Bai Bureh
Bai Bureh | |
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Bai Bureh (February 15, 1840 – August 24, 1908) was a
.Early life and rule pre-rebellion
Bai Bureh was born in 1840 in
When Bureh was a young man his father sent him to the small village of Gbendembu in northern Sierra Leone, where he was trained to become a warrior. During his training at the village, he showed that he was a formidable warrior and was given the nickname of Kebalai, which translates as "one who doesn’t tire of war." When Kebalai returned to his home village, he was crowned ruler of Kasseh.[1]
During the 1860s and 1870s, Bureh became the top warrior of Port Loko and the entire
Rebellion
As a ruler, Bureh never wanted to cooperate with the colonial government who were living in the capital city of Freetown. Bai Bureh refused to recognise a peace treaty the British had negotiated with the Limba without his participation; and on one occasion, his warrior fighters raided their way across the border into French Guinea.
On January 1, 1893, the colonial government instituted a
Bai Bureh refused to recognise the hut tax imposed by the colonial government. He did not believe the Sierra Leonean people had a duty to pay taxes to foreigners and he wanted all Britons to return to Britain and let the Sierra Leoneans solve their own problems. After refusing to pay his taxes on several occasions, the colonial government issued a warrant to arrest Bureh. When the British Governor to Sierra Leone, Frederic Cardew, offered one hundred pounds as a reward for his capture, Bai Bureh reciprocated by offering the higher sum of five hundred pounds for the capture of the governor. In 1898, Bureh declared war on the British in Sierra Leone. The war later became known as the Hut Tax War of 1898.
Most of Bureh's fighters came from several
Bai Bureh had the advantage over the forces of the colonial government for several months of the war. By 19 February 1898, Bai Bureh's forces had completely severed the lines of communication between Freetown and Port Loko. They blocked the road and the river from Freetown. Despite their arrest warrant, the colonial government's forces failed to defeat Bureh and his supporters. The conflict ultimately resulted in hundreds of casualties on both sides.[1]
Surrender and exile
Bai Bureh finally surrendered on 11 November 1898, when he was tracked down in swampy, thickly vegetated countryside by a small patrolling party of the newly organised West African Regiment in Port Loko. His Temne and Loko warriors fought for a while, but they did not evade the troops for long. Bai Bureh was taken under guard to Freetown, where crowds gathered around his quarters day and night to gain a glimpse of him. Bai Bureh was treated as a political prisoner and was given limited freedom. [1]
The colonial government sent Bai Bureh into exile to the Gold Coast (now Ghana), along with the powerful Sherbro chief Kpana Lewis and the powerful Mende chief Nyagua. Both Kpana Lewis and Nyagua died in exile but Bai Bureh was brought back to Sierra Leone in 1905 and reinstated as the Chief of Kasseh. Bai Bureh died in 1908.
Legacy
The significance of Bai Bureh's war against the British not in its outcome, but in the fact that a man lacking formal military training was able to resist the British for several months. The British troops were led by officers trained at the finest military academies, where war is studied in the same way that one studies a subject at university. The fact that Bai Bureh was not executed after his capture has led some historians[who?] to claim that this was due to admiration for his prowess as an adversary to the British.[citation needed]
The tactics employed by Bai Bureh in during the conflict were very much the forerunner of tactics employed by
There is a very large Statue of Bai Bureh in central Freetown. He is pictured on several Sierra Leonean paper bills. A Sierra Leonean professional football club called the Bai Bureh Warriors from Port Loko is named after him.
Former Peace Corps volunteer Gary Schulze and his colleague William Hart discovered the only known photograph of Bai Bureh for sale on eBay in August 2012. The photo was put on display in the Sierra Leone National Museum in 2013.
References
- ^ a b "Bai Bureh". sierra-leone.org. Archived from the original on 2007-01-07. Retrieved 2007-01-17.
- Bai Bureh – Hero of the 1898 Rebellion at the Wayback Machine (archived 2009-05-26)
External links
- Sierra Leone & the New Labour Militism at the Library of Congress Web Archives (archived 2005-04-19)
- President Kabbah Previews "Bai Bureh Goes To War" at the Wayback Machine (archived 2006-10-15)