This article examines how and why anti-colonial activists in Nyasaland, now Malawi, seized on modernization theory to make their case for national independence in the early 1960s. As far as British officials were concerned, Nyasaland’s small size, large population, and agrarian character meant that it stood little chance of joining the modern, industrialized world. The Malawi Congress Party, however, saw their country differently, as a future “Central African Denmark.” This article argues that Congress’s Danish vision was part of an anti-colonial challenge to the industry-first development strategies that dominated early international development thinking. Congress thinkers, far from rejecting the modernization idea, flipped the framework from industry to agriculture, helping to open new possibilities for small, agrarian territories on the empire’s margins. The article concludes by showing how this agrarian counter-current in development thinking subsequently shaped the international community’s turn to market-friendly, agriculture-centered policies in the 1970s, though in ways that eclipsed the original anti-colonial vision.

本文探讨了在 1960 年代初期，尼亚萨兰（现为马拉维）的反殖民活动家如何以及为何利用现代化理论为民族独立辩护。就英国官员而言，尼亚萨兰的面积小、人口多和农业特点意味着它几乎没有机会加入现代工业化世界。然而，马拉维国大党却以不同的方式看待他们的国家，将其视为未来的“中非丹麦”。本文认为，国会的丹麦愿景是对主导早期国际发展思想的工业优先发展战略的反殖民挑战的一部分。国会思想家并没有拒绝现代化理念，而是将框架从工业转向农业，帮助为小型、帝国边缘的农业领土。文章最后展示了发展思维中的这种农业逆流如何影响国际社会在 1970 年代转向市场友好型、以农业为中心的政策，尽管其方式使最初的反殖民愿景黯然失色。