John Chilembwe, who is often considered the father of Malawi nationalism, was born during the 1860s in the former British colony of Nyasaland. He travelled with Joseph Booth, the fundamentalist missionary to the United States towards the end of the nineteenth century and received a degree from a Negro theological college. Returning to Nyasaland in 1900, he undertook missionary work and established the Providence Industrial Mission to improve the lot of his black compatriots. Becoming increasingly disenchanted with the oppressiveness of European colonialism, Chilembwe wrote a stern protest in the Nyasaland Times in 1914. He was not only critical of British administration in Africa but sceptical of the value of black sacrifices in what essentially was a white man’s war. When the British ignored his protest, he led a suicidal and largely symbolic rebellion against their rule and was promptly killed on 3 February 1915. Chilembwe’s revolt, of course, was futile. But it drew attention to European injustice in Africa and his martyrdom gave a considerable fillip to African nationalist movements in the generations that followed.