History professor wins Fulbright

Posted 10/28/02, by Tamara Steinert

History professor Judith Byfield will study 1947 Nigerian tax revolt

Judith Byfield, Associate Professor of History, has been named a 2002–2003 recipient of a Fulbright Scholar grant by the Council for International Exchange of Scholars. The grant will allow her to do research and teach in Nigeria for five months beginning in January 2003.

The Fulbright award will help fund Byfield's research on a 1947 women's tax revolt that occurred in Nigeria. The incident, which resulted in the abdication of the 'traditional' king supported by the colonial British government, brought together women of all economic and social backgrounds and laid the groundwork for future political advocacy by Nigerian women, Byfield said.

"The 1947 revolt in Abeokuta wasn't the first tax protest led by women, but it included a wide cross-section of women from all backgrounds, especially from rural areas. The women also had a much broader engagement in the political system than had occurred in the past," Byfield explained. As a result of the revolt's success, women from other parts of the country often sought advice from the revolt's leaders in organizing their own political movements.

In the pre-colonial period, women in the Abeokuta region often held political office. However, with the arrival of the European powers, women were excluded from government, and the Abeokuta women objected to being taxed when they were not given representation on the local council. Further complicating the situation was a patchwork of tax laws that were inconsistent from region to region.

"Abeokuta was just one of two provinces where women were taxed separately from men," Byfield explained.

In the end, as many as 10,000 women gathered in Abeokuta for mass protests that resulted in arrests and even the siege of the local king's home. Eventually, he was pushed to abdicate.

Previous grants from Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center allowed Byfield to do two summers of archival work on the project, which is titled "The Great Upheaval" — The Egba Women's Tax Revolt: Gender and Nationalist Politics in Nigeria. This winter, she hopes to complete the archival work and begin personal interviews with market women involved in the revolt. She also will teach a graduate seminar on "Women and the State in Africa" at the University of Ibadan.

Created in 1946 and sponsored by the United States Department of State, the Fulbright Scholar Program awarded approximately 800 grants to U.S. faculty and professionals this year, along with a similar number of foreign scholars. The program is administered through the Council for International Exchange of Scholars.

Prior to Byfield's award, Professor of History Margaret Darrow was the most recent Dartmouth faculty member to receive a Fulbright award. She received the honor in the 2000–2001 academic year for travel and research in Istanbul, Turkey.

- Tamara Steinert