Paper short abstract:

This paper examines multiple imaginary moneys or “ghost” units of account in the 19th century Gulf of Guinea to critique inappropriately conceived terms and assumptions in African economic history (e.g. “law of one price” “commodity value equilibrium” “balance of trade” “surplus” “balance sheet”...)

Paper long abstract:

Currency is a major stumbling block for historians who have wrestled with making sense of price data and different denominations in pre- and early colonial Atlantic Africa. The widespread view from standard concepts of economic history onto such economies produces fundamentally flawed “observations”, due to their one-dimensional calculations of “prices on the African coast”, when in fact, across the Gulf of Guinea, until the early 20th century, regional or river-based units were used to price the ratios of exported and imported goods. All goods passed through “imaginary” (Einaudi, 1936), “ghost” (Cipolla, 1956) or “fictional” (Guyer, 2004) units of account, such as the “round” trade in Ivory Coast, the “bar”, “copper” and “crue” in the Bight of Biafra, the “bundle” “paquet” “panno” or “quilt” in Loango and Angola, etc. These were not a material means of payment with intrinsic value expressed in European money but were rather nominal, conventional units with lagging and highly distorted exchange rates to European money-goods.

I draw these and further conclusions from Karl Polanyi’s original remarks (in Dahomey and the slave trade, 1966, part III) on “assortment” and the “ounce” trade in 18th century Gold Coast and Ouidah, whose historical implications for other periods and regions are still largely unprocessed. This revisiting reframes our ability to account for gains, margins, continuous bookkeeping, inflation as well as exploitation in exchange in the context of African interdependencies with Asian and European commodity and money markets, and the demise of the international silver and then gold standards.

Paper short abstract:

The paper aims to analyse monetary practices across the boundary between Haute Volta and Gold Coast. Analysing colonial monetary policies, taxation and the flow of currencies across borders, it will show how the people of this region managed the introduction of colonial currencies.

Paper long abstract:

Colonial empires’ boundaries significantly influenced monetary practices in the colonies, especially in bordering areas. This paper focuses on the region enclosed between southern Burkina Faso and northern Ghana from the late nineteenth century to the 1930s. This area historically has been characterized by cultural and political coherence. However, in the process of colonization, French and British regimes divided it with the creation of a border, introduced new currencies, and imposed contrasting taxation policies. How did people respond to these new impositions? The paper will consider the socio-economic context and the kind of value systems operating in the area before and during colonial times. The study area was part of a commercial zone characterized by currency multiplicity, different systems of value, and strong commercial networks that endured colonial regimes. Thus, analysing colonial monetary policies, taxation and the flow of currencies across borders, the paper will show how people managed to create monetary circuits by manipulating colonial currencies. In addition, we try to bridge the academic boundary between Francophone and Anglophone African countries. Few studies conducted historical research on the border between Burkina Faso and Ghana, and fewer focused on the multiple currencies circulating across the border. Therefore, based on the results of our archival research in both countries, we attempt to show how the study of multiple currencies could be a useful tool to investigate and analyse diachronically continuities and disruptions brought by colonial borders.

Paper short abstract:

Retracing the monetary history of the Italian colonies in East Africa, the paper shows that, despite colonial attempts at reducing monetary multiplicity by regulating the modalities of monetary transactions, smuggling was often a critical factor in keeping colonial economy alive.

Paper long abstract:

Multiplicity is one of the defining features of African monetary history. When the Italians occupied Massawa, on the western shore of the Red Sea, in 1885, it was a crossroads of maritime and caravan trade routes, where different monetary devices were employed according to the commodities exchanged, or the direction these commodities were coming from or going to. In the Italian colony of Eritrea, as it happened in other African colonies, military occupation was followed by attempts at reducing the multiplicity through the introduction of territorial currencies, following the trend established in Europe since the emergence of nation-states. However, multiplicity did not disappear. Different currencies continued to be employed in commercial transactions in the port towns and through the porous borders of the colony, keeping trade and labour networks alive. In the Italian East African empire, as well as elsewhere in Africa where boundaries started to be traced on the maps, the label of smuggling was applied to many kinds of monetary transaction occurring despite these boundaries. This paper represents an attempt at retracing the monetary history of the Red Sea through the lens of smuggling, as it was defined by colonial administrators and practiced by both European and non-European actors. The paper shows that the construction of a colonial monetary system passed through the power of the authority to regulate the modalities in which a particular monetary transaction was allowed. At the same time, it provides evidence that money smuggling was a critical factor in keeping colonial economy alive.

Paper short abstract:

After the takeover of Togo by France, the substitution of mark with franc far from easy. Togolese societies took advantage from the competition between European currencies while French officials claimed a genuine Togolese monetary sovereignty as a guarantee given to the League of Nations.

Paper long abstract:

The takeover of German Togo by France in 1914 was not followed by an easy transition from a European currency to another. The overlapped circulation of European currencies appeared to French officials as an obstacle in their effort to reform the budget of Togo. Indeed, the rapid devaluation of mark below its nominal value, along with the circulation of counterfeit British coins, and the will to express a French sovereignty over Togo, urged the need for a currency reform. While officials refered to this situation as a "monetary disorder", we can study how Togolese societies took profit from monetary multiplicity.

Nevertheless, the mandate system created another obstacle to officials on the road of French monetary sovereignty in Togo. As they tried to increase public revenues, officials were also under the supervision of the League of Nations, which limited their fiscal autonomy. The minting of special coins for Togo demanded by French governor appeared as a solution addressed to both concerns. Seigniorage benefits provided the local budget with higher revenues, while being presented before the Mandates Commission as the expression of a genuine Togolese monetary sovereignty, independent from French tutelage. However, this reform did not only fail at suppressing monetary multiplicity, but it also increased it. Therefore, contrary to what has been anticipated by officials, this reform fueled the monetary agency of Togolese societies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper seeks to investigate the integration of British Somaliland into imperial monetary arrangements and to better understand its fiscal role in the Empire. It seeks to better understand the ways in which imperial policy related to finance affected or influenced trade, commerce, and economics.

Paper long abstract:

Little to nothing has been written on the monetary policy or the currency regimes of British Somaliland, ruled as a protectorate from 1886-1960. A peripheral part of the Empire for much of its history, it was intially tied into the Rupee complex extending from india for much of the 19th century, and later brought into the East African Currency board after World War II. Imperial monetary structures and logics underwent a profound series of transformations over this period, and the effects of this on Britains more peripheral colonies is insufficently understood. This paper seeks to investigate a series of questions about how British Somaliland was ruled and integrated into imperial monetary strucutures. For example, what currencies circulated prior to imperial rule and what was the nature of Somalilands regional economic integration? How did the entrance of empire affect the flow of finance and exisiting currency regimes? What was the role of the Gold Standard or the Treasury in dictating monetary policy for the colony? Looking at the role of Empire in the adminsitration and exercise of finance in its imperial periphery is an important and underlooked aspect of imperial history, and one which we should be ready to engage more fully in.

Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates the genesis, organisation and operations of the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) for the period 1954-1970.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the genesis, organisation and operations of the Nairobi Stock Exchange (NSE) for the period 1954-1970. Given the relatively low and racially skewed levels of private sector development and savings mobilisation in colonial Kenya, this paper explores the question of whether there was an economic justification for the establishment of a capital market during the uncertain period of political and economic transition. The second objective is to explain how the development of Kenya’s capital market, centred around the NSE, can provide valuable insights into the composition of private capital in Kenya during and after the Mau Mau rebellion for independence from British colonial rule. Officially established on 1 July 1954, the NSE was a private initiative led by six brokerage companies to facilitate broader access to long-term capital for settler-colonial enterprise and the state’s growing need for development finance. Using the operations and regulation of the NSE as an analytical lens into the history and politics of Kenya’s capital market, this paper provides novel evidence on the participation of private capital and the architecture of the financial sector during the country’s violent decolonisation process. The early growth in volume and value of transactions on the NSE shows the dominance of European and Asian institutional investors in the trade in government stocks and debentures in an expanding pool of Kenyan industrial companies. The analysis of the NSE immediately after Uhuru in 1963 consider the effects of the government’s Kenyanisation policies on the participation of African capital and individual investors.