Towards monetary autonomy in the French Union? The 1949 reform in French Somaliland and the façade of sovereignty

This article examines the 1949 monetary reform in French Somaliland, when the French government replaced the colonial franc with a currency board pegged to the US dollar – breaking with the franc zone but without granting autonomy. Triggered by the collapse of the French franc and distrust of a colonial currency ill suited to regional trade, the reform imposed external stability through a top-down mechanism lacking legitimacy. Drawing on unpublished archives from the French Ministry of Finance (SAEF) and using the Mundell-Fleming trilemma as an analytical lens, the article shows how French authorities prioritized exchange rate stability and capital mobility over monetary autonomy. Far from a step towards sovereignty, the reform reaffirmed imperial interests under the façade of technical modernization. Three concerns motivated this decision: the discrediting of the colonial franc, Ethiopia's demand for settlement mechanisms, and France's strategic imperative to maintain a foothold in the Horn of Africa. The resulting arrangement created ‘stability without sovereignty', a structured dependency that was monetary (via a rigid dollar peg), institutional (under French Treasury oversight), and commercial (through interdependence with Ethiopia). The 1949 reform thus exemplifies how a currency board transformed colonial dependence into a tool of economic and geopolitical engineering, prefiguring postcolonial monetary logics.