In a Grove? ’s 1898 Hut Tax War Reconsidered

Ochiai, Takehiko*

Abstract

In February1898, an armed uprising occurred in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone soon after the collection of a so-called ‘hut tax’ began in January. The rebellions against the British colonial rule continued for approximately nine months until they were suppressed in November. In Sierra Leone history, this large-scale insurrection is referred to as the Hut Tax War. The British government appointed David Patrick Chalmers as a royal commissioner and dispatched him to Sierra Leone to research the causes and investigate countermeasures. His report was finally submitted to the British Parliament in 1899. The aim of this essay is to examine why the Sierra Leone’s 1898 Hut Tax War occurred, based on the diverse attitudes and opinions of contemporary people expressed in the records of testimony and documents included in Chalmers’ report. This essay mentions six reasons why the war broke out: the introduction of the hut tax, brutality by the Frontier Police Force, inexperienced and overbearing district commissioners, the abolition of slavery and slave-dealing, the loss of authority by the chiefs, and the betrayal by the Creoles. The essay does not pursue a single unambiguous explanation of the truth regarding the causes of the Hut Tax War. Rather, it attempts to elucidate the multifaceted reality of the Hut Tax War as internalised, narrated, and constructed by people involved both directly and indirectly.

Key words: Sierra Leone, Hut Tax War, Creoles, Protectorate, Colonial rule, Chiefs, Violence

* Professor in African Politics, Faculty of Law, Ryukoku University, 67 Fukakusatsukamoto-cho, Fushimi-ku, Kyoto, 612-8577, Japan. E-mail: ochiai@ law.ryukoku.ac.jp 56 ▌▌ Asian Journal of African Studies Vol.41 ┃February 2017┃

1. Introduction

It was near the end of the Victorian era in August 1896 when Britain declared a protectorate over the majority of its territory in the present-day Republic of Sierra Leone. A direct tax referred to formally as a ‘house tax’ and informally as a ‘hut tax’ was introduced to pay for the expenses of governing the Protectorate. However, after the collection of the tax began in January 1898, local people, including the Temne of the northern region, initiated an armed uprising in February, and from April onward, a revolt occurred in the southern region mainly inhabited by the Mende, leading to numerous casualties. The rebellions continued for approximately nine months until they were suppressed in November. This large-scale insurrection is referred to, in Sierra Leone history, as the Hut Tax War. The insurrection was a significant shock to the British home government, which appointed and dispatched a royal commissioner to research the causes and investigate countermeasures. David Patrick Chalmers, a lawyer who had served in the British Gold Coast (today ), was appointed as the commissioner. Chalmers arrived in the Colony of Sierra Leone in July 1898, as the Hut Tax War was still being waged. Before leaving the Colony in November, he gathered numerous relevant documents and conducted interviews with many concerned individuals, including administrative officials, interpreters, police officers, soldiers, merchants, chiefs, and missionaries. In 1899, after returning to Great Britain, Chalmers completed the final draft of the Report by Her Majesty’s Commissioner and Correspondence on the Subject of the Insurrection in the Sierra Leone Protectorate 1898 and submitted it to Parliament.1 This extensive report of

1 Report by Her Majesty’s Commissioner and Correspondence on the Subject of the Insurrection in the Sierra Leone Protectorate 1898, July 1899, Vol. LX., c. 9388., c. 9391. This report is made up of Part I, which includes reports and memos, and Part II, which includes testimonies and documents. In this essay, the Chalmers report, its Part I and Part II are abbreviated as CR, CR I, and CR II respectively.

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more than 870 pages included an investigative report by Chalmers himself, in addition to testimony by 272 concerned individuals and 97 related documents attached as appendices. This report is of great value as a historical record of the Hut Tax War. In this report, Chalmers concludes that the introduction of the hut tax and its inappropriate collection were the main causes of the insurrection by local people. He recommends future measures such as abolishing the hut tax, curtailing the functions of, or disbanding, the police force, and increasing the authority of local chiefs. The report includes a rebuttal by Governor Frederic Cardew of the Sierra Leone colonial government. The governor objects to Chalmers’ view that the introduction of the hut tax was the main cause of the insurrection. Governor Cardew theorizes instead that the insurrection was caused by dissatisfaction with British colonial rule in general and with the abolition of slavery as well as agitation by merchants and newspapers in the Sierra Leone Colony in particular. The Hut Tax War was a ‘bush war’ that took place mainly in the tropical rainforest region of the Sierra Leone Protectorate. The tropical rainforest region in the Protectorate was terra incognita from the point of view of the white government, and, as this essay will later describe, from the beginning there were a number of diverse interpretations and conflicting views on why the ‘bush war’ occurred. This essay investigates why the Sierra Leone Hut Tax War occurred, based on the diverse attitudes and opinions of contemporary people expressed in the records of testimony and documents included in Chalmers’ report. These will be treated not as a single, non-conflicting view of history but as a combination of contradictory interpretations in order to shed light on the reality of narratives of the Hut Tax War. Incidentally, among the novels of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, a famous Japanese writer, is a short story entitled In a Grove (Yabunonaka in Japanese). In the story, a man’s body is found in a mountain grove, and

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Kebiishi (a post that combines the functions of a present-day policeman and judge) interviews several people who give completely contradictory testimony concerning the cause of the man’s death. While the plot concerns the investigation into the death that occurred in the unfamiliar terrain of the grove, in the end the true perpetrator is not found, and the story depicts the profundity of aspects of human nature such as lust, loathing, cunning, cruelty, shame, and vanity in a manner even more vivid than real life by presenting the contradictory narratives of different individuals involved in the incident. This essay emulates the basic structure of Akutagawa’s In a Grove. That is, while this essay is based on the theme of investigating the cause of the Hut Tax War that occurred in the unfamiliar terrain of the bush, it does not pursue a single unambiguous explanation of the truth. Rather, this work attempts to elucidate the multifaceted reality of the Hut Tax War as internalised, narrated, and constructed by people involved both directly and indirectly. However, before examining the narratives of the 1898 Hut Tax War, let us give a simple overview of the formation of the Colony and Protectorate of Sierra Leone in order to understand the historical background of the war.

2. Historical Background

2.1 The Formation of the Colony

In the second half of the 18th century, a small black community began to form in London, England, as the enslaved persons brought from became free and former slaves (who were loyalists) moved there on the condition that they join the American Revolutionary War on the side of the

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British. However, the majority of the black people in England were referred to as the ‘Black Poor’ and lived in severe poverty. Amid these developments, English businessmen and politicians who took the initiative in efforts to abolish the slave trade (abolitionists) set out to help the Black Poor. They developed organisations to assist the Black Poor, collected donations, and worked to provide food, clothing, and health services. However, they believed that such responses did not truly resolve the problem, and they began to search for an area on the Atlantic rim where the Black Poor could be settled. Then they happened upon the Sierra Leone River region on the western coast of Africa. In April 1787, with support from the British government, approximately 400 people, including the Black Poor, white women, and workers, set out from Plymouth harbour in the south of England for Sierra Leone. Approximately 10 percent of the passengers perished during the month-long voyage from Plymouth, and the settlers arrived in Sierra Leone during the rainy season; thus, due to infectious diseases such as malaria, the number of deaths continued to pile up even after the landing. At first, the settlers built a small town called Granville Town on land granted to them by a Temne chief. However, the town was completely destroyed in a December 1789 attack by a local chief with whom the settlers had come into conflict.2 Though the first attempt at settlement ended in failure, the English abolitionists again sent a small number of settlers to Sierra Leone. To rebuild the settlement, in 1790 they established St. George’s Bay Company, an organisation that was restructured the next year as a chartered company called the Sierra Leone Company. Then, in 1791, they dispatched agents to build a new Granville Town in a different location, and in January 1792, they sent 1,190 loyalist blacks and their families who had once been

2 For more detail of the early settlement by the Black Poor, see, for example, Braidwood (1994).

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American slaves and who had migrated to Nova Scotia (currently the southeast of Canada) to settle in Sierra Leone. These people are referred to, in the , as ‘Nova Scotians’. After arriving in Sierra Leone, they built a town called on the site of the former Granville Town. Furthermore, approximately 550 former slaves called ‘Maroons’ who had fled from Jamaican plantations and then been transferred to Nova Scotia moved to Sierra Leone in 1800. In 1807, the British Parliament passed a law prohibiting the slave trade, and in January 1808, it formally transformed Sierra Leone from a settled colony under the control of a chartered company into a Crown colony, making it a home for the recaptives, or captured Africans freed from slave ships. Thereafter, many freed slaves began to arrive. Thus the Sierra Leone Colony was shaped by four main groups of settlers: (1) early settlers from England (1787), (2) Nova Scotians (1792), (3) Maroons from Jamaica (1800), and (4) recaptured slaves born in various locations in Africa (from 1808 onward). Initially there were severe friction and discord among these groups, which had sharply differing cultural backgrounds and political attitudes. But around the 1870s the antagonism eased somewhat, and a Creole identity and culture unique to the Sierra Leone Colony, which combined American, English, Jamaican, and various African cultures, began to form. Subsequently, the Creoles expanded their merchant and missionary activities from the Colony to the surrounding areas.3

3 Today, Creoles are called Krio. For the detail of a history of Krio, see Spitzer (1975), Fyfe (1962), and Porter (1963).

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2.2 The Establishment of the Protectorate

After Sierra Leone was declared a Crown colony in 1808, the colonial government began to expand into the surrounding areas, mainly for economic gain. It sent envoys and contingents into the surrounding coastal and inland regions, establishing friendship treaties with local chiefs, intervening as mediators in conflicts between local chiefs, and fighting repeated, sporadic battles with forces involved in the slave trade. However, despite the government’s expansionist policies, the formal territory of the Colony, at least until the 1850s, was mainly limited to Freetown and the surrounding Sierra Leone Peninsula region. The main reason for this was that the British government, particularly the Colonial Office, did not wish to increase their administrative responsibilities and economic burdens, and they continued to restrain the expansion of the Sierra Leone colonial government’s sphere of influence. In the 1860s, local chiefs ceded authority over Sherbro Island, one of the main trading locations, and its surrounding area to the colonial government, and the Colonial Office reluctantly approved the merger of this territory, but this was an exceptional measure. However, in the 1870s, due to contemporary issues such as a fall in the revenue of the Sierra Leone colonial government due to the Long Depression, the breaking off of negotiations between the British and French home governments concerning the exchange of land on the west coast of Africa, and the expansion of French imperial territory in West Africa, the British home government gradually began to favour expansionist policies. Then, in the 1880s, the British home government proceeded to negotiate with the French home government concerning border demarcation on the Atlantic coast north of the Sierra Leone Colony, while incorporating the coastal region south of the Colony into its own sphere of influence. Moreover, in 1889, two travelling commissioners were appointed and

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dispatched to various parts of the coastal and inland regions, where they signed numerous standard treaties with local chiefs, that had stronger binding force than friendship treaties. The commissioners attempted to build a stronger, more expansive base for a sphere of influence surrounding the Colony. In this manner, as attempts were made to secure legal justification for rule over surrounding regions by signing standard treaties with local chiefs, in January 1890, a security contingent called the Frontier Police Force was created to enforce this rule. The main purpose of the Force was to maintain security and crack down on slavery and slave-dealing in the region surrounding the Sierra Leone Colony, i.e., the frontier as seen from the perspective of the Colony. Measures such as the signing of more ‘effective’ treaties with local chiefs, the conclusion of border demarcation negotiations with France, and the creation of the Frontier Police Force paved the way for Britain’s formal declaration in August 1896 of a protectorate over the region surrounding the Sierra Leone Colony, as previously mentioned. The Sierra Leone Protectorate was divided into five districts — Karene, Ronietta, Bandajuma, Panguma, and Koinadugu — and a district commissioner was stationed in each (see Map 1). Then, in contrast with the direct rule implemented in the Colony, in these districts of the Protectorate, a system of indirect rule was implemented wherein chiefs referred to as paramount chiefs and sub-chiefs governed under the supervision of district commissioners.

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Map 1 Districts in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone (1896)

Source: Alie (1990: 136).

3. The Development of the Hut Tax War

3.1 Causes of the War

The biggest challenge facing the Sierra Leone colonial government when the Protectorate was established was how to pay for the expenses of governance. The initial expenses of establishing the Protectorate were

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estimated to be at least 5,000 pounds per year. However, as the Sierra Leone colonial government faced annual expenses of 19,000 pounds to maintain the Frontier Police Force, it could not take on the additional financial burden. Thus the hut tax was implemented to provide the main revenue for the governing of the Protectorate (Abraham, 1978: 119). At first, the hut tax was set at 10 shillings per home for homes of four rooms or more and five shillings per home for homes of three rooms or less, and all homes in the Protectorate, with the exception of houses owned or inhabited by non-native residents and officials, were subject to the tax. Because the system of indirect rule was implemented in the Protectorate, as previously described, the collection of the hut tax was, as a general rule, carried out not directly by European government officials such as district commissioners but through a procedure in which local chiefs collected the tax from people under their jurisdiction and then paid it to district commissioners or their representatives (such as police officers). The payments were generally made in cash, but in some cases, payments in material goods such as rice, palm oil, and so on were permitted. Finally, a grace period of one year and four months from the establishment of the Protectorate was set, and the collection of the tax was initiated on 1 January, 1898. In response to this, the Colonial Office expressed misgivings or opposition to the hasty introduction of direct taxation in the Protectorate, stating, ‘It is too early to introduce a direct tax such as the hut tax in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone so soon after its establishment’, ‘With just a handful of administrative officials, it may not be possible to begin collecting the hut tax all at once throughout the entire territory’, and ‘There is not enough currency in circulation in the Protectorate, and the introduction of a hut tax will create chaos among the people and lead to strong opposition’. However, the Colonial Office finally permitted the introduction of a hut tax in the Protectorate, advising the Sierra Leone colonial government that it

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should begin collecting the hut tax in just three districts — Karene, Ronietta, and Bandajuma — and gradually expand the collection of the tax (Abraham, 1978: 131-132). However, as the news of the hut tax reached various regions within the Protectorate, many local chiefs expressed strong opposition. For instance, in October 1896, a number of Mende chiefs from the southern region submitted requests for hut tax exemptions. Furthermore, in December, many chiefs in the eastern region held a meeting and jointly expressed their opposition to the hut tax. Furthermore, in November 1897, a number of Temne chiefs in the northern region met directly with Governor Cardew, protesting the policies of the colonial government, including the hut tax, and requesting that improvements be made (CR I: 19-22). Due to these repeated appeals and protests by local chiefs, in November 1897, Governor Cardew took corrective measures. Following the advice of the Colonial Office, he officially postponed the collection of the tax in Koinadugu and Panguma during the first year. He established tax exemptions for temporary buildings used for farm work, houses in villages with less than 20 homes, and buildings used for Christian missionary work in the districts of Karene, Ronietta, and Bandajuma, where the tax would be collected. He also established a uniform tax of five shillings regardless of the number of rooms.4 However, in spite of these signs of concession, Governor Cardew made no moves to change the basic approach of initiating the collection of the hut tax within the Protectorate on 1 January, 1898. Governor Cardew wrote a letter to Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain on 8 December, 1897, just before the collection of the hut tax began, stating the following.

4 Governor Sir F. Cardew to Mr. Chamberlain, 8 December, 1897, NAUK CO 879/55/1. NAUK and CO stand for ‘The National Archives of the United Kingdom’ and ‘The Colonial Office’ respectively.

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I do not apprehend that the Chiefs will continue to forcibly resist the collection of the tax, for they lack cohesion and powers of organization, and there are too many jealousies between them for concerted action, but there may be isolated acts on the part of some Chiefs and their followers of forcible resistance to the tax, which might spread to other tribes if not promptly suppressed by the police, and for this reason it is most necessary to have a sufficient force of police at hand.5

That is, Governor Cardew did not anticipate that the chiefs’ opposition to the hut tax would develop into a serious, large-scale armed conflict, if he had a sufficient force of police at hand. However, at the beginning of 1898, when the collection of the hut tax began, the situation went counter to Cardew’s expectations. The security situation worsened, first in the southern district of Bandajuma and then in the eastern district of Panguma, which was exempt from the collection of the tax for the first year. Then, in February of the same year, a confrontation took place between government officials and chiefs in the northern district of Karene, and there was a conflict between the Frontier Police Force and a group of armed youth. This was the beginning of the Hut Tax War. The Hut Tax War can be broadly separated into a northern conflict (occurring mainly in the district of Karene) involving mainly the Temne, and a southern conflict (occurring mainly in the districts of Ronietta and Bandajuma) involving mainly the Mende. Both disturbances occurred due to the introduction of the hut tax, and while they influenced each other, they also differed in many respects. Thus, in this essay, the disturbances will be separately addressed below to give an overview of the development of each.

5 Governor Sir F. Cardew to Mr. Chamberlain, 8 December, 1897, NAUK CO 879/55/1.

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3.2 Developments in the North

In the northern district of Karene, as noted above, an armed conflict broke out in February 1898. The conflict began when a district commissioner named W. S. Sharpe attempted to arrest a chief named Bai Bureh (whose real name or alias was Kebalai), who he believed played a major role in the movement against the hut tax. There was a violent confrontation between the police force led by Sharpe and a group of armed youth called ‘war-boys’ who supported Bai Bureh, leading to a rapid decline in security in part of the district of Karene, the blocking of main roads by war-boys and armed people, and repeated armed clashes between the police force and war-boys. Governor Cardew determined that it would be impossible to restore order with the police force alone, and from the end of February onward, he made numerous attempts to suppress the disturbances by sending troops from Freetown and other areas to the district. Then, in the beginning of March, he suspended civil administration in Karene and declared martial law over the entire area. In general, it is thought that the mastermind or instigator of this rebellion in the northern region was Bai Bureh, but some hold conflicting views (Abraham, 1976: 62-69). However, at least as far as the surface developments of the conflict indicate, and from the perspective of the Sierra Leone colonial government, the Hut Tax War in the northern region was a ‘war with Bai Bureh’. Beginning with the armed conflict over his arrest, the conflict developed into a struggle pitting the war-boys who supported him against the police force and military. Bai Bureh was also involved in the conclusion of the conflict. That is, in November 1898, a colonial search party found Bai Bureh in the jungles of the district of Karene and took him into custody. With this, the ‘war with Bai Bureh’ in the northern region effectively ended.

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One of the unique features of the Hut Tax War in the northern region is that the rebel forces did not commit atrocities. For instance, in the northern insurrection, there were at least 140 casualties among police and soldiers and 137 casualties among local people in military employ on the side of the colonial government (CR I: 39). However, in this insurrection, there were almost no cases in which people were massacred or pillaged by armed Temne rebels. Governor Cardew also pointed this out in his letter to Colonial Secretary Chamberlain on 28 May 1898: ‘The Timinis have conducted their war in a fairly humane and civilized manner, and, except in a few cases, not committed acts of murder. But the Mendis have spared no one: all aliens on whom they have laid hands have been butchered’.6 As Governor Cardew pointed out, the massacre of civilians in the southern insurrection, which will be described below, contrasted significantly with the rebellions in the northern region. In the south, many whites and Creoles were massacred by Mende mobs.

3.3 Developments in the South

The revolt in the south broke out simultaneously in the districts of Ronietta and Bandajuma at the end of April 1898 (CR I: 46). Subsequently, Mende mobs armed with swords, guns, and sticks repeatedly and indiscriminately massacred white and Creole merchants, missionaries, government officials, and police officers as well as their families. For instance, a Creole woman named Nancy Violette Taylor was taken captive by Mende war-boys, and her husband was slaughtered in front of her. In an interview with Chalmers, she provided the following testimony on these occurrences.

6 Governor Sir F. Cardew to Mr. Chamberlain, 28 May, 1898, NAUK CO 879/55/1.

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On 29th April a sudden attack was made on Bolian. We went away in a boat, my husband, myself, a constable, and several others. In less than half an hour we got to a town, and over 200 people came on us with cutlasses, sticks, and guns. They rushed on the policeman, W. J. Caulker, and chopped him, and killed him, and took his gun, and then threw him into the sea. They took the two other men and laid them side by side on the ground and chopped them to pieces. They killed my husband at my feet. I asked them, ‘Why do you punish Sierra Leonians so?’ They say, ‘You pay the hut tax’ (CR II: 302).

Additionally, a Creole girl named Miriam Deborah Hughes was captured by Mende war-boys along with her family, and after a brief period of confinement, both her parents were killed. She provided the following testimony to Chalmers about these occurrences.

On Thursday night we heard my father’s voice on the wharf, which was only a few yards off, but we could not see out of the house. He said, ‘Friends, kill me one time, don’t punish me too much.’ I saw his body after; the people would not allow us to go to it, and the water carried it away. On Saturday they took three women and killed them at the water side. One man took us off, and called us and told us he was going to kill my mother for the tax, and they killed her (CR II: 317).

Then, in May, there was an incident in the district of Ronietta in which five American missionaries, including four women, were massacred by war-boys. A man residing in the local area named Thomas F. Hallowell witnessed this and provided the following testimony.

We saw the crowd coming with the missionaries, but could not distinguish them. They killed Doctress Hatfield last. I know this

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because they brought her to the gate and kept her standing there. She was standing there praying for fifteen minutes. At this time the warboys were looting the Mission House. Doctress Hatfield was dressed in her long dress. As soon as the Mission House was completely burnt down, they fell on her and killed her.7

It is not clear how many fell victim to the massacre. However, according to one account, at least 1,000 Europeans, Americans, and Creoles were killed in the southern insurrection (Abraham, 1978: 147). In general, it is believed that the Mende uprising in the south did not have a ringleader like Bai Bureh in the north. However, there were rumours that a secret society called Poro was involved in the southern revolt from the very beginning. For instance, Chalmers’ report also points out that the Poro society may have been used as one means of inciting the Mende uprising, although there was no definite proof of this (CR I: 52). Furthermore, Kenneth Little, author of a pioneering research report on the Mende, states ‘It is also likely that the Poro secret society was the main instrument, and that the Poro war-sign — a burned palm-leaf — was despatched from town to town and from country to country to call out the war-boys’ (Little, 1951: 48). However, there is still no generally accepted understanding regarding the role of Poro in the southern rebellion. While this Mende uprising produced a number of civilian victims, as previously described, it began to subside approximately two months later. Here I would like briefly to look at what distinguished the development of the Hut Tax War in the north from that in the south. The first point of contrast was in the massacre of civilians. As previously described, although very few atrocities were committed against civilians in the north, not only

7 Enclosure 2 in Governor Sir F. Cardew to Mr. Chamberlain, 9 June, 1898, NAUK CO 879/55/1. In Chalmers’ report, the same testimony is included under the name of Thomas Holloway (CR II: 103-104).

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police and soldiers but also white and Creole civilians were targeted in the south, and many people were massacred by Mende mobs. The second point of contrast was the participation of a core ringleader of the insurrection. In the north, it appears, at least on the surface, that Bai Bureh was the central figure in the insurrection, but in the south, there was no mastermind behind the uprising, and instead a secret society called Poro was rumoured to be involved. As will be described later, the reasons for these regional differences are closely linked with the causes of the Hut Tax War. However, this essay will not attempt a detailed analysis of the reasons for these regional differences. Instead, in the next section, I would like to interpret and analyse the diverse narratives of contemporary people regarding the causes of the Sierra Leone Hut Tax War, including these regional differences.

4. Narratives of the Hut Tax War

From the beginning, there was a wide range of speculation regarding the causes of the Hut Tax War, as well as conflicting claims by people in differing positions. It was easy to understand the perception that the initiation of hut tax collection in January 1898 led to the outbreak of the insurrection in February. However, it was unclear from the beginning whether this was in fact the insurrection’s main cause, or whether the introduction of the tax was simply a trigger for an insurrection whose root causes lay elsewhere. As noted above, the nature of the disturbances and revolts differed significantly between the north and south of the Protectorate, and this is one factor that complicates speculation on and comprehension of the causes and purposes of the rebellion. That is, there are doubts over whether the insurrection in the north, where the fighting occurred mainly with the police and the military, and the insurrection in the south, in which a

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large number of white and Creole civilians were massacred, actually both arose from the single cause of the introduction of the hut tax, or whether in fact different causes led to different insurrections that took different forms in different regions. What motivated the instigators of the bush rebellions, what did the participants want, what did the witnesses see, and what did the parties who tried to suppress the rebellions think about them? Let us take a look at the diverse views of those involved in the causes of the rebellions by referring to the testimonies and documents included in Chalmers’ report.

4.1 The Introduction of the Hut Tax

In his final investigative report on the insurrection in the Protectorate of Sierra Leone, Commissioner Chalmers concludes that ‘The Hut Tax, together with the measures used for its enforcement, were the moving causes of the insurrection’ (CR I: 73). To be sure, evidence that the introduction of the hut tax was the main cause of the insurrection is found in many testimonies included in Chalmers’ report. For instance, a chief named Foolah Mordoo testified through an interpreter that ‘What brought about this war is nothing else than the hut tax’ (CR II: 270), and a chief named Bonna Sobole also stated, ‘The tax brought the war’ (CR II: 273). Moreover, three messengers dispatched by a paramount chief named Suluku testified to Chalmers that ‘Paying for a thing in our country means you had no original right to it; so it seems as if they had no right to their houses’ (CR II: 107). The last testimony in particular demonstrates that the people of the Protectorate saw the introduction of the hut tax as a denial of their property rights over their homes, and they may have felt that the tax burden was like paying rent. It also suggests that the main reason for the insurrection may have been their feeling that Britain had stolen their property.

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In 1899, English traveller Mary Kingsley published a book titled West African Studies. In the book, she harshly criticises the British government’s approach to the Hut Tax War. According to Kingsley, previous wars fought by the British in West Africa involved moral causes such as protecting one tribe from another, preventing the stagnation of commercial activity, and so on, but such aims were entirely absent in the Sierra Leone’s Hut Tax War. This is because the point of contention in the war, the hut tax, constituted an infringement of Africans’ property rights from the beginning, and thus the war was a backlash by Africans against this violation. The moral right could be claimed by the Africans resisting the infringement of their property rights, and the British government, which usurped their rights and suppressed their attempts to resist, had no basis for making such a claim (Kingsley, 1899: 317, 332). Furthermore, although Kingsley’s assertions regarding the Hut Tax War do not coincide entirely with the results of Chalmers’ report,8 to some extent they share the same attitude. Officials of the Sierra Leone colonial government unanimously objected to the notion that the introduction of the hut tax was the main cause of the insurrection. For instance, Governor Cardew, who himself led the introduction of the hut tax, stated in a letter to Colonial Secretary Chamberlain on 28 May, 1898, during the war, that ‘As I have said before, I think it would be taking a very superficial view of the situation to attribute it to the house-tax alone’, pointing out that ‘But the true causes, in my opinion — and I am supported in this by the independent testimony of numerous missionaries, Sierra Leone traders, and others — lie far deeper down, and

8 While Kingsley sought the reason for the occurrence of the Sierra Leone insurrection solely in the ‘denial of property rights by the Hut Tax’, Chalmers’ report demonstrates a more multi-faceted interpretation. For instance, in addition to the hut tax, as described later in this essay, the report mentions the coercive or violent collection of the hut tax, the dissatisfaction of chiefs and local people with violent and oppressive behavior by the Frontier Police Force prior to the introduction of the tax, and the high cost of the hut tax (five shillings) as reasons for the occurrence of the war.

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they are desire for independence and for a reversion to the old order of things, such as fetish customs and slave-dealing and raiding’.9 In his official response to Chalmers’ report, Governor Cardew also expressed doubts regarding Chalmers’ view that the hut tax constituted a violation of the property rights of local people (CR I: 107). The commissioners of the various districts and the colonial government bureaucrats who worked under Governor Cardew also did not believe that the introduction of the hut tax caused the insurrection, stating that there were numerous other important causes (e.g. CR I: 144).

4.2 Brutality by the Frontier Police Force

Chalmers’ report presents numerous elements other than the introduction of the hut tax as the main causes of the insurrection. One of these is brutality by the Frontier Police Force. As previously described, the Frontier Police Force was created in 1890 with the main purpose of maintaining order in the area surrounding the Colony. Following the establishment of the Protectorate in 1896, the main purposes of the police force became ensuring the integration of the territory and maintaining peace, and it carried out activities such as defending important roads and cracking down on slave-dealing. In 1898 it took up the task of collecting the hut tax. The police force initially consisted of just under 300 officers, but it grew when the Protectorate was established, totalling around 600 officers at the time of the insurrection in 1898 (CR I: 12). Other than around 10 European executive officers, the Frontier Police Force was made up almost entirely of African people. However, the majority of them were illiterate, and some lacked discipline and behaved

9 Governor Sir F. Cardew to Mr. Chamberlain, 28 May, 1898, NAUK CO 879/55/1.

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violently. Therefore, right from the founding of the Frontier Police Force, there was a never-ending string of incidents such as theft, bribery, brutality, injury, rape, and murder. For instance, from February 1894, before the establishment of the Protectorate, to March 1898, immediately after the outbreak of the insurrection, a total of 62 frontier police officers inflicted harm on people and were subsequently punished (CR II: 563-565). Contrary to its original mission of maintaining order, the Frontier Police Force became a threat to the local people of the Protectorate, causing widespread dissatisfaction even before the insurrection. For instance, the aforementioned Creole woman named Taylor testifies, ‘The policemen’s treatment gave rise to this war’ (CR II: 302). An individual named Santigi Shela who was dispatched by a chief in the northern region told Chalmers, ‘I come to tell you that we do not refuse the hut tax, but the Frontier Police spoil everything in the country’ (CR II: 388-389). Moreover, when Chalmers asked, ‘Do you know anything about the cause that brought the war?’ a chief in the southern region named Farwoonda responded as follows:

As I heard they said that the District Commissioner at Bandajuma had sent some men to collect the tax near Bumpe, and one of the Frontier Police shot a man with a gun at Bumpe. When they killed the man his brother drew his sword and struck the Frontier, and the war was caused by that uproar. […] It is not so much the tax that displeased us, but it was more the Frontier Police (CR II: 337-338).

With regard to the poor reputation of the Frontier Police Force, Chalmers stated in his report that ‘Their supposed duties were to stop any slave-dealing, to prevent inter-tribal fighting, and to watch the country. They were practically little judges and governors. Thus situated, many of the Police egregiously abused their position and powers’ (CR I: 13). He

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then stated that in his opinion, dissatisfaction with the Frontier Police Force had been widespread even before the hut tax, and that when the hut tax was introduced, the people believed that its purpose was to pay for the expenses of ruling the Protectorate, particularly maintaining the Frontier Police Force, and that this might have been the cause of the insurrection. Then he proposed establishing a new civilian police force under the supervision of chiefs and transferring the Protectorate’s police functions to this organisation (CR I: 81). Governor Cardew disputed Chalmers’ claim that brutality by the Frontier Police Force was a cause of the insurrection. Governor Cardew pointed out that among the incidents regarded as crimes by the Frontier Police Force, some had been committed by Creoles disguised as police officers, and although 27 frontier police officers were punished for committing crimes in 1894, just two officers were punished in 1896 and 10 in 1897, indicating clear improvement (CR I: 91-92).

4.3 Inexperienced, Overbearing District Commissioners

Edward Wilmot Blyden was born in St Thomas, Danish West Indies (now known as the US Virgin Islands), in 1832. Later he lived in the Republic of Liberia and the Colony of Sierra Leone, where he achieved renown as a politician, journalist, educator, and diplomat. In a 28 July 1898 memo addressed to the Colonial Office, he mentioned both the previously described violent behaviour by the Frontier Police Force and the immature, overbearing approach of district commissioners as causes of the insurrection in Sierra Leone.

Under most of the previous Administrations, and under the policy formerly pursued, the natives could have been brought to see the necessity of assisting the Government to improve and keep order in

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their country, but they allege serious grievances against the arbitrariness of young and inexperienced officials sent among them, called District Commissioners, entrusted with power far beyond their capacity to wield with any useful result.10

Furthermore, a chief named Babuneh claimed that he was humiliated by Thomas Hood, a medical officer and a representative of the district commissioner of Ronietta, before the insurrection, and described the incident to Chalmers as follows:

I asked why they arrested me, and Dr. Hood said for the hut tax. I said ‘I must send to consult the big Chief first’: he said, ‘We are going to take you to prison: you must pay £8’. I said, ‘I have no money: I do not know what to do,’ and he said, ‘If you do not pay the hut tax we will burn all your country.’ This was in January. They took all my clothes off me (CR II: 124).

In response to this, Chalmers asked, ‘Do you think I can believe that?’, and the chief responded clearly, ‘Yes’ (CR II: 125). At first, among the white officials in the Protectorate, including district commissioners, there were many young soldiers with little service experience. Many of them behaved in a coercive, insulting manner toward chiefs and people, and rebellion against these young, arrogant white government officials spread throughout the Protectorate before the introduction of the hut tax. In response, Governor Cardew stated in a letter to Colonial Secretary Chamberlain that although the investigation into whether the behaviour of

10 Memorandum, enclosure in Dr. E.W. Blyden to Colonial Office, 28 July, 1898, NAUK CO 879/55/1.

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district commissioners helped spark the insurrection would be left to the royal commissioner, ‘I know them to be humane, honourable and upright, and to have carried out their duties under most trying circumstances with admirable ability, tact, and judgment’, expressing support for his subordinates.11

4.4 The Abolition of Slavery and Slave-dealing

In a letter to Colonial Secretary Chamberlain dated 28 May 1898, Governor Cardew stated his view of the cause of the insurrection as follows: ‘In my opinion, the rebellion has been one of the Chiefs, and it has been a determined attempt to overthrow white rule, and the chief cause is the abolition of slavery’.12 The governor also stated in his official view on Chalmers’ report that, because slavery and slave-dealing were completely prohibited when the British Protectorate was established, the chiefs had reacted strongly against this by starting the insurrection (CR I: 104-105). If the claim of Governor Cardew is correct, perhaps the insurrection in Sierra Leone in 1898 was not a ‘tax war’ but a ‘slave war’ (Abraham, 1978: 161-162). On the other hand, Chalmers cited the testimony of Samuel Lewis, a renowned Creole lawyer, to refute Commissioner Cardew’s theory regarding the ‘abolition of slavery and slave-dealing’. Lewis testified that the conclusion of a Britain’s treaty with the Temne of the northern region and the creation and deployment of the Frontier Police Force for the Mende of the southern region had led to the basic acceptance of the principle of prohibiting slave-dealing by 1890 at the latest (CR II: 148). Based on this

11 Governor Sir F. Cardew to Mr. Chamberlain, 20 September, 1898, NAUK CO 879/55/1. 12 Governor Sir F. Cardew to Mr. Chamberlain, 28 May, 1898, NAUK CO 879/55/1.

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testimony, Chalmers concluded that, as of the late 1890s, when the Protectorate was declared, slave-dealing had already been eliminated within the Protectorate, with minor exceptions. He then concluded that if the principle of the prohibition of slavery and slave-dealing had permeated the Protectorate by 1890, this could not possibly have been the main cause of the 1898 insurrection (CR I: 52-53).

4.5 The Loss of Authority by the Chiefs

James Charles Ernest Parkes, an outstanding Creole government official in the Colony of Sierra Leone, mentions that the loss of authority by the chiefs was one of the causes of the insurrection, and points out, ‘The attitude of their wives, children, and domestics (slaves), who will not now obey them, as the chiefs and headmen have not now the power of punishment that they had before’ (CR I: 144). Additionally, Governor Cardew gave the following testimony to Chalmers, in which he passed along what a chief named Momo Jah had told him.

You know when I want to fill my belly I get a big bowl and fill it with rice: but that is not enough. Before I eat, I put on a little pepper or soup or greenstuff. That does not fill my belly, it is the rice that fills it. Well, the rice represents our wives, and slaves, and the pepper is the hut tax (CR II: 18).

In other words, the chiefs had always had numerous wives and slaves who were forced to submit to them, but with the establishment of the Protectorate, their authority and influence diminished, their household slaves fled, and their wives ceased to obey. The meaning of the chiefs’ allegory as introduced by Cardew was that underlying the insurrection was the chiefs’ strong dissatisfaction with this loss of power and authority, and

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the introduction of the hut tax simply provided the opportunity for the chiefs’ dissatisfaction to transform into an insurrection. Underlying this theory of the ‘fall of the chiefs’ was the fate of the longtime custom of ‘women palavers’. In the inland region, when a married woman committed adultery and was discovered by her husband, he could demand a large sum from the other man as damages. If the other man was unable to pay, he could even be sold as a slave (CR II: 83). Some chiefs and village headmen with many wives abused this custom of women palavers to enrich themselves. They committed fraud by forcing their wives to seek out partners and commit adultery (in fact prostitution), then demanding damages from the other man (CR I: 136). As mentioned above, with the creation of the Frontier Police Force and the establishment of the Protectorate, the power and authority of the chiefs weakened, and the wives and slaves stopped obeying them. As their income decreased due to the decline of the custom of women palavers, the chiefs’ dissatisfaction grew stronger. According to Sierra Leone colonial government officials, this was one of the main causes of the insurrection.

4.6 The Creoles’ Betrayal

As mentioned above, the insurrection by the Mende in the southern region involved the massacre not only of whites but also of numerous Creoles. The Creole are an ethnic group that formed in the ‘cradle’ of the Colony of Sierra Leone from the end of the 18th century to the latter half of the 19th century. Subsequently, they spread to the coastal and inland regions as merchants and missionaries. In this sense, it can be said that they provided a geographical connection between the ‘Colony’ and the ‘Protectorate’. Moreover, the majority of them received a modern education, converted to Christianity, and followed a Western lifestyle, and they were unique as so-called ‘Black Subjects’. In this sense, the Creole also provided a

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socio-cultural link between ‘whites’ and ‘local people’. As an intermediary group situated between the ‘Colony’ and the ‘Protectorate’, and between ‘whites’ and ‘local people’, they were slandered and attacked by both sides when the insurrection broke out. For instance, in a 28 May 1898 letter to Colonial Secretary Chamberlain, Governor Cardew harshly criticised the Creole newspapers and merchants based in Freetown as traitors who incited the insurrection in the Protectorate.

I have stated that I am prepared to admit that the imposition of the house tax was the exciting cause of the disturbances, but I wish to qualify this by adding my conviction that if the community of Freetown, the Press and the traders, had loyally supported the Government in its policy, or even remained neutral, the tax would have been paid without disturbance. But the contrary, I regret to say, has been the case.13

Moreover, Ronietta District Commissioner E. D. Fairtlough pointed out in a 4 August 1898 letter to the colonial government that the Sierra Leone merchants had doubtlessly played a major role in inciting the opposition to the hut tax. He stated:

There is no doubt that the Sierra Leone traders have largely contributed to the

agitation against the Hut Tax. Numerous complaints of their inciting the natives

not to pay have been brought to my notice, but, owing to the difficulty of

obtaining direct evidence, and the disinclination of the natives to prosecute, a

great many offenders of this class have escaped.14

13 Governor Sir F. Cardew to Mr. Chamberlain, 28 May, 1898, NAUK CO 879/55/1. 14 Captain E.D. Fairtlough, D.S.O., District Commissioner, Ronietta District, to the

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As seen here, officials of the colonial government such as Governor Cardew accepted the theory of the ‘Creoles’ betrayal’, which held that while the introduction of the hut tax may have been one of the causes of the insurrection, the conflict had actually been caused by the Creole newspapers and merchants inducing the chiefs in the Protectorate not to pay the tax. In response, Chalmers stated that the Creole newspapers and merchants had exerted only a very limited influence over the people of the Protectorate, and this could not possibly be the main cause of the insurrection (CR I: 60-66). In addition, the Creoles, whom the colonial government criticised as traitors, were, as numerous aforementioned testimonies have stated, in fact criticised as collaborators with the colonial government, particularly by mobs in the southern insurrection, and many of the Creoles were massacred. Thus the Creoles were criticised by the white colonial government as traitors who induced the rebellion by encouraging the chiefs not to pay the hut tax and as by the local people of the Protectorate as traitors who colluded with the colonial government and took the initiative in paying the tax. It could be said that they were scapegoats who played dual, conflicting roles.

Colonial Secretary, Sierra Leone, 4 August, 1898, enclosure 1 in Governor Sir F. Cardew to Mr. Chamberlain, 23 August, 1898, NAUK CO 879/55/1.

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5. Conclusion

Thus far, this essay has investigated the diverse interpretations and attitudes of contemporary people regarding the causes of the Hut Tax War in Sierra Leone, mainly through testimonies and documents included in Chalmers’ report. Specifically, we have discussed six reasons why the war broke out: the introduction of the hut tax, brutality by the Frontier Police Force, inexperienced and overbearing district commissioners, the abolition of slavery and slave-dealing, the loss of authority by the chiefs, and the betrayal by the Creoles. It is not easy to determine which one of these factors was the main cause of the Hut Tax War, and as mentioned, investigating the ‘true perpetrator’ who caused the war is not necessarily the intent of this essay. The main aim of this essay is to depict the reality of ‘the Hut Tax War constructed by narratives’ rather than to find the truth of ‘the Hut Tax War as historical facts’. Even today, the reality of ‘the Hut Tax War as historical facts’ seems to be ambiguous and in a grove. The ‘true perpetrator’ who caused the Hut Tax War is still unclear and unknown to us. However, even if we do not know the main cause of ‘the Hut Tax War as historical facts’, is there not anything that we can learn from the reality of ‘the Hut Tax War constructed by narratives’ examined in this essay? In the conclusion, let us discuss one point, i.e. the ‘plurality of violence’ in the Hut Tax War. A Revolt or uprising by Africans against European colonial rule like the Hut Tax War tends to be understood as composed of ‘homogenous singular violence’ caused by a single factor or for a single purpose. However, is it true? What the reality of the narratives of the Hut Tax War examined in this essay suggests to us now is that, in fact, the war may have been composed of not ‘homogeneous singular violence’ but ‘heterogeneous plural violence’. As discussed above, the Hut Tax War may have been both a revolt led by

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chiefs and secret societies rebelling against the introduction of the hut tax, and a disturbance stemming from anger among local people toward the overbearing approach of the Frontier Police Force and district commissioners. Additionally, it may have been both an uprising led by chiefs being dissatisfied with the abolition of slavery as well as the loss of their authority, and a disturbance by local people agitated by the Creoles. Among those who incited, committed, witnessed, suffered from, or suppressed violence, not only were there diverse interpretations and understandings, but it is also clear that they perceived pluralistic violence arising from different causes and of different types. In this sense, pluralistic violence may have been a structural reality of the Hut Tax War. The reality of the narratives of the Hut Tax War discussed in this essay has much to teach us about the importance of cultivating a multifaceted rather than a narrow-minded view, not only with regard to the Hut Tax War but also on any complex topics in African history.

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References

Abraham, A. (1976). Topics in Sierra Leone History: A Counter-Colonial Interpretation. Freetown: Leone Publishers. ──── (1978). Mende Government and Politics under Colonial Rule: A Historical Study of Political Change in Sierra Leone 1890-1937. Freetown: Sierra Leone University Press. Alie, J. A. (1990). A New History of Sierra Leone. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers. Braidwood, S. J. (1994). Black Poor and White Philanthropists: London’s Blacks and the Foundation of the Sierra Leone Settlement 1786-1791. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press. Braithwaite W. C. (1903). The Advance of Our West African Empire. London: T. Fisher Unwin. Fyfe, C. (1962). A History of Sierra Leone. London: Oxford University Press. Kingsley, M. H. (1899). West African Studies. London: Macmillan (Third edition, London: Frank Cass. 1964). Little, K. (1951). The Mende of Sierra Leone: A West African People in Transition. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Porter, A. T. (1963). Creoledom: A Study of the Development of Freetown Society. London: Oxford University Press. Spitzer, L. (1975). The Creoles of Sierra Leone: Their Responses to Colonialism 1870-1945. African edition, Ife, Nigeria: University of Ife Press.

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Chalmers’ Report Report by Her Majesty’s Commissioner and Correspondence on the Subject of the Insurrection in the Sierra Leone Protectorate 1898 (July 1899, Vol. LX., c. 9388., c. 9391).

Received 8 February 2017; accepted 15 February 2017