John Maynard Keynes’s Indian Currency and Finance

John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946) started working for the India Office in 1906, when the British Empire’s administration was at the height of its power and influence. After working for the Military Department of the India Office, Keynes was transferred in March 1907 to the Department of Revenue, Statistics and Trade. He wrote the Indian Currency and Finance (ICF) four years after leaving the civil service in 1908 to lecture on Indian monetary problems at the London School of Economics and the University of Cambridge (in 1910-1911). ICF was Keynes’s first book. Lionel Abrahams and Neville Keynes discussed and helped to improve the book’s first drafts, which were made up of chapters that Keynes had originally planned to include in a larger and more comprehensive volume on the India System. After completing ICF, Keynes joined the Royal Commission on Indian Currency and Finance chaired by Austen Chamberlain, which was a major opportunity for him to influence policy. Even though it was very critical of Great Britain’s official doctrine, ICF was widely accepted. This article analyses Keynes’s proposals for Indian currency reform as a tribute to the centenary of its publication.