The idea of Bai Bureh and the “Hut Tax War” of 1898 has remained firmly entrenched in our history which Sierra Leoneans and other historians have taken for granted until now. Most of the known histories of any aspect of Sierra Leone’s past continue to refer to this event as the Hut Tax War. Virtually all history texts still refer to that event of 1898 in the same way so that all Sierra Leoneans who grew up on those texts gracefully refer to it. As the Hut Tax War. As late as two years ago, a collection of articles by Sierra Leonean scholars in the USA edited by Sylvia Ojukutu Macauley and Ismail Rashid, two of my former students, boldly throws the term “Hut Tax War” around the compilation, a whole chapter being dedicated to an analysis of this event. A recent jingle on the radio systems in Sierra Leone put out by the Monuments and Relics Commission to honor Bai Bureh’s gravesite refers to Bai Bureh as the leader of the Hut Tax War.
In my earliest contribution to a generalized history of Sierra Leone titled The History of Sierra Leone: A Concise Introduction published in 1981, I referred to the event as “Protests of local rulers and the 1898 War”. I however did not emphasize the point that this piece seeks to stress, that the term “Hut Tax War” was a misnomer. In the context of British colonial history that term is bent on emphasizing the good that the British were doing for Sierra Leone peoples and yet these people irresponsibly refused to pay tax. In the context of African, particularly here Sierra Leone history, the local rulers emphasized in one of the petitions sent to the British on the tax that if they paid the tax it meant to them that they no longer owned their own houses. This latter explication is the crux of the matter, for the local rulers were well aware of what the British was asking them to do – to recognize and accept British claimed suzerainty over their country by consenting to pay tax for their land and houses to the British. They stoutly refused. Thus the tax was simply a test by the Britiish of getting the local rulers to acknowledge British suzerainty and the rulers dug their heels in and resisted.
And this is where Bai Bureh’s leadership comes into significant as he was leading a number of local rulers in the north to resist the imposition of colonial rule. The ability to make a firm decision to resist and to carry it out in the face of demonstrated British fire power showed the honor and laudable intent of Bai Bureh and his supporters. This is the source of honour we give to Bai Bureh as he demonstrated incipient nationalism in that fiery period of the race for imperialism in Africa. It is also to be recognized that most of the rulers in the south rose up against this British intrusion on April 27, 1898 (the date Sierra Leone later chose as that of Independence Day), though there was not a single leader to this harmonized movement.
Those historians who picked up on this point of refusal to readily accept the incoming imperialists in early writings on this theme, described it as “The Resistance Movement in Africa”. One of the earliest collection of writings on various resistance movements in Africa in this period was published at the end of the 1960s titled Protest and Power in Black Africa, edited by Rotberg and Mazrui. Thus, even though written by White scholars, this represented an African perspective on African history.
Perhaps we need to elaborate a little on the difference between colonial history and African history perspectives, for in these days in Sierra Leone there are many people who insist they are historians without any training in writing history. To love history and to be a historian are not necessarily the same thing. Colonial history represents attempts to present historical analyses from the perspective of the colonizing powers, mostly justifying their colonial conquest and rule. Since Britain had a large colonial empire, they therefore have an extensive British Empire history. Attempting to justify colonialism would mean presenting developments in the way that that intent would be highlighted. Thus colonial history can at best miss out on issues of importance to the colonized, at worst misrepresent events in the light of the intent of the colonizing power.
African history, on the other hand has a whole swath of colonial experience as virtually all of Africa was colonized. But this history is not necessarily seen in the same way by the colonizer as by the colonized. Those suffering the butt end of colonial rule may not necessarily agree with the interpretation of their actions and history under colonial rule in the same way as the colonizer. In our case we as Sierra Leonean historians and those employing an African perspective on these issues may see the events in a radically different way from that of the colonizer, even though they might both be looking at the same data.
I have always given this example on the issue of differing perspectives. A little crowd developed as two teenagers fell into a brawl in a Freetown street, hurling abuses at each other and then eventually ending up in a fist fight. By the time the fight was over the crowd had grown bigger and included some strangers. One of them asked “who started the fight?” “It was the shorter boy, for he landed the first blow” came the reply from another bystander. “Not so” sharply retorted another onlooker, to the concurrence of a number in the crowd. “The taller fellow started the fight as he abused the other’s mother, knowing the short fellow would defend his honor and he would then apparently justifiably beat that fellow up”.
Here two onlooker were witnessing the same event and giving differing interpretations to it. What is significant is that the cultural element of starting a fight was missing from the first conclusion, probably because that conclusion was made by someone not part of that culture. Thus there is a possibility of differing analyses on history depending on who is interpreting the available evidence. This therefore would lend a different colour between colonial or in our case British Empire history and African or Sierra Leonean history.
If we continue to accept the colonial history analyses of Sierra Leone’s past as some Sierra Leone intellectuals have suggested we should, we tamely surrender the correct interpretation of our past to wrong outside perceptions. Those perceptions may present us in the light of submissive idiots, gladly accepting colonial rule and assisting the British to glorify all of what they did under colonial rule. And the greatest assault on us in this interpretation of our history is the psychological, something we suffer from up till today. The colonial interpretation of our history always gives the Africans resounding blame for any adverse development, thus making Africans, even the educated, come to have some psychological complex about their ability to achieve and to advance their own societies. The average educated or little informed Sierra Leonean still thinks the British can do no wrong as far as Sierra Leone and other African countries are concerned. That is far and away from the reality and such an issue has been debated endlessly.
At the end of the 1898 Rebellion, the British set up a Commission of Enquiry into what they called the Hut Tax War, resistance in which had triggered the fighting. Their major concern was to identify culprits and to find out whether or not the people were too poor to pay the tax as had been claimed in some of the petitions they had sent to the colonial government before the war. The report of the Chalmers Commission, named after the Commissioner sent from England, brought out clearly that people were indeed able to pay the tax, but some of the petitions brought out the crucial factor, almost neglected by the British. That the rulers had indicated that if they paid the tax it meant they no longer owned their own houses and by implication their land and their country. They would then be acknowledging a new British ruler, and this they would not agree to. The tax therefore was secondary to the main issue of threatened loss of sovereignty.
A rendition of this 1898 war as “hut tax war” therefore obviously misses the main point for Sierra Leone history, why we laud Bai Bureh as the main symbol of the nationalistic fervor of our early forefathers. A colonial interpretation of our history, which is what we have been fed with all along, can easily miss this point while the keen eye of someone viewing the evidence from a Sierra Leonean perspective will pick it up.
Thus anyone can from the perspective of colonial history, talk about hut tax war if they like, But in Sierra Leone history, this misleading epithet should be expunged from our textbooks and renditions of aspects of our history.
REFERENCES
Abraham, Arthur, “Nyagua, the British and the Hut Tax War”. International Journal of African Historical Studies V, 1, 1972
————, “Bai Bureh, The British and the Hut Tax War”. International Journal of African Historical Studies, VII, 1974
Alie, Joe A.D, A New History of Sierra Leone. London, Macmillan, 1990
Denzer, LaRay, “Bai Bureh and the Sierra Leone Hut Tax War of 1898”. In Protest and Power in Black Africa, R. Rotberg and A. Mazrui (eds). London, Oxford 1970
Fyfe, Christopher. A Short History of Sierra Leone. London, Longmans 1964
————-, “Documents Relating to the Sierra Leone Hut Tax Enquiry in the Sir David Chalmers Collection, University of Edinburgh”. Africana Research Bulletin, 2, 4, 1972
Fyle, C. Magbaily. The History of Sierra Leone: A Concise Introduction. London, Evans, 1981
Ojukutu-Macauley, Sylvia and Ismail Rashid, Paradoxes of History and Memory in Post Colonial Sierra Leone. Lanham MD, Lexington Books, 2013. See the chapter by Lansana Gberie which includes a section, “The Hut Tax War of 1898 and the Rebel War of the 1990s Revisited”
By C. Magbaily Fyle
Friday November 11, 2016
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