John McCracken (historian)

Kenneth John McCracken (1938-2017) was a British historian and Africanist, known particularly as a historian of Malawi.

Biography

John McCracken was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 1 July 1938.^[1] He was educated at Sedbergh School and later studied at St John's College, Cambridge where he became interested in African history. He undertook a PhD at Cambridge, under the supervision of Ronald Robinson focussing on Church of Scotland missions in colonial Malawi. While still a doctoral student, he took up a teaching post at University College of Rhodesia and Nyasaland in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia in 1964. He was present at the celebrations of Malawian independence in July 1964. After Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, he left the country to teach at the new history department in the University of Dar es Salaam. There he completed his doctorate which was subsequently published as Politics and Christianity in Malawi, 1875–1940 (1977). He acquired a reputation as one of the leading historians of Christianity in Africa.^[2]

McCracken returned to Britain in 1968 in order to take up a post at the new University of Stirling where he remained for most of his academic career. He published a number of well received articles and chapters on the social, economic, and political history of Malawi as well as environmental history.^[2] He left Stirling briefly between 1980 and 1983 to take up a senior post at the University of Malawi. He also served as president of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom between 1990 and 1992.^[3] He retired from teaching in 2002.^[4] After his retirement, McCracken continued to work on Malawian history. He published several further monographs, including A History of Malawi, 1859–1966 (2012) and Voices from the Chilembwe Rising (2015).^[5]

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