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Power and markets in global finance: the gold standard, 1890–1926

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 November 2008

G. Balachandran
Affiliation:
Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Voie-Creuse 16, PO Box 136, CH–1211 Geneva, Switzerland E-mail: gopalan.balachandran@graduateinstitute.ch

Abstract

This paper explores the intimate connection between imperialism and a liberal global economy in the late nineteenth century and the inter-war period by distinguishing and disentangling the imperial and political dimensions of the pre-World War I gold standard, and interwar efforts to restore it. By doing so it attempts partial!y to redress the relative neglect of power in historical accounts of the international financial arrangements, and re-balance conventional liberal assumptions about the role of markets and incentives in the consolidation and spread of global institutions such as the gold standard. By re-embedding the intertwined financial histories of the imperial and Atlantic worlds into a global context, perspectives from the empire help develop more historically-situated analyses of global economic institutions and arrangements, and help clarify the many intersecting processes involving both power, in all its forms, and markets, that have historically shaped financial relations and institutions.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © London School of Economics and Political Science 2008

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References

1 See for example Bordo, Michael D., Taylor, Alan M., and Williamson, Jeffrey G., eds., Globalization in historical perspective, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The volume contains papers originally presented at a US National Bureau of Economic Research conference.

2 On the association between the gold standard and global financial integration, see Maurice Obstfeld and Alan M. Taylor, ‘Globalization and capital markets’, in Bordo, Taylor, and Williamson, Globalization. For a dissenting view of this association – ‘the gold standard explains at best only a tiny fraction … of financial globalization’ – see Marc Flandreau and Frédéric Zumer, The making of global finance, 1880–1913, Paris: Development Centre of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2004; the quote is on p. 22.

3 J. M. Keynes, Indian currency and finance, London: Macmillan & Co., 1913 (republished as D. E. Moggridge and E. Johnson, eds., The collected writings of John Maynard Keynes, vol. 1, London: Macmillan, 1971) offers a good illustration of this tendency.

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10 On the role of ‘cooperation and credibility’ in the international monetary system, see Barry Eichengreen, Golden fetters: the gold standard and the Great Depression, 1919–1939, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 30 and ‘Hegemonic stability’; on cooperation, see A. G. Ford, ‘International financial policy and the gold standard, 1870–1914’, in Peter Mathias and Sidney Pollard, eds., The industrial economies: the development of economic and social policies, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, p. 219.

11 Flandreau and Zumer, Global finance; Lindert, Peter H., Key currencies and gold, 1900–1913, Princeton, NJ: International Finance Section, Princeton University, 1969, pp. 48–52Google Scholar; for an argument about empire, credibility, and regime stability in the context of the depression, see G. Balachandran, ‘The interwar slump in India: the periphery in a crisis of empire’, in T. Balderston, ed., The world economy and national economies in the interwar slump, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003, pp. 143–71.

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21 Cain and Hopkins, British imperialism, p. 153.

22 Green, ‘Rentiers’, pp. 605–7.

23 For a concise and accessible account, see de Cecco, International gold standard, pp. 63–7.

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30 Jean Jacques Van-Helten, ‘Empire and high finance: South Africa and the international gold standard 1890–1914’, Journal of African History, 23, 4, 1982, pp. 529–48. As late as 1914, Treasury officials thought that they could rely on weekly gold arrivals from South Africa and Britain’s creditor position to finance any European war: The National Archives (UK), formerly Public Record Office (henceforth TNA), T170/19, ‘Gold Reserves’, Blackett’s memorandum, 22 May 1914. Also see Shula Marks and Stanley Trapido, ‘Lord Milner and the South African state’, History Workshop, 8, 1, 1979, p. 57.

31 Marks and Trapido, ‘Lord Milner’, pp. 56–7; J. J. Van-Helten, ‘Mining and imperialism’, Journal of Southern African Studies, 6, 2, 1980, pp. 233–4, also suggests that imperial strategists perceived gold as an economic and military necessity.

32 Turrell, ‘“Finance”’, pp. 79–93.

33 Russell, Ally, Gold and empire: the Bank of England and South Africa’s gold producers, Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994, pp. 25–8Google Scholar; also Cain and Hopkins, British imperialism, pp. 376–81.

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36 Royal commission on Indian finance and currency (henceforth Chamberlain Commission) (Cd 7070, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1913), appendix III, pp. 96–7.

37 The latter are illustrated by the rise in US official gold stocks from about £140 million in 1899 to over £290 million by 1910: de Cecco, International gold standard, p. 124; Chamberlain Commission, Interim report, appendix XXX.

38 Andrew Pope: ‘The imperial matrix: Britain and the Australia–India gold trade, 1898–1919’, PhD thesis, Curtin University, Perth, 1993.

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41 The best description here remains Keynes, Indian currency.

42 De Cecco, International gold standard, pp. 70–4.

43 Ibid., p. 125; Sayers, Bank of England, vol. 1, pp. 54–60. On the use of Indian funds to shore up sterling, see Ambirajan, S., Political economy and monetary management: India, 1860–1914, Madras: Affiliated East-West Press, 1984, pp. 169–70.Google Scholar

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46 G. Balachandran, ‘Introduction’, in Balachandran, ed., India and the world economy, 1850–1950, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 12–14. Historically based political-economy arguments about financial openness promoting the entry of new firms disregard (or implicitly assume as more efficient) the exclusion of participants brought about by changes in spatial geographies and institutional arrangements. For an influential example of such arguments, see Raghuram Rajan and Luigi Zingales, ‘The great reversals: the politics of financial development in the twentieth century’, Journal of Financial Economics, 69, 1, 2003, pp. 5–50. On short-term volatility in gold export points, to which council bill and telegraphic transfer interventions were tied, see Ronald I. McKinnon, ‘The rules of the game: international money in historical perspective’, Journal of Economic Literature, 31, 1, 1993, pp. 5–6.

47 Rosenberg, Financial missionaries, pp. 12–25.

48 Conant, C.A., History of modern banks of issue: with an account of the economic crises of the nineteenth century and the crisis of 1907, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1909, pp. 570–83.Google Scholar

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50 Metzler, Lever of empire, pp. xv, 38, 53–4.

51 As indeed it was nearly six decades later: see Aubrey, H. G., The dollar in world affairs: an essay in international financial policy, New York: Harper & Row, 1964, pp. 256–63.Google Scholar

52 Britain’s wartime financial difficulties in New York are discussed in Kathleen Burk, ‘The diplomacy of finance: British financial missions to the United States 1914–1918’, Historical Journal, 22, 2, 1979, pp. 355–60. On the implications of these difficulties for India, see Balachandran, G., ‘“Finance Orientalism”? Britain, the United States, and India’s wartime currency crisis, 1914–1918’, South Asia, 16, 2, 1993, pp. 92–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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55 Balachandran, ‘“Finance Orientalism”?’, pp. 99–102.

56 Ibid., pp. 102–4; see p. 99 for the reference to the Norfolk landing.

57 Brown, England, pp. 12–14, 42–3.

58 On this, see Balachandran, G., ‘Britain’s liquidity crisis and India, 1919–1920’, Economic History Review, 46, 3, 1993, pp. 575–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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64 Shipping gold to London first represented a cost addition benefiting the largely British shipping companies. These were therefore tense months for relations between the mining and shipping companies: Brown, England, pp. 39–40.

65 Montagu Norman’s diary entries reflect fears for London’s future as the principal gold market: Bank of England archives (henceforth BOE), ADM 20/8, January 1920.

66 Brown, England, p. 136.

67 Innes, Anglo American, pp. 90–3.

68 Cain and Hopkins, British imperialism, p. 132.

69 Until the South African Reserve Bank was established in 1921, two London-based banks dominated South Africa’s banking system and functioned as banks of issue. Currency and banking laws also varied between the four states.

70 BOE, ADM 16/2, Norman’s memorandum, 15 February 1921, and enclosure; Andrew, Boyle, Montagu Norman: a biography, London: Cassell, 1967, p. 206Google Scholar; Sayers, Bank of England, vol. 1, pp. 156–60; vol. 3, appendices 9, 10, 17; and G. Balachandran, ‘From concubinage to “Hindoo marriage”? Anglo-Indian monetary relations in interwar India, 1917–35’, Modern Asian Studies, 28, 3, 1994, pp. 626–8.

71 Sayers, Bank of England, vol. 1, pp. 202–3; pp. 201–10 generally for the Bank of England’s relations with dominion central banks.

72 Cain and Hopkins, British imperialism, p. 130.

73 Brown, England, pp. 182–4.

74 Bruce, Dalgaard, South Africa’s impact on Britain’s return to gold, 1925, New York: Arno Press, 1981, pp. 46–50Google Scholar; Ally, Gold and empire, pp. 111–22.

75 Ally, Gold and empire, p. 127.

76 Robert N. Seidel, ‘American reformers abroad: the Kemmerer Missions in South America, 1923–1931’, Journal of Economic History, 32, 2, 1972, pp. 520–45; Paul W. Drake, ed., Money doctors, foreign debt, and economic reforms in Latin America from the 1890s to the present, Wilmington, DE: SR Books, 1994, pp. 86–109. For a more elaborate account see Paul, Drake, The money doctor in the Andes: the Kemmerer Missions, 1923–1933, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1989.Google Scholar

77 Dalgaard, South Africa’s impact, pp. 93–4, 102–4.

78 TNA, T172/1499B, ‘Recent gold exports from USA’, 5 February 1925; also Churchill College Archives, R. G. Hawtrey Papers, 1/26, ‘The gold standard’, 2 February 1925. Hawtrey was, at this time, the director of financial enquiries at the British Treasury.

79 Seidel, ‘American reformers’, pp. 525–8.

80 Costigliola, ‘Anglo-American financial rivalry’, pp. 923–5; Brown, England, pp. 239–41; Dalgaard, South Africa’s impact, pp. 156–7.

81 Dalgaard, South Africa’s impact, p. 157.

82 Currency policies were, according to the Indian Finance Member George Schuster, the ‘worst cause of discord’ between India and Britain: B. R. Tomlinson, The political economy of the Raj, 1914–1947: the economics of decolonization in India, London: Macmillan, 1979, p. 87.

83 On the 1920 stabilization, see Balachandran, ‘Britain’s liquidity crisis’.

84 Though formally independent, the commission was ‘packed’ with members aligned with City interests: Balachandran, G., John Bullion’s empire: Britain’s gold problem and India between the wars, Richmond: Curzon, 1996, pp. 140–3.Google Scholar

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86 TNA, T172/1500A, Churchill’s comments on Niemeyer’s note of 10 February 1926.

87 TNA, T175/25B, Niemeyer’s note, 26 February 1926; Churchill’s comment, 28 February 1926.

88 Federal Reserve Bank of New York (henceforth FRBNY), C252/genl., Strong’s ‘Memorandum for Mr. Harrison: regarding discussions in London’, 24 December 1927; Costigliola, ‘Anglo-American financial rivalry’, pp. 922, 931–3. For other explanations for Strong’s suspicions, see Hogan, Michael J., Informal entente: the private structure of cooperation in Anglo-American economic diplomacy, 1918–1928, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1977, p. 47.Google Scholar

89 FRBNY, C262.5.1, Strong’s memo for Randolph Burgess, 6 March 1926.

90 BOE, G3/185, Norman to Schacht, 10 April and 26 April 1926; and Norman to Vissering, 10 April 1926; OV 56/85, Schacht to Norman, 17 April 1926; Norman to Schacht, 19 April 1926; and Vissering to Norman, 4 May 1926. Nor, unlike J. P. Morgan, who also could not appear in person before the commission, was Schacht invited to submit written views.

91 FRBNY, 1000.7, Strong to Harrison, 5 May 1926; Strong to Jay, 2 May 1926. For a more detailed discussion of this episode, see G. Balachandran, ‘Gold, silver, and India in Anglo-American monetary relations, 1925–1933’, International History Review, 18, 1996, pp. 577–86.

92 Balachandran, John Bullion’s empire, pp. 155–9.

93 Tomlinson, Political economy, p. 79.

94 Pressnell, ‘1925’, p. 83; Ian M. Drummond, The floating pound and the sterling area, 1931–1939, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, p. 101 and ch. 4.

95 BOE, G1/411, George Schuster to F. C. Goodenough, 30 November 1929; Schuster to Niemeyer, 19 January 1930; Markovits, C., Indian business and nationalist politics, 1931–1939: the indigenous capitalist class and the rise of the Congress Party, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985, pp. 46–7, 93CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tomlinson, Political economy, pp. 47, 87.

96 See here Eichengreen, Golden fetters, p. xiii.

97 Niall, Ferguson, Empire: how Britain made the modern world, London: Allen Lane, 2003, offers a particularly strident contemporary re-statement of an oft-made colonial claim.Google Scholar

98 Committee on Currency and Foreign Exchanges after the War, Interim report (1918) and Final report (1919); M. June Flanders, International monetary economics, 1870–1960: between the Classical and the New Classical, Cambridge, 1990, p. 83; more generally, see pp. 67–83.

99 Sayers, Bank of England, vol. 1, pp. 110–11 suggests that the committee’s report was limited by the experience of its members, which was mostly confined to a few years immediately preceding the war.

100 Ford, A. G., The gold standard, 1880–1914: Britain and Argentina, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962.Google Scholar

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102 Such as through the Plaza accord: see Eichengreen, Golden fetters, chs. 1 and 2 for a concise account of his main views.

103 For example, D. N. McCloskey and J. R. Zecher, ‘The success of purchasing power parity: historical evidence and its implications for macroeconomics’, in M. D. Bordo and A. J. Schwartz, eds., A Retrospective on the Classical Gold Standard, 1821–1931, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984, pp. 121–50.

104 For example, Rajan and Zingales, ‘Great reversal’; Ferguson, Empire offers a good illustration of the former point.

105 For a recent re-statement of this distinction, see Ranald Michie, ‘The City of London and the British government: the changing relationship’, in Ranald Michie and Philip Williamson, eds., The British government and the City of London in the twentieth century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004, p. 33.

106 Roberta, Allbert Dayer, Finance and empire: Sir Charles Addis, 1861–1945, London: Macmillan, 1988, p. xviii.Google Scholar

107 Silverman, Dan P., Reconstructing Europe after the Great War, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982, notes (pp. 58–9, 79, ch. 7) that the gold exchange standard was a minor sideshow overshadowed even at Genoa by discussions on restoring economic relations with the Soviet UnionCrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the gold exchange standard as a ‘British fad’, see Royal Institute of International Affairs, The international gold problem, Oxford: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1931, p. 91.

108 Sayers, Bank of England, vol. 1, pp. 347–50; Boyce, British capitalism, pp. 288–91; BOE, G14/313, Committee of Treasury, 30 November and 7 December 1927, 13 June 1928, 3 September, 10 September, 22 October, and 4 November 1930; Norman’s note, 1 March 1930; Treasury note, 2 March 1930; Moreau to Norman, 28 December 1928 and 8 January 1929; Norman to Lubbock, 2 February 1929; Norman to Harrison, 29 August and 6 September 1930; Norman to Young, 6 September 1930; Young to Norman, 4 September 1930; Harrison to Norman, 4 September 1930; ‘League inquiry into the stabilization of gold’, by Siepmann, 26 November 1928. On the delegation’s report, see Eichengreen, Golden fetters, pp. 198–201.

109 Drummond, Floating pound, pp. 128–33; Macmillan Committee, Report, paras. 140–50, 185, 240; also Boyce, British capitalism, pp. 290–1.

110 TNA, T170/46, ‘Gold standard and rationalization: notes’, undated; T160/430, f. 12317/1; Hawtrey to Hopkins, 10 December 1930; Boyce, British capitalism, pp. 290–1.

111 Thus, Montagu Norman described the interwar gold standard as a ‘competitive scramble for gold’: Evidence to the Committee on Trade and Industry (Macmillan Committee, 1931), Qq. 6724–5.

112 Judith, Kooker, ‘French financial diplomacy: the interwar years’, in Benjamin, Rowlands, ed., Balance of power or hegemony: the interwar monetary system, New York: New York University Press, 1976, pp. 97–8.Google Scholar