Sinews of empire? The Crown Agents for the Colonies and African government debt under colonial rule

Abstract

In 1924, John Maynard Keynes complained about the fact that Southern Rhodesia, which he described as “a place somewhere in the middle of Africa”, was able to raise loans on the London market on the same terms as a large English borough. Existing literature on the “empire effect” has contended that investors did not discriminate between the bond issues of different colonies, either because they adopted similar economic and financial policies or because they were considered to be subsidiary governments to metropolitan states. However, archival records suggest that this was not the case and that African bonds were particularly unpopular. Contemporaries stressed that maintaining low borrowing costs for African colonies required considerable behind the scenes interventions by the Crown Agents using reserve funds they held on behalf of other colonies. This paper presents preliminary data on the financial connections between colonies created by this practice, which it calls the “sinews” of empire, and examines the implications for debates about imperialism and financial globalisation.