Britain's Sterling Colonial Policy and Decolonization, 1939-1958

Arguing that Britain's sterling policy had a significant impact on its colonial economic policy, this book focuses on the connection between Britain's sterling and balance of payments policy, colonial economic policy, and the British government's decision to transfer power to colonial peoples. The volume considers such factors as sterling policy and the state of the British economy, U.S. and Western European pressure for multilateralism in Britain's trade and commercial policy, the movement toward independence in colonial territories, and the cost of financing colonial development and welfare.

The book argues that in the postwar years the assumptions guiding British policies for colonial political reform were undermined by postwar developments in Ghana, Nigeria, and the Malayan Federation--the three greatest dollar-earning colonies. As these colonies moved toward independence, their demands for development finance forced Britain to face the prospect of meeting such demands at great costs when the expenditure could not be justified. Britain extricated itself from this dilemma by transferring power to colonial peoples.

List of contents

Introduction
Sterling and Imperial Policy 1945-1951
British Economic Trials and Devaluation 1945-1949
Recovery and Relapse: British Imperial Policy 1949-1952
Sterling and Colonial Resource Mobilization: The Crucial Years, 1949-1951
Britain's Postwar Crises and Colonial Development Finance 1945-1951
Sterling Convertibility and Colonial Reform 1952-1958
Decolonization and Colonial Development Finance 1952-1957
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

About the author

ALLISTER HINDS is Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of the West Indies--Mona Campus./e He has published a number of articles on the impact of the sterling on colonial economic policy in general and the Nigerian economy in particular.

Product details

• Authors: Allister Hinds, Hinds Allister
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 30.07.2001
• EAN: 9780313319532
• ISBN: 978-0-313-31953-2
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Sociology > Sociological theories; European History, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Money & Monetary Policy, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Economic History, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000, HISTORY / Europe / Great Britain / 20th Century, Colonialism & imperialism, Economic history, British & Irish history, United Kingdom, Great Britain, Later 20th century c 1950 to c 1999, c 1938 to c 1946 (World War Two period), Colonialism and imperialism, Monetary Economics, c 1939 to c 1945 (including WW2), c 1945 to c 2000 (Post-war period), World History: Economics