later accessions by staff of Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections May 2007 (Philippa Bassett) and April 2012 (Mark Eccleston).

Permission to make any published use of any material from the collection must be sought in advance in writing from the Director of Special Collections (email: special-collections@contacts.bham.ac.uk). Identification of copyright holders of unpublished material is often difficult. Special Collections will assist where possible with identifying copyright owners, but responsibility for ensuring copyright clearance rests with the user of the material

The Society's headquarters were based in London for many years and most of the archives were lost in the Blitz 29 December 1940 when the office was at 83 Fore Street EC2.

The Special Collections Department holds records of other missionary societies which were active in Africa, principally the Church Mission Society (CMS)