Nyasaland almost universal rejection of Federation. Finally, it suggested that the British government should negotiate with African leaders on the country's constitutional future. The Devlin Commission's report is the only example of a British judge examining whether the actions of a colonial administration in suppressing dissent were appropriate. Devlin's conclusions that excessive force was used and that Nyasaland was a "police state" caused political uproar. His report was largely rejected and the state of emergency lasted until June 1960. At first, the British government tried to calm the situation by nominating additional African members (who were not Malawi Congress Party supporters)
Nyasaland Southern Rhodesia led to a Royal Commission on future association between Northern and Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, or all three territories. Despite almost unanimous African opposition to amalgamation with Southern Rhodesia, the Bledisloe Commission report of 1939 did not entirely rule-out some form of association in the future, provided Southern Rhodesian forms of racial discrimination were not applied north of the Zambezi. The danger of Southern Rhodesian rule made African demands for political rights more urgent, and in 1944 various local Voluntary Associations united as the Nyasaland African Congress (NAC). One of its first demands was to have