Colonial Taxation and Peasant Resistance in Sokoto Province, 1903 to 1940

This study examines the imposition of colonial taxation systems in Sokoto Province and the forms of peasant resistance that taxation generated among Hausa-Fulani farming and trading communities between the British conquest of the Sokoto Caliphate in 1903 and 1940, situated in what is now Nigeria's North West geopolitical zone. Colonial taxation was the primary mechanism through which the British colonial state extracted surplus from Northern Nigerian peasant producers and compelled their participation in the commodity export economy. Using a descriptive historical design, the study draws on colonial tax assessment records, district officer intelligence reports, and oral tradition accounts from Sokoto and Kebbi communities, supplemented by secondary literature published between 2019 and 2024. The Peasant Resistance Theory by James Scott and the Colonial Fiscal State Framework provide the analytical lenses. Findings reveal that peasant resistance to colonial taxation took multiple forms ranging from flight to adjacent French territory, concealment of taxable assets, under-reporting of harvests, and occasional collective non-payment, that collectively constituted a sustained if largely invisible challenge to colonial revenue extraction. The colonial government's use of emirs as intermediary tax collectors created additional tensions between the emirate system and peasant communities. Keywords: colonial taxation, peasant resistance, Sokoto Province, North West Nigeria, colonial fiscal policy.