Evolution of the Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard
H. A. Shannon
THE EVOLUTION of the monetary and exchange system that has come to be known as the sterling area dates back to a time when almost all the territories outside Great Britain and Ireland in which this system operates were British colonial dependencies.1 For later stages of its history, as the concept of Dominion status crystallized and the number of territories to which it was applied increased, the distinction can be made, for convenience, between the Dominions, which now have complete control of their national currency and exchange policies, and other parts of the British Commonwealth which have not yet attained that status—leaving aside altogether members of the sterling area which are outside the British Commonwealth. The process of growth has been continuous throughout; it is, moreover, not yet complete. A sketch of the earlier stages of its history will contribute to a proper understanding of the sterling area as it operates today and, in particular, of the position in the sterling area of the territories which operate under the Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard.
/fileasset/fileasset/IMF_Seal_blue.png
IMF eLibrary
Abstract

THE EVOLUTION of the monetary and exchange system that has come to be known as the sterling area dates back to a time when almost all the territories outside Great Britain and Ireland in which this system operates were British colonial dependencies.1 For later stages of its history, as the concept of Dominion status crystallized and the number of territories to which it was applied increased, the distinction can be made, for convenience, between the Dominions, which now have complete control of their national currency and exchange policies, and other parts of the British Commonwealth which have not yet attained that status—leaving aside altogether members of the sterling area which are outside the British Commonwealth. The process of growth has been continuous throughout; it is, moreover, not yet complete. A sketch of the earlier stages of its history will contribute to a proper understanding of the sterling area as it operates today and, in particular, of the position in the sterling area of the territories which operate under the Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard.

THE EVOLUTION of the monetary and exchange system that has come to be known as the sterling area dates back to a time when almost all the territories outside Great Britain and Ireland in which this system operates were British colonial dependencies.1 For later stages of its history, as the concept of Dominion status crystallized and the number of territories to which it was applied increased, the distinction can be made, for convenience, between the Dominions, which now have complete control of their national currency and exchange policies, and other parts of the British Commonwealth which have not yet attained that status—leaving aside altogether members of the sterling area which are outside the British Commonwealth. The process of growth has been continuous throughout; it is, moreover, not yet complete. A sketch of the earlier stages of its history will contribute to a proper understanding of the sterling area as it operates today and, in particular, of the position in the sterling area of the territories which operate under the Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard.

The sterling currency area originated in a Treasury Minute of 1825 concerned with the payment of British troops in the Colonies. Their pay was fixed in sterling, and the Treasury sought to tidy up its administration and its conversion into local currencies. At the same time, the Minute was in part a sequel to the reform of the English monetary system itself after the Napoleonic Wars, particularly the full adoption of gold as the standard and of silver as token money.

Until 1825 Britain had never supplied any of its own currency to its colonies. They had been left to fend for themselves and to pick up and use what other money they could find. The coins used make up a long and picturesque list, ranging through the alphabet from “anchor money” and “black dogs” to “Venetians” and “zequeens.” In origin they were mainly Spanish, Spanish-American, Portuguese, French, Dutch, Danish, Sicilian, Barbary, Knights of St. John, Indian, and Eastern. Their condition was frequently as diverse as their origin: full weight, light weight, cut, clipped, plugged, holed, of true fineness or alloyed, legal or counterfeit, gold or silver, and baser. In the older colonies this heterogeneous collection had been given independent legal ratings by the various colonies themselves in their own £ s. d. “currencies”—£ s. d. units of account which were neither the same as £ s. d. sterling nor the same between different colonies. Far back, in 1704-07, the home government, like a primitive International Monetary Fund, had sought to establish a schedule of par values expressed in terms of English silver as a common denominator of the weight and fineness in effect under the Elizabethan mint indenture of 1601. But it had failed. In the newer colonies, mostly acquired during the Napoleonic Wars, there were added difficulties arising from their linking with the British system or from the change-over from their own currency systems to it—difficulties increased by the existence then in Britain of a wartime paper standard. Moreover, in some of the ex-Dutch colonies, irredeemable paper currency was frequent. Perhaps the most relevant generalized statement on colonial currencies just before 1825 is that most of the West Indies were individually on a kind of gold standard with very poor subsidiary coinage, and that elsewhere the ancient Spanish or Spanish-American silver dollar in one form or other was supreme among their coinages, except in the Dutch paper-using colonies. Even today the colonial currencies cannot be understood except in the light of their complex history.

By the end of the Napoleonic Wars both the home and the colonial currencies were in great need of a systematic overhaul. The immemorial, full-weight, English silver standard had in the course of the 18th century given way, partly by accident and mostly de facto, to the new gold standard based on the guinea, a coin of 21s. not agreeing with the pound sterling unit of account—and the silver coins were in a lamentable state. Gold itself gave way to paper during the Wars and disappeared from circulation.

The first reform, therefore, took place in Britain itself under the influence of Lord Liverpool’s earlier Letter to the King (1805) on the coin of the realm. The gold sovereign of 20s. was established by the Coinage Act of 1816 as the standard coin and, partly by accident, silver was reduced to a token and limited use in a properly articulated system of coinage. The full principles were not immediately or completely understood. Liverpool considered that token silver would be kept in a properly subordinated place merely by limiting its legal tender, and the Act of 1816 authorized the opening of the Mint to silver by proclamation. But it so happened that the market price of silver was then below the mint price, and as a consequence the proclamation was not, and never has been, issued. In fact, the subordinate role of silver is derived from restriction of its quantity rather than by limitation of legal tender. The Treasury had not fully grasped the position when it attempted its colonial reforms in 1825. And by its failure it laid up a store of trouble for itself and the Colonies in the revolution of the bimetallic ratios fifty years later, and some difficulties even today. In immediate relevance here, however, the new token silver shilling was a great and demonstrated success at home.

The Reforms of 1825 and 1838-44

Meanwhile, by the 1820’s, successful rebellions had broken out in Latin America, and the various Latin American countries had achieved their independence. Supplies of silver and of Spanish-American silver dollars were dwindling. In fact, Spain was passing out of the ranks of great empires, and the long hegemony of the Spanish dollar, dating back three centuries, was passing away. With the expansion of the British Empire overseas and the rising world economic predominance of Britain, the pound sterling—with its representative, the sovereign, and its vehicle, the bill on London—was to take the place of the dollar for the nineteenth century and beyond.

The Treasury turned to its nonmetropolitan task in 1825. In an elaborate minute of many pages, it surveyed the untidy colonial scene in 1825 2 and decided that the time had come to clear it up.3 It sought to introduce the new and successful home shilling into general circulation as a standard coin of the Empire, concurrent with the numerous other coins already in use, the sovereign of course being of too high a value for general circulation. And, more important, it sought to establish fixed rates of exchange throughout the very diversified colonial systems. This it attempted to do by offering bills on London against the local delivery of shillings as needed for payment of the troops and for other local imperial expenditure. In effect, its proposals amounted to the establishment of an official sterling exchange standard. At that date the Treasury would, in many respects, have been the largest exchange dealer in colonial markets, especially outside the wealthier islands in the West Indies. Its rate of exchange would have tended to dominate the exchanges.

The idea was simple. The shilling was legally to be given concurrent circulation with the heterogeneous collection of foreign coins already circulating in the Colonies. The Treasury was to ship out an initial stock, the troops were to spend it, the local merchants were to gather it in and turn it over to the local Army Command against bills on London, the Command was to pay the troops with it by re-issue, and so on indefinitely. The Treasury, by one shipment from home, plus supplementary ones as needed by the forces, was to have a permanent circulating stock in each colony and was to be saved the expense and bother of hunting up full-weight Spanish dollars and sending out a continuous flow of specie. The rate of exchange was to be fixed and military administration simplified. The Colonies were to have a good coin convertible into gold and their anomalous systems cleared up, over a period of time, as the shilling more and more established itself. After some two centuries of colonial history, the home country was to supply its own currency to its colonies instead of leaving them to shift for themselves as best they could. The mother country of course would pocket the seigniorage—a point not mentioned but, no doubt, in mind.

Nevertheless, it was no part of the Treasury’s intentions, either in 1825 or under the amendments of 1838-44, to make the shilling the sole or main unit of coinage in the Colonies. The idea was simply to give it concurrent circulation with whatever other coins there were and so to simplify and improve the system of sterling expenditure for the public services in the Colonies.4 Hence, in legal tender matters, the Order in Council of 1825 which implemented the Minute went no further than to declare that where the Spanish dollar was a legal or customary tender, the tender of 4s. 4d. British silver money “should be deemed an equivalent tender,” and correspondingly for the Dutch rix-dollar, etc. The Treasury, still inexpert in currency theory, missed the point that this would confer the right of unlimited tender on the token shilling, where the Spanish dollar was unlimited tender. The ensuing troubles are discussed below.

Though the principles were excellent, their execution was faulty and the 1825 scheme was a failure at first. There were three main reasons for this failure, which persisted on the whole until the later reforms of 1838-44.

First, the rough-and-ready idea of the Minute that its uniform world-wide charge of a 3 per cent commission on a London bill would suffice was soon knocked on the head. At various times and in various colonies, merchants found cheaper ways of transmitting funds to London, and then there was no circular flow of shillings into and out of military chests. British specie had to be shipped where once Spanish dollars had been shipped. The 3 per cent commission was later cut to 1½ per cent. Even so, the centralized and dilatory Treasury changes did not and could not keep pace with the nimble agility of exchange dealers in the expert markets of, say, the West Indies. But this was perhaps only a minor and remediable defect which would not have wrecked the whole scheme. In principle and subject to the size of the military expenditure, the Treasury commission set a limit to the exchange fluctuations. Once stabilized, the rates would tend to remain so and the new basis tend to be permanent.

The main defect was that the Treasury’s sterling parity with the Spanish dollar was a wrong parity. As a third defect, there was a consequential error in rating gold doubloons, which wrecked the local West Indies gold standard.

Legally but naively the Treasury had used the old Elizabethan mint indenture of 1601 as the basis of its 1825 calculations.5 But in the circumstances of the 1820’s this mint price was 2d. per ounce above the market price. Had the Treasury departments (and files) been properly coordinated, the significance of this difference would have been appreciated, for it was this that caused the nonissue of a proclamation under the Act of 1816 (see discussion, p. 336). Moreover, the Treasury took the silver content of the Spanish dollar not from mint assays, such as Sir Isaac Newton had made for Queen Anne, but from a commercial reference book. These facts seem to indicate that the Treasury thought it was dealing merely with a small matter of military administration and tidiness. As a consequence, the Spanish dollar at the Minute rating of 4s. 4d. was over-valued as against the shilling by about 3 per cent, and the shilling failed to become current. Moreover, in the gold-using West Indies the doubloon, then worth 64s. sterling in intrinsic gold value, had long passed for 16 Spanish dollars. This was also true elsewhere, e.g., in Gibraltar. Thus, through the doubloon, there were local over-valuations of the Spanish dollar by some 9 per cent.

Hence, in many colonies, merchants and army paymasters quickly found it profitable to deal in the Treasury silver chests. These soon began to return to England “unopened and with seals intact.” For a doubloon worth 64s. bought 69s. 4d. worth of military silver, the deal giving a gross profit of 5s. 4d. per doubloon to the parties involved. When the paymasters, on revised orders from a scandalized Treasury, actually paid the troops in silver, the merchants achieved much the same result by collecting the King’s shillings and shipping them back.6 It took the Treasury ten years to get at one root of the trouble, and in 1835 the doubloon was reduced for Army purposes to about 15¼ Spanish dollars. The West Indies were driven off gold in the process. As the Spanish dollar itself was still rated at 4s. 4d., it continued to hamper the use or adoption of the shilling.

The major error—taking the value of silver from the Elizabethan indenture of 1601 instead of taking it from the market—was rectified in the West Indies in 1838 and, because of the success demonstrated there, the correction was copied elsewhere in 1838-44. The silver dollar was correctly rated at 4s. 2d., and the gold doubloon at 64s., in accordance with their bullion value at the then bimetallic ratios and equivalently with other foreign coins in use. This was not a lasting solution. Nevertheless, there was fair and open competition between all coins for concurrent circulation, and the shilling slowly made headway.7 The gold discoveries of 1850 assisted its progress. The rising gold price of silver helped to drive the full-weight silver dollar out of circulation until the wheel, turned in the 1870’s.

Since the ancient colonial £ s. d. currencies often had no simple arithmetic relation to sterling, the shilling had in many cases a most awkward fractional value in local terms, and similarly with other local systems. The wide and quick adoption of British coins was delayed in part by the fact that they were often incommensurable with the ancient local units of account. Hence another step was needed: the adoption of sterling units of account in place of the ancient colonial £ s. d. “currencies” or other non-sterling units. But the adoption of this reform was, naturally enough in 19th century British colonial practice, left to the local legislatures to settle.8 In the end, it was not universally adopted and today some colonial territories use different units and still differing coins. Indeed at present the movement is the other way: some territories in the West Indies are dropping £ s. d. units and coins in favor of the British West Indian dollar units and coins—the BWI dollar being a lineal descendant of the Spanish dollar of the 17th and 18th centuries. In this way they will bring their coins and customary units of account into line at last, after two centuries of discrepancies. Another present-day anomaly—the use of the Indian rupee by Aden—may be rectified in the future by the adoption of the current East African shilling as the unit.

Gold and Silver Problems

However the colonial currencies might have settled after these changes, they were to run into new difficulties, first, from the gold discoveries around 1850 and then, as these were being cleared up, by the gold shortages of the 1870’s and 1880’s. These world changes upset the bimetallic ratios which hitherto had had considerable stability. In particular, the dormant question of unlimited legal tender for the shilling was to become active. So too the legal position of the full-weight Spanish dollar had to be re-examined and changed. Further, a half attempt was made to set up a gold and sterling standard for the immemorial silver standard of the Eastern colonies. Banking and bank notes were also more or less new and emerging factors, and just as the Coinage Act of 1816 had colored British views on colonial coinage, so the Bank Charter Act of 1844 was to have, in theory and practice, its influence in the new field.

In 1852 the Treasury, affected by the new gold discoveries as well as the “general impolicy of a practice which is in opposition to sound principles of currency,” took up its colonial task again. It sought the opinion of the West Indian colonies on the question of unlimited silver tender, but it found such a diversity in the official replies—so many difficulties, so many local laws, so many differences in local trading links and positions—that it postponed any further action in this respect. The process began again in 1888 when St. Lucia sought, unsuccessfully, to place a 40s. limit on the legal tender of British silver coins, and a Is. limit on bronze coins. In fact, only in the 1930’s was real headway made here, but British silver coins are unlimited legal tender in some of the West Indies even today. British silver remained unlimited tender in British West Africa until 1912. The law was different in the various Canadian provinces until after the establishment of the Dominion of Canada in 1871. In the Cape, silver remained unlimited tender until 1881.

In gold-producing Australia, however, the Treasury found a natural willingness to reduce the use and importance of silver. Therefore, in 1852, it was decreed that in Australia, New Zealand, Ceylon, Mauritius, and Hong Kong, British silver coins were to be legal tender only up to 40s., as in Britain itself. British gold coins were also made legal tender, and from 1856 this was extended to Australian gold coins. But Ceylon, Mauritius, and Hong Kong had been natural silver users from time more or less immemorial. Moreover, Pennington’s principle (see footnote 8) and the principles of contiguity and commercial relations demanded that they remain on full-weight silver with unlimited tender in accordance with their trade with, e.g., India and China, just as Canada’s contiguity and commercial relations with the United States were bringing it about this time into the currency area of the American dollar and just as the position of some of the West Indies vis-à-vis Latin America had kept them off the sterling £ s. d. units. Had “sound principles of currency” and the interests of Australian gold producers been allowed finally to dictate policy, these ancient Eastern silver systems might have been wrecked. In the end a wider wisdom was to prevail.

The whole question of silver arose again in the 1870’s. The world supply of gold was falling off, the supply of silver was increasing, the bimetallic ratio had started on its headlong plunge, silver was being demonetized in Europe, the Latin Monetary Union was formed, the “crime of 1873” perpetrated, and so on. But the Spanish, now Mexican, silver dollar still remained unlimited legal tender in most, or all, colonies. By around 1880 a full-weight silver dollar could be produced at 3s. 10d. and sold to the colonies for 4s. 2d., as fixed in 1838-44. The colonies were threatened by a return to a pure silver standard in a world changing over to gold monometallism. A Liverpool merchant dumped over 200,000 silver dollars into British Guiana in mid-1876 at a considerable profit, and promised more. There was similar dumping in West Africa by Hamburg merchants.9 Faced with this threat, the local legislatures in the West Indies (except British Honduras) demonetized the silver dollar around 1880 and the central authorities did likewise in other places. One long chapter in colonial history was closed.10 But the colonies still retained many non-British coins as legal tender and in circulation.

Even by the 20th century the position of silver in the colonial currency systems remained highly unsatisfactory in at least three important respects. First, the seigniorage still accrued to the British Government or other metropolitan issuer and not to the colonial territories. Second, as silver in Britain was limited to 40s. in its legal tender (and similarly with foreign issues), the colonial territories had no way of getting rid of redundant silver or of converting it into gold or sterling except at its bullion value. They bought coin above its value and had no way of getting their money’s worth back, if they wanted to. From the 1880’s the British Government agreed to accept, at face value, worn coin withdrawn from circulation, but that was all.

In due course, but all relatively recently, these defects were remedied as the modern Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard was adopted. Their removal may be said to have begun with the establishment of the West African Currency Board in 1912 when the home government agreed to repatriate British silver coin at its face value and to let the seigniorage on local coins accrue to the local governments. The principles are now well established. Perhaps their most important future application will be in the British Caribbean West Indies under the changes currently proposed there.11 On the other hand, when the East African Currency Board was established in 1919 on a shilling basis instead of a rupee basis, no equivalent arrangement was effected with the Government of India in respect of Indian rupees or with Germany in respect of its rupee issues in Tanganyika. The Board lost £1½ million in consequence.

The third factor contributing to the unsatisfactory position of silver arose in connection with its relation to gold. The tidying-up attempt in the Eastern colonies, mentioned above, which would have limited silver tender and even put those colonies on gold, was abandoned by the 1870’s. The Bank Charter Act of 1844 with its emphasis on gold, and the early belief of the 1850’s that the East would abandon silver, had lost ground in theory and in fact. It was recognized that Ceylon, Mauritius, and Hong Kong were in a silver currency area and not in a sterling currency area. Canada’s adoption of American gold coins for concurrent circulation with British gold coins further established the principles of contiguity and of natural currency areas. In 1869 Ceylon formally adopted the Indian silver rupee as sole unlimited tender, and added the Portuguese rupee later. Mauritius, which is a very complex case, finally established the rupee in 1876. In Hong Kong, however, which was closely linked with China where the Spanish (now mostly Mexican) dollar held very considerable sway, this dollar and its equivalents were recognized as sole unlimited tender in 1863. An attempt to circulate a British equivalent failed in the face of Chinese conservatism which indeed preferred a true Spanish dollar of 1808 even to its Mexican and other successors.12 In the end, bank notes were to win. In the Straits Settlements, the East India Company and, later, the Government of India had tried to enforce its rupee against the natural use of the silver dollar. When the Straits Settlements passed over to the British Government in 1867, however, the Government immediately legalized the silver dollars “of Spain, Mexico, Peru, and Bolivia”—even the short-lived British Hong Kong dollar—and added in 1874 the American trade dollar and Japanese yen. But the subsequent history of these dollars in the East differs from the history of the West Indies dollar despite their common ancestry. These Eastern examples merely illustrate still further British empiricism and Pennington’s principle.

The use of gold in the colonial system also has its own variegated, but shorter, history, and, like silver, an understanding of this history is necessary for understanding the modern Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard. It, too, is linked up with the development of colonial banking and bank notes.

First, the position of silver as having unlimited legal tender frequently blocked the advance of gold in actual circulation, even though an extra commission was payable on a London bill when the local payment was in silver. This was true particularly in the West Indies. When the West Indies went partially over to sterling units, the currency of the United Kingdom in some cases also became their currency. This covered the sovereign. It possibly was of too high a value for wide circulation in the mid-19th century, but its chances of circulation were reduced by the predominating position of silver. Again, after American gold coins were rated and made legal tender in the West Indies “in the same manner as if such tender had been made in the current coin of [the] United Kingdom,” they too failed to circulate.13 The Australian gold discoveries and, later, the setting up of Australian mints gave an impetus to the use of gold and to placing colonial currencies “on a sound basis,” as a contemporary Treasury minute put it. By 1866, British and Australian gold coins had a wide legal tender throughout the Empire except in the East. Nevertheless, even by 1900, gold circulation was little effective in present-day colonies, although gold had of course established itself in what are now Dominions. The main exceptions might be Malta, which as a naval station had a considerable gold circulation, and Cyprus, which had been used to gold under Turkey.

The adoption of British copper and other subsidiary coins also has its own chequered history and incidents—such as a dislike of their taste by less developed peoples who, having little clothes and no pockets, carried them in their mouths. But it has no points of major interest and importance.

Banking and the Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard

Banking in the Colonies has, on the whole, an excellent history, with few failures of importance. All the early banks had to be specially chartered, since general incorporation laws were then unknown, and quite early—by the 1830’s—general instructions based on English experience in company matters were drawn up to guide colonial authorities in issuing banking charters. After the passage of the Bank Charter Act of 1844, they were amended to reflect its philosophy and monetary doctrine, and thereafter remained more or less unchanged for the rest of the century.14 It was taken for granted in those days that there would be no State banking or note issues. Banking, including note issues, was to be left to private enterprise. The original instructions were good ones, for their time, both in the way of general corporation practice and of banking practices. There was effective legislation governing the subscription and payment of capital, the powers of the company and of the directors, payment of dividends, publicity, and balance sheets. When all these had been properly looked after, the instructions took up the narrower questions of proper banking safeguards. For example, on the banking side, the company had to confine itself to discounting commercial paper and negotiable instruments; it could not make advances on, e.g., land, houses, ships, or pledges of merchandise, and so on. On the issue side, only bank notes payable in specie on demand and not under £1 sterling in value, or equivalent in the local colonial currency, could be issued; the total of notes issued and in circulation could not exceed the paid-up capital; and a reserve of specie equal to one third of the notes in circulation was always to be maintained as part of the general assets of the bank. Moreover, shareholders were liable for twice the amount of their subscribed capital; the company was to publish a half-yearly balance sheet which gave particulars of the issues, and to verify it by confidential documents if called on, etc. Thus, considerable cover and safeguards were given to the notes: the holders, as creditors, had their proportionate share of the specie in the general assets, and their claims against double liability on shares. The instructions were not perfect but they gave more protection than the laws—contemporary and later—of most countries elsewhere. The notes, in short, were of the private promise-to-pay variety secured by general assets which had to include some specie. The promise was in local legal tender, usually token silver.

The home government was, in theory and in practice, against the issue of government notes of any kind, and it slowly effected the withdrawal of those in existence, mainly as an inheritance from previous Dutch governments, as in British Guiana, the Cape, and Ceylon. But a bank failure in Mauritius in 1847 forced the sanction of a local government issue for a time. When, late in the 1850’s, the home government sought to restore the issue to private enterprise, local opinion defeated it. In seeking to put the government issue on a secure footing, it established, mostly unawares, a new principle for which, however, there was a great future as the Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard gradually developed. It ordered the Currency Commissioner in 1864 to hold a specie backing of one third as minimum or one half as maximum and Imperial or Mauritius securities against half the issue. In short, it had struck upon the principle of a formal sterling reserve for colonial notes. It also struck upon the principle of direct specie cover for notes, as distinct from some specie in the general assets of the issuer. In 1884 its hand was forced again. The Oriental Bank Corporation failed and the Government of Ceylon, to allay local panic, guaranteed the notes circulating in Ceylon, although the Straits Settlements Government refused to act similarly there. This incident demonstrated a new principle, viz., the principle of ultimate State liability for private issues where failure might wreck the local community. The home government, now forced to give up its more laissez-faire views, had to sanction a slow growth in some local colonial practices which tended to require that any new private issues be fully covered, partly by specie and partly by approved securities, including of course British Government securities, all to be held by independent trustees. Again, the principle of sterling reserves for colonial notes was followed, and again, mostly by accident and as a result of the pressure of circumstances. This new type of note was in due course to replace the fully private note of the old “promise to pay” kind, vaguely backed by specie and general assets. Here is the origin of government fiduciary currency notes backed by sterling securities 110 per cent. The trustees could easily evolve into or be superseded by public currency commissioners. The issue of government notes had begun by 1900, though full development occurred only in the 1930’s and in World War II.

The first government currency note issue fully set up by the home authorities as distinct from local legislatures seems to have been in 1899 in the Falkland Islands. Issued under a Board of Commissioners of Currency, the currency note was legal tender (except by the Board) and was a promise to pay on the part of the Government of the Falklands, charged “on the moneys and securities in the hands of the Commissioners and on the general revenue of the Colony,” the payment to be “in current coin.” In the Falkland case this was British coin. There was a note guarantee fund of which two thirds was coin (or, with special permission from the Colonial Office, one half, depending on the “hard core” of notes in circulation) and the balance was “in such securities of the Government of any part of Her Majesty’s dominions other than the Colony, or in such other securities as a Secretary of State may approve.” The proviso, “other than the Colony,” is important; it shows a change from Mauritius, and it became a standard clause. The Southern Rhodesia Board, formed in 1940, is exceptional in this respect; it has power to invest in local government securities. It would seem that this wider choice may in future become a new standard rule. In 1948 it was given to the West African Board, but it has not been conceded to the proposed British Caribbean Board. Also, in modern forms, the proportions of the reserve to be kept in cash and in securities are not rigidly laid down. As the Falkland case shows, the securities need not all be government securities; they can include such other issues, e.g., sterling municipal issues, as the Secretary of State for the Colonies may approve.

The absence of an effective gold circulation of high value gave an advantage to bank notes for larger payments; and the wide use of silver, not easily redeemable in gold or sterling in quantity, left the control of the exchanges and exchange profits in the hands of the banks. In at least one case—Newfoundland in 1856—the banks fought against, and merchants supported, the local introduction of the sovereign for these reasons. Today private bank notes flourish only in the ex-silver territories in the Far East; elsewhere the government currency note easily predominates.

Final Evolution of the Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard

By the 1890’s the changing bimetallic ratios and fluctuating exchange rates had moved India toward the gold exchange standard to which in the end it drifted safely. The Straits Settlements, centered around the great entrepôt of Singapore, had had similar troubles, and, starting in 1903, the logic of events forced them, also mostly without prevision, to a similar standard, though with some variants.15 Gold and sterling were to them synonymous, and it was a sterling exchange in the guise of gold that was started. The Straits idea was to demonetize all existing silver coins, replace them by a new Straits silver dollar, and then, by a strict control of the quantity of dollars, first to raise and next to stabilize the exchange rate, with the new coins in the end to become mere token coins exchangeable with gold. However, there was a real “token” already in existence, the popular government currency note issued since 1899, and ultimately it was through the note issue and its cover that the new system evolved. In 1906, and after some muddling, it was decreed that the Currency Commissioners were to issue notes in exchange for gold delivered in Singapore at notified rates of exchange, and might invite tenders for their issue in Singapore against sterling in London. This latter provision was intended as temporary, but it became permanent. Soon there was a two-way traffic on the Note Fund, Singapore on London and London on Singapore, and the exchange rate on London was kept within narrow fluctuations. An ultimate obligation to redeem in gold in Singapore was suspended in World War I and rescinded in 1923. The full sterling exchange standard was therefore formally recognized after 17 years of evolution and practice.

Meanwhile, West Africa’s system had also evolved into the sterling exchange standard. By the early 1900’s the area had passed the barter stage, but its monetary system carried many historical relics and vestiges and it was perhaps the prime example of the defects of the older silver system of the 19th century. Gambia was contiguous to French territory; the French franc had been legalized in 1843 and, later but consequentially, the coins of the Latin Monetary Union were also legalized.16 American gold coins were recognized in 1852. And so the system developed, though differently, in each of the four colonies. The bulk of the coinage was British silver, with some British gold. For many years the steadily rising trade of the area had drawn into it vast quantities of British silver. Indeed, in 1901-10, the Royal Mint turned out for West Africa alone some nine tenths of what it turned out for the United Kingdom itself. But the rise in trade could not be presumed to last indefinitely, and by 1910 the ugly problem of a redundancy of silver—current and hoarded—began to raise its head. The supply was profitable to Britain, but what of a return obligation? The area, too, needed a more convenient medium of higher value than silver. It had no bank notes. Silver in quantity was too heavy.17 Accordingly a Committee in 1912 recommended a local coin and a local government note issue, both to be issued and redeemed by a Currency Board at face value in sterling and the seigniorage and profit to accrue to the local governments. Further, the British Government was asked to redeem at face value British silver (and copper) coins by instalments as they were replaced by local issues. The recommendations were accepted and the new system launched in 1912. The principles of the Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard had been worked out with, as usual, some hesitancy in tone but ultimately with great success in practice. Minor tidying up remained in West Africa until 1949 when, at long last, native “manillas”—tokens introduced by the Portuguese in the 17th century—were successfully redeemed.

The West African system proved a great success and, with local modifications according to circumstances and local historical evolution, it was gradually applied or adopted elsewhere. The major example is the East African Currency Board, formed in 1919. This Board ran into many difficulties in its early days and finally reached solvency, in the sense of a 100 per cent cover of its own, only in 1946—its earlier balance-sheet deficits, however, having had local government guarantees. The Straits Settlements, as mentioned earlier, came over fully in 1923. Hong Kong, abandoning its silver standard when China did in 1935, adopted a special form of the Sterling Exchange Standard which, in substance, works the same as the others. When the Straits Settlements arrangements were widened in 1938 to include the Federated Malay States, they were further modernized. More generally, the Colonial Office in the 1930’s developed a model currency ordinance,18 based on West African experience, and its main lines were followed in new laws in Cyprus, Mauritius, and some of the West Indies. In the last case, the old problem of unlimited silver tender had remained generally unsolved by the 1920’s. The separate islands and their legislatures mainly persisted in their ancient ways and somewhat ignored the center, as they had done more plainly two centuries earlier. Their basic and effective coinage in the 1920’s was still token silver and was without an assured international value. In 1923 they rejected a proposal for a common West Indian currency on a sterling exchange basis. Some minor reforms were effected in the 1930’s, e.g., the Bahamas in 1936 limited silver to 40s. legal tender. The war, particularly with the rapid expansion of government note issues, brought about changes. Shortly, a regional currency board, with the title of “Board of Commissioners of Currency, British Caribbean Territories (Eastern Group),” is to be created to cover Barbados, British Guiana, Leeward Islands, Trinidad, Tobago, and the Windward Islands and to set up a unified currency for them all on a full modern Sterling Exchange Standard. But—perhaps characteristically—the Bahamas, Bermuda, and Jamaica are not joining; being a northerly and westerly group, their interests and history are different, though they are sterling countries. British Honduras has for centuries been a persistent nonconformist in these matters. It became one of the sterling group only late in 1949.

The outcome of this long complex history is today quite simple. The Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard 19 has been adopted throughout the colonial territories,20 except in Aden, which uses the rupee, in Basutoland, Bechuanaland, and Swaziland, which use South African currency, in British Solomon Islands, the Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Tonga, and, with French complications, the condominium of New Hebrides, which use Australian currency or are linked with it, and, finally, in St. Helena, which from 1949 is directly sterling (including Bank of England notes). Under that Standard, their currencies are convertible into sterling and sterling into them at par either for a small commission or within narrowly limited rates of exchange.21 Coin is now relatively unimportant, except in West Africa, where paper money would suffer from termites; private bank notes are also now relatively unimportant except in the Eastern territories, such as Hong Kong. The predominating paper money is the local government currency note, backed 110 per cent22 in sterling (cash in London and sterling securities). The importance of bank deposits and advances varies greatly from territory to territory, according to local circumstances and stages of economic development. Bank reserves are, of course, in sterling in one form or another, sterling being the form in which their liabilities are ultimately to be discharged. Except in Hong Kong, exchange transactions, other than in sterling area currencies, are very rare. In 1948 the total of coins in the colonial territories under the system was probably about £50 million, half being in Africa, and the total of notes was about £180 million, of which perhaps £50 million were private bank notes in Hong Kong. The volume of bank deposits is not known. Under the Colonial Sterling Exchange Standard are some 70 million people and a total international trade of some £1,250 million—about 4 per cent of world trade, much of it vital to world progress.