Hut Tax War of 1898

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The Hut Tax War of 1898 was a war initiated by Temne chief Bai Bureh against British colonialists in 1898. The cause of the war was the perceived overtaxation of the Temne by British tax-collectors.

Britain's imposition of a hut tax sparked off two rebellions in the hinterland of Sierra Leone in 1898, by one by the Temne, led by Bai Bureh, the other by the Mende, led by Momoh Jah. To pay for the privilege of British administration, the military governor, Colonel Frederic Carthew, had decreed that 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."