The collapse of the gold standard in Africa: money and colonialism in the interwar period

Leigh Gardner

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Research on Africa’s monetary history has tended to focus on the imposition of colonial currencies while neglecting the monetary upheavals which faced the colonial powers after the collapse of the gold standard during World War I. Gardner profiles three crises—in The Gambia, Kenya, and Liberia—resulting from shifting exchange rates between European currencies during the 1920s and 1930s. These three cases illustrate the degree to which colonial policies struggled to keep up with the economic turmoil affecting metropolitan states and bring Africa into the story of global monetary instability during the interwar period, which is often told only from a European perspective.

Keywords: gold standard; colonialism; exchange rates; The Gambia; Liberia; Kenya (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F54 N17 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 22 pages
Date: 2022-12-20
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-fdg, nep-his, nep-mon and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in African Studies Review, 20, December, 2022. ISSN: 0002-0206

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/116665/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:116665

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().