Blantyre is Malawi's centre of finance and commerce, and its second largest city, with a population of 800,264 . It is sometimes referred to as the commercial and industrial capital of Malawi as opposed to the political capital, Lilongwe. It is the capital of the country's Southern Region as well as the Blantyre District.
History
thumb|Blantyre government offices in 1904.
thumb|[[Mandala House, Blantyre's oldest building]]
Blantyre was founded in 1876 through the missionary work of the Church of Scotland. It was named after Blantyre, South Lanarkshire, Scotland, birthplace of the explorer David Livingstone. The site was chosen by British missionary Henry Henderson, who was joined there on 23 October 1876 by Dr T. T. Macklin and others. Dr Macklin took over the leadership of the mission and began the work of building; but it was not until 1878 that the first ordained minister, Rev. Duff MacDonald, joined the mission. The original missionaries, for various reasons, faced local opposition and three of them were recalled.
From 1881 to 1898, the mission was run by David Clement Scott, who built the St Michael and All Angels Church, Blantyre, between 1888 and 1891, but also for his Encyclopaedic Dictionary of the Mang'anja Language, the foremost dictionary for Mang'anja and the closely related Chichewa language. It was subsequently edited by Scott's successor in Blantyre, Alexander Hetherwick. The church was built by a team of local workmen with no knowledge of European architecture or building techniques.
Alongside the mission a commercial trading company was established. The Livingstonia Central Africa Trading Company, renamed the African Lakes Corporation in 1878, was founded in Glasgow in 1877. In 1881, it moved to Mandala, not far away on the other side of the River Mudi. The company's original base in Blantyre, Mandala House, still exists and is a National Monument and the oldest building in Malawi.
Blantyre became a British consular station in 1883 and attained municipality status by 1895, making it Malawi's oldest municipality.
Urban development in Blantyre was further stimulated by the construction of the railway. In 1956 it was merged with its sister city, Limbe ( east, founded in 1909), to form one city.|align=left