Hut Tax War of 1898 in Sierra Leone

In 1898, two rebellions broke out against British colonial rule in Sierra Leone in response to the introduction of a new hut tax by Governor Frederic Cardew. On 1 January 1898, Cardew introduced the hut tax as a way to pay for the colonial administration's financial expenditures. However, the tax proved to be beyond the financial means of many in the colony, provoking discontent. In February 1898, an attempt by colonial officials to arrest Temne chief Bai Bureh led to him and rebels under his command to revolt against British rule. Bureh's forces launched attacks on British officials and Creole traders. Despite the ongoing rebellion, Bureh dispatched two peace overtures to the British in April and June of that year, aided by the mediation of Limba chief Almamy Suluku. Cardew rejected both offers, as Bureh would not agree to surrender unconditionally. Bureh's forces conducted a disciplined and skillfully executed guerrilla campaign which caused the British considerable difficulty. Hostilities began in February; Bureh's harassing tactics confounded the British at first but by May they were gaining ground. The rainy season interrupted hostilities until October, when British colonial forces resumed the slow process of capturing rebel stockades. When most of these defences had been eliminated, Bureh was captured or surrendered (accounts differ) in November. The second revolt in the southeast was a mass uprising, planned somehow to commence everywhere on 27 and 28 April, in which almost all 'outsiders'—whether European or Creole—were seized and summarily executed. Although more fearsome than Bai Bureh's rising, it was amorphous, lacked a definite strategy, and was suppressed in most areas within two months. Some Mende rebels in the centre of the country were not beaten until November, however; and Mende king Nyagua's son Maghi, in alliance with some Kissi rebels, continued the revolt in the extreme east of the Protectorate until August 1899. The principal leaders of the uprisings, Bureh, Nyagua and Kpana Lewis, were exiled to the Gold Coast on 30 July 1899. Nine months after the rebellion, the colonial government convicted and executed ninety-six rebels who had been found guilty of murder by hanging. In 1905, Bureh was allowed by the British to return to Sierra Leone, where he reassumed his chieftaincy at the settlement of Kasseh.