The Blantyre Mission predated Malawi’s formal colonization by the British government. The missionaries were initially eager to attract British protection against Portuguese and Arab incursions. However, they became the new administration’s fierce critics when it embarked in the 1890s on a series of punitive expeditions against disobedient chiefs. By then, Scott had written scathing articles about the involvement of Cecil Rhodes in acquiring concessions and influence in the territory. Scott saw Rhodes’s manoeuvres as amounting to monopoly and oppression. The British Central Africa protectorate’s first commissioner Harry Johnston was another target of Scott’s criticisms. He and his colleague Alexander Hetherwick complained about the high rates of taxes imposed on Africans, among other injustices. Scott criticized Johnston’s book about Central Africa for its ‘degrading’ view on Africans. The transfers of land to incoming White settlers alarmed the missionaries, although Scott thought that the prosperity of all demanded increased contact and cooperation. His reflections on land tenure sought the grounds for a more just and more productive relationship than the one he described as land grabbing. Africans had to be recognized as co-knowers in a condition of co-occupation.