How Global Geo-Politics Shaped South Africa's Post-World War I Monetary Policy: The Case Of Gerhard Vissering And Edwin Kemmerer In South Africa, 1924–25

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe purpose of this paper is to highlight using international archives, the extent to which America's attempts to anchor its increasingly dominant global economic power and specifically the struggle between London and New York as the centre of global finance, impacted on the nature and character of the monetary policy advice given by these two international experts, as evident in their work on the Kemmerer-Vissering Commission. We show that Kemmerer, a representative of the rising new global economic powerhouse, the United States of America, and Vissering, a representative of a far less significant global player, the Netherlands, also with somewhat closer historical ties to Britain, were in fact instruments of these global dynamics, as they went about their work on the Commission. This global aspect of the narrative of the Kemmerer-Vissering report has not been highlighted by previous research.