Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: the sterling area in the 1930s
- 2 Sterling and the rupee
- 3 The Canadian debate over money and exchanges, 1930–1934
- 4 South Africa, sterling, and the gold standard, 1931 and thereafter
- 5 Australia and New Zealand, 1930–1939
- 6 Monetary preparations for the World Economic Conference
- 7 United Kingdom policy at the World Monetary and Economic Conference
- 8 Talking about exchange stabilization, autumn 1933 through June 1936
- 9 The Tripartite Agreement of 1936
- 10 Intergovernmental conversations and the management of sterling, 1936–1939
- 11 Conclusion: the significance of sterling
- Notes
- Index
11 - Conclusion: the significance of sterling
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 October 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: the sterling area in the 1930s
- 2 Sterling and the rupee
- 3 The Canadian debate over money and exchanges, 1930–1934
- 4 South Africa, sterling, and the gold standard, 1931 and thereafter
- 5 Australia and New Zealand, 1930–1939
- 6 Monetary preparations for the World Economic Conference
- 7 United Kingdom policy at the World Monetary and Economic Conference
- 8 Talking about exchange stabilization, autumn 1933 through June 1936
- 9 The Tripartite Agreement of 1936
- 10 Intergovernmental conversations and the management of sterling, 1936–1939
- 11 Conclusion: the significance of sterling
- Notes
- Index
Summary
This final chapter is not a summary of material from the preceding ten chapters. Rather, it offers some reflections on the place of sterling and the sterling area in the world monetary system of the 1930s. Sterling mattered because the sterling area was a vast zone of fixed exchange rates, because sterling was one of the two great reserve currencies, and because the world suspected that the clever British were manipulating sterling and the sterling area for their own advantage.
To the suspicious Americans and the nervous French, the sterling area resembled Gulliver's Laputa:
The reader can hardly conceive my Astonishment, to behold an Island in the Air, inhabited by Men, who were able (as it should seem) to raise, or sink, or put into a Progressive Motion, as they pleased … I … chose to observe what course the Island would take; because it seemed for a while to stand still … In the lowest Gallery, I beheld some People fishing … I called and shouted with the utmost strength of my voice … I found by their pointing towards me and to each other, that they plainly discovered me, although they made no return to my shouting.
In reality things were by no means so simple. The “island” was not nearly so solid as it seemed, nor were its monetary affairs under a single management, however diligently Montagu Norman cultivated his ties with the central banks inside the Empire and outside it.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Floating Pound and the Sterling Area1931–1939, pp. 252 - 261Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1981