Currency and Monetary Policies in White Settler Colonies and Dominions: Superior Alternatives to Colonies

Abstract

Discussions of colonial currency policies seldom include the experiences of much earlier white settler colonies in North America, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa1, even though they had quite similar currency problems invariably generating similar conflicts with the imperial decision-makers. Indeed, discussions of colonialism rarely look at England’s early colonization of Scotland, Wales and Ireland, with the rare exception of Philippa Levine (2007). Yet the contrasting imperial reactions to the currency policies in these white settler colonies, later to be granted self-government status and eventually called ‘Dominions’ 2 which became ‘developed’ economies, highlights the negative consequences of imperial policies in colonies proper, which were adamantly refused self-government and treated quite differently in currency and monetary matters, as well as broader economic policies. 3 The central issue is why the white settler colonies were given the leeway that the colonies proper were not. The differential treatment of white settlers in ‘mixed’ white settler colonies, such as South Africa and Rhodesia, where non-whites were in the majority and given inferior treatment by the state, illustrates also the factor of racism underlying monetary imperialism, a factor considered important also by Accominotti et al (2005) below.