Tumbuka, a people who live on the lightly wooded plateau between the northwestern shore of Lake Nyasa (Lake Malaŵi) and the Luangwa River valley of eastern Zambia. They speak a Bantu language closely related to those of their immediate neighbours, the lakeside Tonga, the Chewa, and the Senga.
The contemporary Tumbuka are the offspring of a complex intermingling of people of diverse origins. The original inhabitants of the area, mostly matrilineal in descent, lived in highly scattered homesteads and had a weak, decentralized political organization. In the late 18th century a group of traders involved in the East African ivory trade arrived in the area and established a string of politically centralized chiefdoms among the Tumbuka in an attempt to control the region’s export trade in ivory. Their rule collapsed about 1855, when the Tumbuka area was subjugated by a group of Ngoni, a highly militarized refugee people from South Africa. The intermingling of the Tumbuka with their Ngoni overlords resulted in great cultural changes for both. The Tumbuka adopted the compact villages, patrilineal descent, and dance and marriage customs of the Ngoni, while the Ngoni adopted the Tumbuka agricultural system and the Tumbuka language. By 1900 the Ngoni language was effectively in disuse, and the Tumbuka-speaking group had abandoned many elements of its original culture. This situation began to change with the imposition of British colonial rule in the 1890s. As the prestige of the Ngoni declined under the impact of British administration in the area, the Tumbuka began to reassert their traditional culture and form independent villages. Tumbuka dances and religious practices were revived, and in the 20th century the Tumbuka became a notable example of reborn ethnic consciousness.
The Tumbuka were among the first to establish political organizations to oppose the British colonial system. Under the leadership of such men as Levi Mumba and Charles Chinula, Tumbuka speakers were in the fore of early nationalist movements, which in the 1940s coalesced to form the Nyasaland African Congress. Since the independence of Malaŵi in 1964, the political power of the Tumbuka speakers has been eroded. Northern Malaŵi and eastern Zambia remain poverty-stricken and lack exploitable natural resources. The Tumbuka people still practice subsistence hoe agriculture, and their incomes are supplemented by the earnings sent home by migrant workers outside the Tumbuka area.