Hut Tax War of 1898

The Hut Tax War of 1898 was a war of resistance to British colonialism in Sierra Leone.It was initiated by Temne chief Bai Bureh in 1898, and later involved other native peoples, including the Mende. The war was an attempt by the local African kingdoms to maintain their independence in the face of Britain's 1896 declaration of a Protectorate over Sierra Leone. The immediate precipitator of hostilities was the attempt by British officials to collect hut tax.

Britain's imposition of the tax sparked off two rebellions in the hinterland of Sierra Leone in 1898, one by the Temne, led by Bai Bureh, the other by the Mende, led by Momoh Jah. The military governor, Colonel Frederic Carthew, had decreed that, to pay for the privelege of British administration, the inhabitants of the new Protectorate should be taxed on the size of their huts: the owner of a four-roomed hut would pay ten shillings a year, those with smaller huts would pay five shillings. Colonel Cardew was not an administrator, but a professional soldier who had spent years in India and South Africa. First imposed on January 1, 1898, the hut tax aroused immediate and intense opposition, led in the first instance by the sixty-year-old Bai Bureh. The operations against him, from February to November, involved "some of the most stubborn fighting that has been seen in West Africa," wrote Colonel Marshal, the British commander. "No such continuity of opposition had at any previous time been experienced on this part of the coast."

ee also

*Hut tax

References

* [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0361-7882(1974)7%3A1%3C99%3ABBTBAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-C Bai Bureh, The British, and the Hut Tax War ]
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/11chapter10.shtml Tax Wars]