Where the name comes from, and everything after

Before the lake had a name on any map

People have lived on this lakeshore for at least fifty thousand years; stone tools and later iron-age pottery turn up all along it. The Chewa-speaking Maravi arrived from the north-west around the fifteenth century and built a loose confederation of chiefdoms that stretched from the lake to the Zambezi. Their name is where "Malawi" comes from. The usual translation is "flames" or "rays of light", which is why the rising sun was the obvious choice for a national symbol.

The nineteenth century: traders, missionaries, a protectorate

By the 1800s the lake was on the route of the Swahili-Arab slave and ivory trade, with Nkhotakota as its main crossing point. David Livingstone reached the lake in 1859, called it Nyasa, and campaigned against the trade for the rest of his life. Scottish missions followed in the 1870s: Livingstonia in the north (after a false start at Cape Maclear, where the graves are still visible) and Blantyre in the south, named after Livingstone's birthplace. In 1891 Britain declared the territory a protectorate, renamed Nyasaland in 1907. The slave trade was suppressed; a plantation economy of tea, tobacco and cotton grew in its place, mostly in the south.

The twentieth century: resistance, federation, independence

In 1915 John Chilembwe, a Malawian pastor educated in the United States, led an armed uprising against the colonial estates. It lasted days and he was killed, but he's remembered as the first to say out loud that the country belonged to its people; his face is on the banknotes. From 1953 Nyasaland was bound into a federation with the two Rhodesias, which most Malawians opposed. Hastings Kamuzu Banda, a doctor who'd spent decades abroad, returned in 1958 to lead the campaign against it. The federation broke up, and on 6 July 1964 Nyasaland became Malawi. The flag that went up that day is the one that flies now.

The republic

Malawi became a republic in 1966 with Banda as president, then president for life from 1971. His rule was orderly, conservative and authoritarian; the capital moved from Zomba to Lilongwe in 1975 and the lake's tourism began. A 1993 referendum ended one-party rule and the first multi-party elections followed in 1994. In 2010 the flag was changed to a full white sun; two years later it was changed back, which tells you something about how people felt about the original.

Why any of this matters on holiday

Because you'll walk through it. Livingstonia's stone church and mission house are still up on their escarpment above the lake. Likoma's cathedral was built by the same Anglican mission that fought the slave trade. Zomba's botanical gardens and old parliament are colonial Malawi intact. The Chongoni rock art near Dedza, a World Heritage Site, is Chewa history painted onto granite over two thousand years. And the Gule Wamkulu masked dance, listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage, is Maravi culture still being performed. The experiences page has the practical side of each.