Hut Tax War
The Temne-Mende Revolt of 1898
By 1888 the British, French, Germans, Portuguese, and Liberians had completed laying their claims to the coast of West Africa. In 1895 a new government came into power in Great Britain led by a political party favorable to imperialist ideas that were in accord with the hopes of the newly appointed governor, Fredrick Cardew. On August 31, 1896, in accordance with powers granted him by the home government the previous year, he proclaimed a formal protectorate over the entire mainland.
The terms of the Sierra Leone Protectorate and even the legal meaning of the word protectorate were left undefined. What was clearly intended was that British administration would be as limited as possible, all internal affairs being left to the existing chiefs. Even the institution of domestic slavery was left intact, and it was not formally abolished until 1926. Although the objective of the Protectorate was proclaimed to be the improvement of the country for the benefit of its inhabitants and its legal basis the existence of treaties between many of the chiefs and the British, not even a pretense was made of consulting the Africans.
The Protectorate was not to be united with the Colony. Cardew was opposed to Creole involvement in British rule anywhere. He was a firm believer in the civilizing mission of the British and felt that only they should rule. As nationalism reached its peak and as improvements in medicine made it possible for Europeans to live comfortably in the tropics, a new racism appeared that emphasized the purported superiority of the British over all others, particularly the nonwhite races.
The idea of racial purity was also becoming popular in Europe, so that for many the “pure” African was to be preferred to the Creole. Although most Creoles were entirely of African blood, their Europeanized culture led many British to consider them “contaminated.” These new ideas made it no longer possible for most Englishmen to regard the Creoles as people whose education and culture could raise them to a par with Europeans. At the same time it was presumed that the backward tribal people had to be protected from the evil ideas the Creoles might introduce.
A hut tax was levied in the settlement of Sierra Leone, but not in the Protectorate for more than 20 years. It was repealed in 1872 in connection with an increase of Customs duties which provided a larger revenue than the tax which was surrendered.
The home government expected Sierra Leone to continue to finance its own government and administration. The hut tax was imposed by an Ordinance passed in September of 1897, and allowed by the Colonial Office on the recommendation of the Governor. It was decided to apply it in the first instance to three districts only as an experiment. The tax has been collected by District Commissioners, and its nature and object were first fully explained to the chiefs. Cardew imposed a five-shilling tax on each dwelling in the Protectorate. This is the only tax that could have been imposed upon the Hinterland; it is imposed in substitution for all other taxes, and it was the only form of direct taxation which has been found suited.
This tax brought in about £20,000 or £25,000 — a sum surely too small and insignificant for which to plunge a country into rebellion. But that was not all, because the collection of it meant the cost of the war to be waged against these unfortunate people for their resistance.
In 1898 the opposition of the chiefs to the enforcement of the tax caused the rebellion. The chief objection was to what was said to be the intention of the Government — namely, to put the chiefs themselves under magistrates, who would have the power to order them to be flogged, in the presence of their wives and families and slaves, for the most trumpery offences. These misapprehendsions were most carefully explained to the chiefs, and Sir Frederick Cardew was given to understand that no serious objection would be taken to the enforcement of the new administration.
Both the Temne, led by an important chief, Bai Bureh, and the less well-organized Mende, led by their secret society, the Poro, reacted violently to the Frontier Police effort to collect the tax. Resentment of the tax burden played a role in what Cardew called the Hut Tax War.
The rebellion arose through the resistance of a chief named Bey Burai, a gentleman with whom the Colonists have had trouble on a previous occasion. On two occasions, at least, Bey Burai has been ordered to be arrested, but the arrest has never been effected, and perhaps he began to think that he was independent of any Colonial control.
Prior to the imposition of the Sierra Leone hut tax, Bai Bureh protested against it, and warned the British authorities that if persisted in it might provoke a native outbreak. Upon the occurrence of the outbreak, Bai Bureh gave a safe conduct to the British subjects within his territory, and escorted them out of the disturbed area. Hhether he repudiated the murder of Mr. Humphrey, and with his own hands executed the murderer. The native atrocities that were committed during the outbreak were in the Mendi territory, and not in Bai Bureh's territory.
In the past Bai Bureh had been a steady ally of the British, and had rendered us valuable services against slave raiders. Before the expedition against him was organised, Bai Bureh requested a safe conduct to Freetown, in order to plead his cause before Her Majesty's Special Commissioner. His request was ignored.
More significantly, however, the war was a revolt against the imposition of British rule, symbolized by the tax. Opposition to the British was strengthened by the form of the tax — a levy against dwellings rather than crops. Among the Mende the Poro society staged an all-out attack on foreign influences, killing whites, Africans associated with them, and Creoles. Because the Creole traders and missionaries were at scattered posts throughout the countryside, they suffered severely; more than 1,000 were killed.
Despite the fact that the Creoles suffered most in the attacks, Cardew blamed them for having instigated the war. In fact they had incurred his wrath by publicly demanding before the war began that the tax be abandoned; unlike the British they recognized how the tax would be regarded by the African people, perhaps remembering their own revolt against the Sierra Leone Company’s rent demands 100 years earlier. When Bai Bureh was brought as a captive to Freetown, the Creoles welcomed him as a hero. He was still seen that way in the mid-1970s.
In May 1898, at the height of the Hut Tax War in Sierra Leone, the British conscripted a body of local troops to form the West African Regiment. By August, when the uprising was quelled, some 4,000 troops drawn from the West African Regiment, the Royal Artillery, the Sierra Leone Frontier Police, and rank-and-file West Indian troops had participated in the operations. The threat to internal security posed by the rebellion was serious, and the show of strength that the military operations represented was overwhelmingly decisive. A pattern had been set. For many years to come the might of the distant monarch would be felt locally in the presence of his troops, and African troops would take orders directly from European officers.
An Irishman was sent out as Governor — Sir John Pope Hennessey. The first step he took was the right and proper one of withdrawing the tax. The result was the instant cessation of the hostility of the people, who, it was reported, in recognition of this action, observed the anniversary of the abolition of the tax as a day of rejoicing, and it was called, in the annals of the Colony, "Sir John Pope Hennessy's Day."
The war was over in six months. After the war large British military forces toured the country and successfully intimidated the people. The Frontier Police were transformed into an army battalion and made part of the West African Frontier Force in 1901. Two hundred or more of the chiefs involved were arrested, eighty-three of the Mende among them being hanged for the multiple murders.
The arrests provided the British with the opportunity to ensure that only men they considered loyal were chiefs. Although no hierarchical order might previously have existed, the leaders of more important groups were styled paramount chiefs; in each area less important groups were to be headed by chiefs and subchiefs administratively subordinate to the paramount chief.
The Protectorate was divided into five districts. A British district commissioner acted as overseer of the paramount chiefs in his district and as judge in serious crimes. Minor crimes and most civil matters were left to traditional systems. A single court to deal with crimes involving non-natives was also created to serve the entire Protectorate.
One chief said it was not the hut tax that started the war, but the belief of the chiefs that if they were united they would be able to expel the British and return to the native customs— not so much the barbarous customs, the fetish customs, to which, no doubt, many of the savages are attached, but principally to the custom of slavery.
In respect to the question of slavery, one of the chiefs, when he was brought up for trial in connection with one of the murders that took place, declared that what he complained of was interference with his domestic slaves — that the slaves ran away, and that they had no means of recovering them. That was to destroy, of course, a great property, the privileges of the chiefs, and naturally they wore all rendered very uneasy by the progress of civilisation in this respect.
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