Operation Sunrise (Nyasaland) Macleod advised Armitage to go on leave pending his retirement, and he retired in April 1961 without returning to Nyasaland. During the 16 months of the State of Emergency, up to 4,500 police and soldiers, the majority not from Nyasaland, patrolled the protectorate. In all, 1,339 people were detailed without trial and 2,160 were convicted. . Operation Sunrise (Nyasaland) Operation Sunrise was the name given to a police and military action conducted by the authorities in the Central African protectorate of Nyasaland (now known as Malawi) which started on the 3rd March 1959, initially to detain and intern 350 individuals
Nyasaland Emergency 1959 to Federation, but otherwise quite moderate and far less radical that the younger Congress members. Although the Nyasaland African Congress was at first based in Blantyre, many branches were established in the Northern Province after 1955. Schemes to prevent cutting down and burning trees to assist the cultivation of finger millet, and to restrict the numbers of cattle owned, had begun in that region in 1938, but from 1947 they were increasingly enforced through fines. From 1951, unpaid work on schemes designed to prevent soil erosion was imposed by the Nyasaland government. Resistance to these measures created a climate of