Colonial Money in Africa and National Economy-Building in Britain and Germany: Examining Relations of Agency, 1890s–1930s

The early twentieth century witnessed the standardisation of colonial currencies in Africa. At the same time, states in Europe, notably Britain and Germany, took on a greater role in managing and promoting their national economies in an increasingly interconnected world. This chapter investigates approaches to colonial monetisation in West and East Africa at the intersection with global economic relationships. It will be argued that official policies regarding colonial currencies and their regulation reflected particular visions of economic development. These visions aimed at creating congenial political-economic spaces when managing the link between colonial silver coinage and the gold standard currency of the imperial state. In the 1900s and 1910s, British policy progressively compartmentalised the relationship between African colonial economies and the British economy. The design of the German rupee in East Africa, by contrast, was an integral part of the ambition by expert-politicians in the Industriestaat to build a global German economy.