Overseas Economic Relations and Statehood in Europe, 1860s–1970s: Shaping the World, Making the Nation 9781032387185, 9781032387192, 9781003346425

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Routledge Studies in Modern History

OVERSEAS ECONOMIC RELATIONS AND STATEHOOD IN EUROPE, 1860S–1970S SHAPING THE WORLD, MAKING THE NATION Gerold Krozewski

Overseas Economic Relations and Statehood in Europe, 1860s–1970s

Drawing on official, archival, and published sources, this book explores how the formative history of the European nation-state was embedded within economic globalization and associated with conceptions of the world overseas. With a particular focus on France, Germany, Italy, and Britain, this research investigates how overseas relationships shaped state governance. The argument departs from conventional histories by linking together the analysis of economic relationships and political cultures, examining the ways in which state agency formed in different areas such as national economy building, the organization of overseas raw material and food supplies, labour, migration, and national identity. Spanning over a century, the book discusses the changing role of overseas colonies in European national development. Once a means to complete economic liberalization, colonies were then envisaged as tools of crisis management before, in the mid-twentieth century, complementarities in imperial-colonial economies shifted away from empire. This volume covers neglected aspects of the transnational history of European nation-states and is an ideal resource for students and researchers interested in the ties between Europe, Africa, and Asia, as well as connections between political, economic, and social relations and their conceptualizations. Gerold Krozewski is a professor of history at Osaka University, and a research associate at the University of the Free State. His research covers topics of Europe’s imperial and colonial economic and political relations.

Routledge Studies in Modern History

Narratives of Dictatorship in the Age of Revolution Emotions, Power and Legitimacy in the Atlantic Space Moisés Prieto Political Power and Colonial Development in British Central Africa 1938–1960s Alan H. Cousins How the Church Under Pius XII Addressed Decolonization The Issue of Algerian Independence Marialuisa Lucia Sergio Overseas Economic Relations and Statehood in Europe, 1860s–1970s Shaping the World, Making the Nation Gerold Krozewski Khoesan and Imperial Citizenship in Nineteenth Century South Africa Jared McDonald Antisemitism Before the Holocaust Re-Evaluating Antisemitic Exceptionalism in Germany and the United States, 1880–1945 Richard E. Frankel Labour in the Suburbs Political Change in Croydon During the Twentieth Century Michael Tichelar Globalizing the Soybean Fat, Feed, and Sometimes Food, c. 1900–1950 Ines Prodöhl For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Research-in-Modern-History/book-series/MODHIST

Overseas Economic Relations and Statehood in Europe, 1860s–1970s Shaping the World, Making the Nation Gerold Krozewski

First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Gerold Krozewski The right of Gerold Krozewski to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 978-1-032-38718-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-38719-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-34642-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003346425 Typeset in Times New Roman by MPS Limited, Dehradun

In Memory of My Brother

Contents

List of figures List of tables Acknowledgments

x xi xii

PART 1

Premises, concepts, arguments 1

The overseas world and the European nation-state: An introduction The enquiry 3 Relating threads of research 7 Historical trajectories in the globe 14 Expert-practitioners, state governance, and the world 22 The book’s organization 27

1

3

PART 2

From interconnected regions to state formation in the globe 2

The world as Europe’s crisis and opportunity: Economic relations, 1860s–1900s Overseas supplies, regional economies, and crises of globalization 45 Experts, universal development, and national progress 55 Entrepreneurship, regional economies, and the globe 66 Agency and the private-public nexus 73

41

43

viii 3

Contents Governance for the nation’s progress: The tropics and modern European statehood, 1890s–1910s States as organizers in a global setting 101 Overseas relations, states, and national economies 108 Invigorating the nation abroad 117 Colonial control in the crisis of economic liberalism 126 From overseas co-opting states to imperial nation-states: A synthesis 131

99

PART 3

Imperial statehood, modernity, and its discontents 4

5

6

National crises and rational development: Overseas raw materials and currency relations, 1919–1939 Expert-practitioners on the nation’s predicament 154 Raw materials and currencies 160 Currency reserves and fats and oils 171 Overseas raw materials and rational statehood 175 National development and its imperial tangents 182 Studying state agency in interwar Europe 187 Imperial statehood as national necessity: The colonial project in the 1930s Expert-practitioners on the purpose of colonies 206 Colonies, the people’s welfare, and nutrition 211 Colonies and the nation’s reproduction 215 Colonies in national economic policy 223 The historical moment of imperial nation-states: A synthesis 230 Continuities in the Second World War: Overseas support for the nation’s war War economies, imperial normality, and contingency 249 Organizing supplies and arranging payments 253 Colonial development for the European war 258 Planning for the post-war order 263 Pre-war to post-war statehood: A synthesis 267

151

153

205

247

Contents

ix

PART 4

The liberal reordering of statehood and the world’s developmental divide 7

8

European recovery and economic liberalization: From overseas complementarities to the “developing world,” 1945–1960s Western Europe and economic liberalization 283 Shifts in transnational and transregional economic relations 287 Experts, colonial currency zones, and economic redeployment 295 State governance for a liberalizing world 303 The transformation of national economies in the globe 309 Empires to globalizing nation-states: (Post-)colonies and national development in Europe, 1950s–1970s National economies, state agency, and the colonial nexus in the 1950s 323 Tackling contradictions in imperial economic relations 329 Re-delineating national welfare 338 Reconfiguring empire overseas in the 1960s 345 Control relations, dependent territory, and European states after empire 348 Analysing the global reproduction of states: A synthesis 353

279

281

322

PART 5

Conclusion, retrospection, outlook 9

Globalization and the European nation-state: Retrospection and legacy Returning to the threads of research 375 Parallels with empire: From the Cold War to the 1990s 382 Tropical resource frontiers and transnational nation-states: Old and new 387 The nation-state and the globe: Past and present 392 Index

373

375

407

Figures

2.1 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 6.1 7.1 7.2 7.3

Exports by Main World Producers of Palm Oil (1909–1913 Average in Thousands of Metric Quintals) Rubber Output of Main World Producers, 1890–1934 (Thousands of Metric Tons) Wild Rubber and Plantation Rubber as Share of Total World Output, 1910–1923 World Petroleum Production, 1918 (Percentages by Region) The World’s Largest Petroleum Producers, 1918–1926 (as Percentages of Total) Output Share of Main Producers of Palm Oil and Kernels, 1928, 1933, 1938 Main Holders of Sterling Balances, 1940–1945 (₤ Million) Main Holders of Sterling Balances, 1940–1956 (₤ Million) Main Holders of Sterling Balances, 1962–1968 (₤ Million) Balance of Payments on Current Account by Portuguese Colonies with Foreign Countries, 1948–1972

48 163 164 166 167 172 252 289 291 294

Tables

2.1

2.2

Selected Raw Material Imports by France from Its Colonies, 1880–1938, as a Percentage of Total Imports in Each Category Selected Exports from France to Its Colonies, 1880–1938, as a Percentage of Total Exports in Each Category

49

76

Acknowledgments

This book has been a long time in the making, and has accompanied my move from Geneva to Sheffield and later to South Africa and Japan. I have incurred many official and personal debts along the way. With regard to research funding, I wish to express my gratitude to a range of institutions. Early funding included grants from The Swiss National Research Foundation and The Leverhulme Trust in association with Sheffield Hallam University. Later, I greatly benefitted from a fellowship at the University of the Free State, South Africa. I am also indebted to my current employer, Osaka University, and the support provided by VicePresident Prof. S. Aimoto and Prof. S. Akita in the IAI framework, and later under the aegis of the Open and Transdisciplinary Research Initiative (OTRI). Above all, I wish to thank colleagues, friends, and family. Without their help I would not have been able to complete this project. At the University of Sheffield, and later at the University of the Free State, Ian Phimister has been most supportive. Thanks are also due to all the people who created a convivial atmosphere in the international studies group at Bloemfontein: Tinashe Nyamunda, Kate Law, Andy Cohen, Rory Pilossof, and others. In Britain, Peter Cain and Tony Hopkins have helped me for longer than I wish to remember. In Osaka, I am particularly indebted to Kayoko Ushio for her efficient administrative support. At Geneva, I have been able to enjoy the lasting companionship of Gopalan Balachandran and Jacques Ayissi Degbelo. Not least, I am enormously indebted to my late brother, not only for his personal encouragement but also for help with library resources relevant to the project. I am also grateful to the Routledge team, and notably Max Novick, Louise Ingham, and Mansi Gautam, for remaining efficient and predictable in challenging times. Gerold Krozewski Osaka July 2022

Part 1

Premises, concepts, arguments

1

The overseas world and the European nation-state: An introduction

The enquiry Paradoxically, nineteenth- and twentieth-century globalism and European statehood are both well-explored subjects of study but in their connections still little understood. Paths of research have investigated globalization and economic progress, the emergence of European modernity, and Europe’s relations with the overseas and tropical world within and beyond colonial empires. Historians and economists of global economic development have discussed how, from the eighteenth century onwards, economies in South Asia, East Asia, and Africa were gradually drawn into networks of commerce and finance in which Europe became dominant in a forming world economy.1 Studies of political thought have followed a long chain of contemporary thinkers, from Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to J.S. Mill in the nineteenth and Max Weber in the twentieth century, in describing modern state formation.2 By and large, these accounts conceived of an evolutionary trajectory in which the state in Europe acquired rational functions alongside its greater autonomy and differentiation from society. Such polities, it was argued, secured the peaceful international order. In the late mid-nineteenth century, this order became conceived of as a stage of development in which progressive elites ought to guide states for the benefit of their nations according to universal norms of progress. At this point, the welfare of a leading nation was expected to coincide with that of the globe. Racial theories became prevalent at the time, reinforcing evolutionist conceptions.3 However, at this juncture, universal rationality was also put in question, such as by Friedrich Nietzsche, and increasingly confused with will power bearing out racial destinies. History became the cumulative tale of competing selfcontained nations in a hierarchical order. In academia, the culture critique and literary criticism of the 1980s explicitly challenged views of rationalizing Western modernity, following Edward Said’s Orientalism. The “non-Western” world became the locus in which Europe anchored cultural difference and justified imperialistic DOI: 10.4324/9781003346425-2

4

Premises, concepts, arguments

domination according to a dichotomy attributed to the philosophy of the European Enlightenment.4 For cultural historians, the mutual constitutiveness of Europe and the “non-West” became the mainstay of analyses of empire and synonymous with Western cultural notions of modern globalism.5 Yet the nexus between state agency, national development, and global economic structures still needs to be systematically explored, especially regarding relations between the tropics and Europe. The neglect of this perspective of state analysis was arguably due to the manner in which research templates formed. Research emphasizing culture rose to prominence because it was able to offer a critique of modernity and its normative legacies. This critique involved rejecting an overarching history of universal economic progress and modernization in which countries outside “the West,” denigrated as “the rest,” were seen as irrelevant and expendable.6 Meanwhile, economic analysis stressed the limited importance of tropical regions, especially Africa, for the growth of modern Western economies. At the same time, critical attitudes towards the Western hemisphere in postcolonial states gained momentum in the 1980s in an environment in which elites in the “developing world” failed to deliver the goods of economic modernization to a wider public. As premises and promises of progress and universal welfare, whether liberal or Marxist, waned in the 1990s, research turned to culture to account for these failures. Enquiries opposing the grand evolutionist universals emphasized race as the central notion of analysis rather than operating with categories of commerce, capital, or even class. There is much to be said in favour of researching the pervasiveness of racial and cultural constructs in transnational agency. It will be argued, however, that the historical study of states needs to extricate itself from the legacy in which the cultural, liberal, and Marxist research paradigms formed, and consider the ways that shaped agency in specific historical contexts. In all the different interpretations of the histories of globalism and modernity, state agency has generally not been investigated in its own right. For liberals, the state was an impediment to progress and economic growth. For Marxists, the state was a mere stage on the way towards revolution beyond bourgeois capitalism. When historical sociologists investigated the emergence of European nation-states, they did so in generic terms with reference to the changing nature of industrial capitalism and mass society.7 When the nexus between the state and empire was expressly theorized, as by Joseph Schumpeter, it was cast in terms of atavistic social forces inhibiting the emergence of capitalist relations.8 Later, when Said and especially postcolonial analysis contested accounts of the diffusion of modernity by the West, they emphasized ideational constructions rather than the contextual dimension of policy norms. Such a route of enquiry of state formation had been tainted by modernization theories. Instead, it was argued that states were shaped by broad cultural dispositions mapped over long periods of time.9

The overseas world and states in Europe 5 Nonetheless, diverse historical research on statehood in Europe challenged assumptions of a one-dimensional evolution of the modern European state. Arguments suggested that rational state management preceded the Enlightenment and stressed variants in state development. What is more, states and societies were rarely congruent but also rarely fully “differentiated.”10 Research on globalization created further potential to move away from self-contained state histories that mirrored official accounts of European nations. From transnational perspectives, nineteenth-century nation-states appear as loci of contested social and economic power, which gave them distinct characteristics as they became a reality beyond ideas and ideals in a connecting world.11 This book is concerned with the interplay between structure and agency in ways that cut across the national histories of country cases. Its central objective is to analyse the role that overseas regions, mainly the tropics and subtropics, played in the development doctrines and practices of the major states in Europe. This is not a revamped history of empires as generalized domains of raw materials or investment, though. The present study argues that cultural constructions became relevant to state agency as they interacted with material contexts. State building responded to the twin forces of regional economic differentiation and globalization. Techniques of government, increasingly mediated by expert advice and linked to the political lobbying of interest groups, engaged with a global material environment. As is well known, Europe’s leading states and economies underwent structural changes in the late nineteenth century.12 What is less understood, however, is how external economies and an unequal world order became important in shaping these processes. From the late nineteenth century, individual nation-states adopted new regulative functions that became part of the rationality of modern statehood. The very model of the modern European state as an imperial one ensued from these adaptations. It will be argued that the tropical world was blending into designs and practices of nation-state building in Europe, providing extensions to economic management and support for national development. Specific raw material supplies from overseas and colonial regions ought to be geared towards national economies and their payments relations. From the 1890s, major states in Europe acquired functions beyond the interests representing the individual state’s main economic and social pressure groups, and did so by invoking global projects. The country cases analysed in this volume – France, Germany, Italy, and Portugal, and the economic hegemon, Britain - show commonalities in techniques and strategies harnessing external support to suit national development. Other European countries differed. Spain remained largely agrarian. The industrialization of the Netherlands as a small country was well served by its historical association with the Dutch East Indies as an important provider of rubber and vegetable fats. Elsewhere, the backbone of development was domestic and regional. Here the “state” of Lombardy

6

Premises, concepts, arguments

in Italy serves as a suitable tool of comparison. Yet there are also countries showing similarities with those under review. Poland in the 1920s and 1930s is a case in point, as is, outside Europe, Japan. Meanwhile, Europe’s old aristocratic polities, imperial Russia and Austria-Hungary, industrialized only slowly. Economic organization gradually occurred within a large contingent territory geared towards an industrial centre, exhibiting some similarities with colonial empires. Relations between the Moscow cotton textile industry and raw cotton producers in the Caucasus are an example. Nonetheless, ultimately, these territories were conceived of as a part of a single economy and state. The United States was, on the one hand, the example of economy building in a large territorial entity, though one relying heavily on social and ethnic stratification within the state. On the other hand, in its empire in the Pacific and Caribbean, the United States was not unlike a European imperial state.13 States acquired distinct characteristics as nation-states as they adopted transnational control strategies. These changes are reflected in a periodization. The period between the 1860s and 1890s was characterized by the aim of implementing economic liberalism worldwide. Colonies were first conceived of as tools in this process. By 1900, the states in question had constituted themselves more explicitly as managers and developers of their national economies. From the 1900s through the late 1940s, debates about colonial economies occurred in this setting. During the resurgence of economic liberalism from the 1950s onwards, finally, the demarcation between the developed and underdeveloped hemispheres of the world changed how states operated. In this connection, it will be explored how overseas regions supported nation-state management. Colonies, for instance, served to extend national textile markets and mattered for the management of raw materials on world markets.14 Moreover, political control over them could help to regulate trade flows and manage currency areas, and support currency standards and the settlement of debts. Policy strategies were devised to solve technical problems of economic management and to reconcile national economies with the world economy. In this way, techniques of the state became related to arguments about national welfare, from employment to food security. Overseas and imperial connections not only took shape in line with economic complementarities assessed from entrepreneurial standpoints. Nation-states in Europe saw the overseas tropical world not solely, or even mainly as an untapped reservoir of natural resources, important as these were. Rather, the tropics were envisaged as support realms for state techniques and tools to manage national development. This involved specific forms of co-option, the outsourcing of development, and the delineation of economic spaces vis-à-vis rival economic powers, especially during periods of economic crisis. As national economy building in Europe encountered difficulties in relating to a trajectory of one-world development, colonial economies

The overseas world and states in Europe 7 became increasingly important for national welfare. Moreover, the emergence of the masses in diversifying and competing industrial economies urged states to adopt developmental roles for their nations in a transnational setting.15 Economies in the late nineteenth century were becoming trapped by the national framing of economic space due to the bumpy road to universal economic liberalism. The conundrum of national progress in the world enhanced the role of states and their experts at the intersection between the globe and the nation. The readings by experts and state bureaucrats of the material processes of globalization influenced the norms of national governance in its relations with the outside world. Overseas territories and economies became control realms and tools deemed necessary to secure the prosperity of advanced states as nation-states. Designs of state agency conflated economic and racial conceptions. Conscious economic management involved commercial, industrial, and international monetary policies as means of shaping core economies or to shield national or hegemonic economic spaces. One consequence was the distinction between core nations and peripheries. The ensuing forms and norms of governance, therefore, again differed from those within the big territorial states, namely the United States and Russia.16 The study bridges the dichotomy between structure and agency, arguing that the major economies and states in Europe formed incrementally as they explored economic complementarities with the overseas world while building on notions of political control and racial difference. Cases varied, however, due to the individual legacies of economies and polities. The manner in which national economies emerged from regional ones with overseas connections differed, as did doctrines of the state, from British liberal imperialism to French Republicanism and Italian fascism. The next section elaborates how strands of historical research relate to the present investigation. Subsequently, a longer section will tie in the volume’s conceptualization with a sketch of the historical argument, by discussing first, the mutual relationship between globalization and national economy building in Europe, and second, the transformation of European statehood in a global setting. This conceptual discussion relates an argument about transnational relations to the characteristics of states in three phases: from the mid-nineteenth century to around 1900, from the 1900s to the early 1950s, and from the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s. The penultimate section of the chapter highlights how the book uses contemporary expert thinking to illuminate the transnational dimension of nation-state agency while the last section sketches out the volume’s organization.

Relating threads of research The volume has benefitted from a vast and diverse body of historical research in a range of languages. This material has been supplemented by

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Premises, concepts, arguments

contemporary and some specifically relevant archival sources. The investigation speaks to a wider academic research on globalization, colonial empires, states and governance, nation-states and nationalism, and economic development. However, the study relates to these areas of research in particular conceptual ways that require further comment. This is a book about Europe; but it captures the peculiarities in which states in Europe formed as a part of worldwide relationships. The dichotomy between the Western and the “non-Western” world have been debated in extenso in the literature on European modernity and the failure of the liberal project for universal progress.17 The book historicizes state agency in an interconnecting world. Studying Europe’s overseas relationships is elusive since they were confusingly both present and absent in contemporary projects of national development. The tropics were deemed economically necessary for Europe yet despised as backward and idle. Europe’s relations with the tropics and subtropics during the period were always defined by difference. The various strands of the Orientalist research agenda serve as a constant reminder. But the overseas world became a part of the model of national European statehood as economies diversified and polities integrated in the course of globalization. The strive to advance a liberal world economy in the late mid-nineteenth century, the debate about the grievances of “have-not” states with no or few colonial possessions in the depression of the 1930s, and British “socialist imperialism” in the late 1940s, all bear out this paradox.18 The study focuses on the role of overseas relations in the formation of major European nation-states, and is, therefore, not a survey of the themes that defined modern statehood in world history.19 Yet studying overseas relations is essential because imperial statehood defined the European state model between the 1890s and the mid-twentieth century. This was not a story told on a minor stage with a cast acting in a parallel plot. Studies exploring global relationships help to investigate how these moulded national economies and nation-states in Europe in terms of complementarities. Supply chains of tropical and subtropical sources became increasingly significant for national economies and mass polities. International transport links facilitated worldwide business relations.20 Policy-making in states occurred in a system of coordinated economic relations involving cause and effect more immediately than in earlier historical periods. Research on globalization has well illustrated how an interconnected world offered economic opportunity in terms of scale and scope and moved towards economic integration.21 Or studies have captured the shifting patterns that characterized a period.22 But the overseas nexus also gained importance as forming national economies in Europe struggled to cope with their exposure to the world economy. In turn, the globe became a coping strategy during crises that affected mass nations. Reordering the world ought to ease the burden of what many experts in

The overseas world and states in Europe 9 the late nineteenth century deemed to be unavoidable disruptions paving the way towards a modern stage of development. However, as midcentury utopias of liberal globalism faltered, states increasingly separated a national sphere from a foreign one and sought to control national development transnationally. Here attention needs to be paid to thinking that links national governance to the globe, as will be discussed in the section on experts.23 The book’s investigative focus on agency requires further clarification in relation to other research agendas. The aforementioned line of enquiry into states differs from the intellectual history of statehood in economic liberalism. Put crudely, laissez-faire liberalism posits an evolutionary trajectory of a homogeneous and self-regulating world economy led by economic hegemons: from Britain in the mid-nineteenth century to the United States after 1945 and in the post–Cold War world in the 1990s and beyond. Setbacks in the 1920s and 1930s are attributed to politicalideological interference. After 1945, the nineteenth-century project of economic liberalism morphed into the hegemony of the Western world. In this narrative, the ideal of the state, to the extent that it mattered at all, shadowed one-world development or became synonymous with global governance in the image of a Hobbesian Commonwealth writ large.24 Historicizing state agency, however, shows a different picture. To be sure, nationalistic states indeed undermined the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie and its entrepreneurial forces at the end of the nineteenth century.25 Yet more often than not nation-states, unable to reconcile progress for the nation with progress for the globe laid claim to a modern project of economic rationality in opposition to old social forces. Germany’s Industriestaat in the 1900s is an example.26 To some extent, the case can also be made for Italy in the 1900s and some strands of fascism later. An argument about the historical formation of state agency that differs from the intellectual account of liberalism, however, requires a note of caution, too. Policy rhetoric must not be confused with its outcome. In his influential essay on the sociology of imperialisms, Schumpeter explicitly stated that he was only interested in studying the transition towards genuine capitalist relations and not in the “fallacies” of agency.27 Agency, though, is central to the investigation of statehood in this book. Such an analysis does not assess policy in normative terms by objectivizing deviations from economic theory. Fascist economic policy, for instance, was marred by inconsistency due to the fork between the real economy and fascist policy practice that had little connection to economic doctrine. It would be misconceived to view Italy’s imperial and colonial policies in the 1930s as “developmental fascism,” namely as a policy geared towards welfare-enhancing outcomes.28 Nonetheless, fascism often defined itself in relation to economic crises, and occasionally did so by placing itself in the tradition of scientific positivism, though one critical of economic liberalism.29

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Premises, concepts, arguments

Anyway, relationships in colonial empires clash with a narrative of increasing inclusiveness in the international order, also in liberal trajectories of development. Initially, colonies were part of a transnational organization that ought to facilitate the realization of a liberal world economy. The case can be made not only for Britain and France but also for Germany. Later, colonies ought to assist crisis management, for instance, in settling national accounts in trade and payments. The book incorporates discussions on colonies insofar as they shed light on relating the link between colonial and imperial policy and the nation. The organization of economic resources and labour are examples. There are also wider policy linkages with knowledge creation in the tropics and with arguments about the role of colonies for character building in imperial states.30 These projects included British liberal imperialism and the French colonial mise-en-valeur. But it is worth emphasizing that the imperial-colonial nexus was selective and not synonymous with colonial rule. Therefore, many aspects of colonial encounters fall outside the purview of the present study.31 Arguments about one-world economic liberalism and the state raise wider questions regarding international and global governance. On the one hand, transnational aspects of economy building involved the world economy and its management. Countries strove for an international economic architecture that suited their economies. The case of Britain as the economic hegemon in the nineteenth century shows an obvious convergence. On the other hand, however, national economy building was never smooth. In all economies exposed to the world economy, tensions arose between the national domain and an international one. Investigating these tensions is essential for a study of the transnational formation of states. The book discusses how norms of national and international governance formed, interrelated, and conflicted. The process involved experts, who in the 1920s and 1930s sometimes occupied positions in nation-states and as international civil servants in parallel. Their views show frictions between these two functions. Moreover, national policy doctrines, strategies, and justifications referred to the discrepancies between individual nations and the world order, and are mirrored in different ideological approaches to development and in public perceptions. These aspects will be discussed especially for the 1930s with regard to economic organization, raw materials, and colonies. In this connection, it is also important to bear in mind different research agendas. Studying the transnational formation of nation-states is not the same as studying the intellectual origins of global governance. Neo-classical economists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek of the Austrian school of economics, and Lionel Robbins in Britain, contemplated how to create a world state.32 However, as would later be the case with neoliberals in the 1990s, their ideas focused on creating the political conditions conducive to the economic theory of neo-classical

The overseas world and states in Europe

11

liberalism. In the interwar period, such views were confined to a small minority of economists with little influence. Most economic thinkers during the period doubted the prospects of liberal capitalism and discussed its crisis, stressing the need for reform with the help of the state.33 Questions of international governance have also received particular scholarly attention related to the League of Nations in the 1920s and 1930s.34 Here some research investigated learning processes in international bureaucracies.35 What matters for the analysis of agency in this book, by contrast, is the manner in which experts dealt with the frictions between national and international governance rather than normative questions of technocratic learning. Arguments about the international order connect to topics of research on imperial relationships and empires. The study of transnational state agency requires a perspective on government, as argued with regard to the imperial-colonial link. However, the strand of politics research on empire, rather than colonial empires, analyses polities comparatively in the longue-durée, offering insight ranging from the Roman empire to the British empire.36 The analysis in the present volume differs due to its focus on relationships, arguing that from the late nineteenth century, national development occurred in a world order. In some sense, by the twentieth century, all major states aspired to becoming empires because they needed to organize as nation-states in the world. A research agenda on empire as government has greater affinity with comparative research on types of statehood across the world.37 More akin to the present investigation are studies of imperial relationships in colonial empires. These could be economic relations and their organization, or purposes related to social power and racial constructs. Imperial bonds involved, among others, the trusteeship of “races” deemed unable to govern themselves. Nonetheless, the book differs conceptually from general studies of colonial empires for two reasons: first, these are studies of country cases, whereas it will be argued that colonial empires, like the nation-states at their centre, need to be studied transnationally rather than placed side by side as self-contained entities. Second, policy-makers tried to gear overseas relations to a range of roles for the nation. These nodes were defined by complementarities, as diverse as specific raw material requirements or the role of colonies in identity politics. The perception of relevant nodes shifted frequently. Policy priorities in Europe related to priorities of control overseas. In Britain, for instance, the prominent imperial unionist Leo Amery saw colonial policy as a counter-measure against the confiscatory welfare state at home based on taxation.38 The intersection between imperial states and their colonies was not primarily defined in terms of spatial or territorial economic coherence. The book does not use the notion of formal and informal empire because these notions risk distracting from the nodes that mattered for states in Europe at a particular time.

12

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Social and economies elites, finally, have been related to empire building. For example, the emergence of Britain’s global service sector in the late nineteenth century has been viewed through the lens of the reinvention of England’s old landed aristocracy.39 Research on Bismarck’s Germany has emphasized social imperialistic manipulations in favour of old landed interests, while the role of German “high finance” has been stressed for the period of the Industriestaat of the 1900s.40 Or, more generally, it has been argued that modernizing industrial bourgeoisies were pushed aside by a state’s imperial expansion. At the time, Schumpeter theorized such an argument, and Vilfredo Pareto used it in his critique of Francesco Crispi’s Italy.41 To some extent, economic and social interest groups indeed imprinted their priorities on national economies with repercussions for state agency. Nonetheless, state practice was not synonymous with one socioeconomic interest group during a period when state functions diversified. States also muddled through due to the conflicting interests which they represented and because they faced imponderables in an uncertain world. Yet precisely these uncertainties enhanced the role of extra-economic factors in economic management, including in Britain’s imperial economy. Some of the most influential research on generic aspects of the European nation-state has been entwined with the social history of nationalism.42 Such a socioeconomic perspective chimes with the book’s investigation insofar as national polities emerged as industrial capitalism spread. Industrialization went hand in hand with an agrarian crisis in the late midnineteenth century. As a consequence, polities changed. In this volume, the narrative on industrialization in Europe will be joined with an argument about external factors as crises and opportunities, notably in relation to shifts in supply chains of overseas raw materials for Europe. The diverse processes of industrial transformation and regional-global links coloured the characteristics of emerging national economies. Industrialization and economic globalization both solicited and challenged nation building and became connected to ideas of reorganizing states by involving the world. Other well-known studies of the European nation-state emphasized either ideas of the nation or conceptions of national societies through myth making. Ideas of the European nation-state, notably in Germany and Italy before national unification, have been traced back to the early mid-nineteenth century without reference to international relations.43 By the end of the century, however, all major nation-states in Europe inevitably organized with reference to a world order. Nonetheless, the ways in which economies and polities placed themselves in this wider setting continued to be affected by the legacies of national political cultures, whether influenced by ideas of the Italian Risorgimento, the unification of the German Reich, French Republicanism, or British liberalism. Political cultures also informed the creation of mass-producing traditions in nations, empires, and colonies.44 The book will build on this line of thought in analysing transnational doctrines of national development.

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As new material realties in the late nineteenth century projected ideas of national development into the world, the global reproduction of nations was widely debated. This reproduction could be a revised version of liberal economic doctrine, as in British constructive colonialism. Or it could explicitly oppose liberalism, drawing on notions of fascist communitarianism or biological views of the world order.45 Myths of national reproduction involved stratified economy building. Between the 1890s and 1940s, this meant co-opting rather than including overseas regions in national projects. Studies of the history of the nation-state that inform this volume not least relate to generic processes in which national economies, state techniques, and norms formed in an international landscape.46 On the one hand, economies reached beyond the national. On the other hand, from the late nineteenth century, they increasingly became territorialized and demarcated, importantly related to hierarchies of money. The latter heightened the importance of national balances of payments and their monitoring and management by state bureaucracies. Seeing economies as national converged with the basic tenet of the European model of statehood: national sovereignty. The territorialization or de-territorialization of economies was testimony to the world’s uneven geo-economy in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. At the end of the twentieth century, the issue became part of controversies regarding the decreasing relevance of the nation-state model.47 The book aims to bring out the interplay between structural change, on the one hand, and the concrete histories in which agency operated and states became defined in individual cases, on the other hand. Some studies of economic history explicitly analyse policy practices. Other research focuses on economic outcomes and can assist in assessing the fork between structural economic relationships and institutional agency. However, two caveats are important regarding the investigative focus of economic research. Policy practices during the period rarely flowed from theory-based economic doctrine.48 Moreover, agency is always about choices, also in the economic field, and is in this sense unavoidably a political process. This is what Schumpeter failed to consider in his essay on imperialism, when he neatly distinguished underlying capitalist forces and irrational political agency. It was also at this juncture that positivist economic rationality and politicking fed on each other in the real world. Perhaps fitting for a book that historicizes state agency, Schumpeter’s views, too, changed in historical context. His later work shows disillusionment with capitalism and the positive role of the social forces that underpinned it.49 Still, he maintained the dichotomy between an economy system and the state, viewing the latter as a disruptive force. Much research that informs this book eludes aggregate categorization. The indebtedness to this vast research is acknowledged in the notes: from economic histories of individual countries and regions, to research

14

Premises, concepts, arguments

on specific aspects of political, social, and cultural histories relating regions in Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Historical trajectories in the globe The thrust of the enquiry sketched out at the beginning of the chapter suggests a historical narrative along the following lines. Late nineteenthcentury globalization influenced state building in Europe in a dual manner: as opportunity and crisis. Initially, regions in Europe, rather than nation-states, connected with overseas regions. However, gradually, national economic trajectories blended in with these relations, and nation-states acted with reference to the outside world. The acceleration of connections across the world and their qualitative transformation, observed since the mid-nineteenth century, played a role in this process.50 In the second half of the nineteenth century, worldwide interconnectedness facilitated the economic expansion of enterprises, access to new resources, support for innovation in science and industry, investment outlets, and markets. This was a vision of economic activities incorporating allegedly unproductive tropical and sub-tropical areas. The midcentury view was one of self-regulating open commerce. The quickening pace of global interaction and the mirage of economic liberalism at a world scale, however, soon prompted crises. A crucial one was the agrarian crisis in Europe in the 1870s and 1880s as overseas food supplies gained access to European markets. Challenges also ensued from competitive industrialization and from shocks on stock exchanges due to unregulated financial integration. These crises, in turn, solicited states as developers of national welfare. At the end of the nineteenth century, moreover, technical-functional state regulation in the main European countries became consciously formulated in a global context. The consequence was greater reliance on norms and doctrines of economic organization, both national and international, importantly in the fields of currency relations and currency standards. Crises of globalization – economic, social, and cultural – enhanced the dichotomy between the domestic and the external realms of states. At this juncture, visions of imperial control became associated with nation-state formation in Europe. Political control overseas came to play a role in patching up these crises. The relevance of the tropical and sub-tropical world for states in Europe mirrored the changing characteristics of global interaction. In the late nineteenth century, colonial rule was first a means to complete one-world economic liberalism. As pointed out in a different setting of historical research, colonial empires were indeed a form of “enforced” globalization.51 Its controlled version was borne out of its inherent crises. Subsequently, as states shielded their national economies in the depression of the 1930s and markets fragmented in Europe, colonies became prominent in debates about raw materials and foreign currency reserves.

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Moreover, in the management of colonial currency areas, like the sterling area and escudo zone, asymmetrical imperial relationships lent support to national economies in Europe. After the Second World War, the decreasing role of raw materials for advanced economies, and their closer integration in the quest for renewed economic liberalization, fundamentally changed the ways in which European states assessed the overseas world. States recast themselves incrementally in contexts rather than as the result of grand policy designs. In the mid-nineteenth century, states became drawn into supporting regional-global connections rather than national economies. The second phase witnessed debates about the rational management of mass industrial economies and societies in the world. Here dependent territory was a part and parcel of the building of the model of modern, rational statehood. What is more, as states in Europe acquired a developmental function for their nations, colonies obtained roles in compensating for the inequalities generated by liberal economic globalism. In the third phase, a reordering of statehood occurred, first as an alternative to US-led economic liberalization, as in Britain’s discriminatory sterling area of the late 1940s. Later, in the 1950s and 1960s, selective overseas relationships ought to help imperial states adjust to the new liberalism. Policy objectives in the escudo zone monetary union and the franc zone bear out this argument. The preceding paragraphs provided an overall sketch of the entire period under review. What follows expands on particular aspects of this narrative. During the last three decades of the nineteenth century, liberal economic ideas became associated with the view that European economies could be modernized by organizing the world’s allegedly unused or underused economies in view of both national and universal progress and welfare. From this position, J.S. Mill in Britain, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu in France, and later Vilfredo Pareto in Italy, all deemed state intervention and a degree of coercive policies to be expedient in overseas regions, though Pareto also argued that for Italy such action was premature.52 In the late mid-nineteenth century, European states began assisting private enterprises to overcome social and political impediments to their overseas activities, notably in Africa. At this point, however, states were primarily not concerned with managing national economies. The widening world of economic interaction between regions across the globe prompted new, though yet ill-defined and volatile relationships between private enterprises and states. The need to pay attention to regions rather than nation-states has long been emphasized by economic historians of Europe studying economic growth.53 The worldwide search for natural resources gave rise to specific regional linkages, such as between overseas regions producing vegetable fats and emerging food processing industries in Europe. These relationships often built on older regional networks between continents that preceded the marked orientation of overseas economies towards Europe. A well-researched example

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Premises, concepts, arguments

is the relationship between the Northwest of England and West Africa in the palm oil trade.54 Such complementarities were in part consciously fostered and in part historically coincidental. They involved private overseas entrepreneurship, trading agents, and new industrialists and their agents and financiers. In this phase, states explored relations with “free enterprise” in their respective countries by offering some support for firms operating overseas; and private enterprise solicited states, though without subjecting itself to the straight-jacked of the old mercantilism. Contexts differed but cases show commonalities during the period. In Northern Germany in the mid-century, overseas trading became relevant to food processing industries connected to tropical vegetable fats from West African palm oil to copra in the Pacific. German traders, however, operated in a competitive environment, notably in relation to British traders procuring resources for soap manufacturing in Northwest England. In France, some similarities with Britain existed in the relations between the region around Lyon and the expanding West African groundnuts production. But it was subtropical and tropical cotton that became crucial for the French economy. First Egypt, which promoted revenue farming under the reforms of Muhammad Ali, became closely related to France as a resource base and outlet for French investment. Later a more important cotton connection built on France’s commercial and territorial expansion in Indochina.55 These instances involved states in two principal ways: first, with regard to the expansion of overseas resource frontiers for the home economy as an emerging national economy. Second, requests by entrepreneurs operating overseas for diplomatic, military, and logistic support were feeding back into expert arguments about universal progress. Here claims to economic logic often became tinged with racial prejudice justified by the need to foster progress in pre-modern societies.56 In France, the state actively promoted colonial textile marketing. Global French entrepreneurship played a role in the Third Republic’s search for national prosperity due to the importance of cotton textile manufacturing for the economy and for employment. In Germany, no such link existed in the 1870s. The state was reluctant to embrace Northern free traders in their overseas ambitions. But it did so from the mid-1880s onwards, in a move that brought Germany’s maritime North into the fold of a national tariff union. Importantly, though, at this point neither the French nor the German state was involved in the macroeconomic management of a national economy vis-à-vis the world economy or positioned itself in terms of conscious nation-state development in the globe. Moreover, visions of an overseas imperial project, supported by small traders and the lower middle classes, and imbued with a racially-inspired civilizing mission, did not chime with the state’s agenda for German nationhood. The latter, famously, aimed at fostering a political alliance between heavy industry and the Eastern landed aristocracy that had redeployed from rye to sugar

The overseas world and states in Europe

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production as cheap wheat imports from North America flowed into central Europe. Yet the postulated link between nations as developmental entities and universal progress changed at the end of the nineteenth century. To be sure, the interconnectedness of polities and economies on different continents and their economic-political or cultural interaction was hardly a phenomenon confined to the second half of the nineteenth century. Research abounds, among others, on the Atlantic and Oriental slave trades, the activities of the Dutch and British East India companies, Spain’s rule in South America, the relationships between Inner Asia and maritime Asia and China’s hegemony in East Asia, South Asian trade in the Indian Ocean, and the Oriental trade in luxury goods by city states like Venice.57 Not least the value of moneys and welfare was affected by the flow of silver bullion across and between continents between the sixteenth and nineteenth century.58 Moreover, states had long delineated themselves as sovereign in terms of territorial defence, as prefigured in Bodin’s and Hobbes’ conceptions.59 Besides, economic planning was not new. It had occurred, for instance, in the sixteenth century with regard to the regulation of exchange rates between Prussia and Poland, and famously involved new techniques of government loan finance in “Dutch finance,” later adopted by the Bank of England.60 But in the course of the mid- and late-nineteenth century, significant qualitative and quantitative changes occurred. Facilitated by faster communications and transport, the import pattern of overseas produce widened. Tropical produce became gradually associated with the building of national economies in Europe in more specific ways. Enhanced by the liberal doctrine of free trade, food resources, importantly vegetable fats, operated in an emerging world market that included the tropics and constituted a new horizon in resource exploitation.61 Raw cotton sources for textile industries in Europe also diversified from the Americas towards Asia and Africa, as did those of rubber, which became a sought-after material in new mechanical industries. Minerals and energy resources from tropical and subtropical regions were less important for national economies in general, even if they captured the imagination of politicians and experts as ushering in a new age of progress. Gold finds, however, affected the advance of the gold standard as an international monetary standard. Moreover, foreign investment began to mirror the new resource frontiers, and subsequently constituted specialized sectors of portfolio investment. Capital exports and the service sector emerged as the hallmark of Britain’s and the West’s modernization. In line with the manner in which many contemporary experts in Europe interpreted history, Britain embodied the vanguard path of development that other economies ought to emulate in their attempt to modernize. At the end of the nineteenth century, modern national economies formed in a world characterized by embryonic multilateral rather than triangular trade and

18

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by centring on the big Western European states for which investment mattered on a world scale.62 As one-world globalism became possible and was no longer utopian, it involved states in a new historical role. According to ideas of progress and the widening of liberal economies, the world’s development not only needed to be completed, but the world’s unused potential needed to be tapped by advanced nations in the name of universal progress. This vision went hand in hand with the territorialization of economies. What emerged was a generalized model of statehood cast in a particular national frame but engaging the outside world in particular ways. Not only were worldwide relationships conditioning economies, but the orbit beyond the nation-state became important to organize nation-states and their economies. Mid-nineteenth-century ideas of forging political nations and economies were from then on projected into a world of accelerating economic interaction and industrial competition. At the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, the tropical world was drawn into the conscious rational reform of statehood in Europe. State reform had been initially designed within the purview of economic liberalism. It flowed from the realization that economic development, in order to fulfil the premises of liberal doctrine, required support from state techniques informed by scientific knowledge. States became engineers of economies and progress. The move involved experts as guardians of national progress while also establishing nations as communities of fate in the globe. The transformation owed much to the circumstances of the 1890s: industrial overproduction in Germany, and panic about the impact of world financial crises on the hub of world finance, the London money market. Tensions between national development and globalization and its discontents also led to the questioning of the British model. From the late nineteenth century onwards, advanced states in Europe increasingly endorsed territorial economic organization in a wider world. Approaches to international financial architecture in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century provide ample evidence.63 Nationstates consolidating territorial money paid attention to exchange control, the balance of payments, and transnational impediments to the smooth running of currency standards.64 Britain adopted a more regulative approach to international debt management, especially after the international financial crisis triggered by the Barings bank in 1890.65 States also assumed developmental identities which, according to doctrine, were geared towards national welfare. As new states in Europe formed from regions, they related to a growing number of similar entities in a world of diffusion and isomorphization. This meant, respectively, the spread of new forms of economic activity and of the model of statehood from Europe to other regions of the world, and the emergence of comparable techniques of state governance under similar conditions of economic activity.66 In continental Europe, notably in Germany and Italy under the

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influence of Friedrich List and Wilhelm Roscher, welfare aspirations bore out the idea of economies as culturally-defined nation-states. At the beginning of the twentieth century, a redefinition occurred in the manner in which overseas economies were expected to relate to economies in Europe. The view that Europe needed to control the tropics to complete liberal globalism faded into the background. Instead, in some cases, colonies became extensions to the home economy. More importantly, however, colonies were conceived of as tools for specific economic management, as was the case in colonial-imperial currency areas. Their political management informed debates about overseas economic space in the dictatorships of interwar Europe at times of foreign currency shortages.67 It also loomed large during Britain’s economic recovery and relations with the dollar area in the late 1940s.68 During the 1900s, Germany epitomized the search for international management by the nation-state, where experts in the state, like Karl Helfferich and Bernhard Dernburg, espoused the modernity of the industrial bourgeoisie and “high finance.” But they also searched for appropriate state techniques and welfare strategies for an economic late-comer, irrespective of interests of class and economic sectors. From this standpoint, the German colonies, acquired earlier, needed to be incorporated into an imperial economic and financial architecture. German colonies ought to support German’s currency management and influence the world’s raw material exchanges.69 These objectives differed from those of “high finance,” which was reluctant to invest in the colonial project. But the pursuit of rational German statehood was also testimony to an unprecedented convergence between an elite in the state’s economic bureaucracy, emphasizing entrepreneurial innovation for industry through research on natural resources, on the one hand, and the industriousness and ethics of retailers, artisans, and colonial settlers, on the other hand.70 German-ness was not associated with class but with a state vision of a global Germany that echoed this national community of interest.71 Besides, in the 1900s, the textile crises of raw cotton supplies and markets suggested uses of colonies for the national economies of Germany and Italy, as well as Britain and France. In Europe’s interwar period, the rationalizing state extended to the organization of scientific innovation in Weimar Germany and the Third Reich, including with regard to synthetic raw materials, for instance as substitutes for natural rubber.72 In France, the colonial mise-en-valeur was a parallel imperial vision that ought to induce macroeconomic rationality into colonial production, colonial trade outside the empire, and French trade with the colonial empire.73 Once again this was about untapped tropical resources. Immediately after the First World War and in the depression of the 1930s, tropical raw materials ought to play a role in currency management, especially in Germany and Italy.

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Policy-makers argued that tropical regions were underdeveloped but, if properly organized, their resources might help sustain nations in Europe. The strive for national progress, militaristic nationalism, the crisis management of currency reserves, and concerns about national food security, all converged in driving the call for colonial territory. Shortages of currency reserves were largely self-inflicted: in Germany, by the arms race, whereas in Italy, the problem was, in addition, related to the structural malaise of Italy’s less competitive industries. In Germany, in the mid-1930s, arguments about currency management became closely entwined with the quest for overseas raw materials paid for in Reichsmark. The related frenzy regarding demands for German colonies created some common ground between otherwise irreconcilable conceptions of Germany’s development: the innovative national-liberal, global Germany of the 1900s and the autarky designs of the national-socialists’ “Greater Germany” in their joint opposition to the Versailles peace treaty.74 Ethnic essentialism, biological organicism, and racism, all informed an imperial modernity that advocated food autonomy, aimed at raw material autarky, and envisaged a role for colonies in balancing the metropolitan economy’s payments. These issues correlated or connected with ethno-nationalistic conceptions of the people and “living-space” in driving state discourses about development at that time.75 In Italy, similar issues had been debated in the fascist state from the early 1920s. Foreign currency reserves were not systematically assessed. However, the matter fuelled debates about Italy’s alternative path to modernity. These connected to positivist theories of an organic world system by the fascist economist-statistician Corrado Gini, whose coefficient for measuring income inequalities within nations later became widely used in economics.76 Moreover, the raw materials theme tied in with fascist arguments about the social value of agrarian produce and possible alternatives to an international financial architecture based on “mammon” and backed by gold.77 Moreover, international sanctions against Italy topicalized food in terms of national sovereignty, facilitating public support for the imperialist war in Ethiopia. The British state before 1914, meanwhile, bore out the economy’s orientation towards capital exports but also the ordering of monetary relations through central banking and debt management in the interest of both financial globalism and the vision of an empire-state. Imperial currency and raw materials relations had served Britain’s hegemonic governance since the nineteenth century. This economic orthodoxy could be presented as universally valid. From the 1910s, however, the national orientation of welfare strategies towards the core nation was becoming more noticeable; and in the 1930s, colonial Africa was expected to serve as a backyard ensuring exclusive access to raw materials in times of war. After 1945, the Western world was set on a course towards liberal reglobalization as a conscious reaction to the experiences of the 1930s and

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the Second World War. However, European countries experienced problems in adjusting to US-led economic liberalization due to the legacy of the destructions and disruptions caused by the war. These difficulties either intensified the search for overseas areas as support realms or prompted economic policies of domestic adjustment. In the late 1940s, Britain’s trade policies in the sterling area and colonial development policies in Africa were reminiscent of objectives of currency engineering known from interwar Europe. Yet the 1950s ushered in new international economic relationships due to the process of integration of Western industrial economies and the role of domestic consumer demand in economic growth. Relations with tropical economies became more ambiguous for national economies and states in Europe. The regional economies of Europe that had been drawn into the dual forces of globalization and nation-state formation in the late nineteenth century were now challenged in new ways by the process of European economic integration and its uses for nations.78 Overseas relationships during the transition to liberal globalism became redefined in conjunction with those between states and the private sector. However, this was not the mirror image of the nineteenth century, when territorial control over quasi-states overseas was deemed to support the expansion of overseas businesses. Now the assumption was that conditions needed to be created to attract capital from Western multinationals, while overseas currency zones could help European economies adapt to the new economic liberalism. The franc zone and the escudo zone monetary union of the 1960s epitomized the search for a congenial alignment with the new environment in overseas relations. In France and its colonies, the tumultuous period from the Indochina war to the Algerian war of independence coincided with the difficult adjustment to economic liberalism. Expert debates about state reform once again involved transnational economic considerations.79 Rationalization meant exposing firms to international competition which had been shielded by the French colonial empire. The reform of the Pacte colonial was designed to transform French capitalism as well as inject an entrepreneurial spirit into the Franco-African currency zone. In this unprecedented move, compatible development doctrine became more important than territorial control. The African franc zone beyond colonial rule was the realm in which these conditions were politically sanctioned at the presidential level, namely in a quid pro quo of state-directed entrepreneurship in Francophone Africa and France. In part, moreover, mutual relations could be managed thanks to the agricultural policy of the European Economic Community (EEC) in the 1960s. The Portuguese escudo zone came to play a part in the reconstitution of European states in the emerging Western economic hemisphere in the 1950s and 1960s. In the Portuguese empire of the late nineteenth century,

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the landed aristocracy and its imperial businesses in Africa had been importantly associated with the trade and service sector spearheaded by the British empire and British finance. In the interwar period, under the dictator António Salazar, the state regulated the escudo zone in a discriminatory imperial economy based on an exploitative overseas agrarian zone, mainly based on cotton plantations. But in the 1950s and 1960s, technological and industrial innovation infused the Salazar state with a new rationality, irrespective of its political ideology, and affected the manner in which diversifying imperial businesses came to define the state. The reorganization of the Portuguese state as an empire-state mirrored the requirements of Portuguese and other multinational enterprises, and of an industrializing Portugal more exposed to international competition. In Western Europe, Portugal became gradually part of a transnational economic and financial area, while also playing a role in meeting industrial demand for labour in the core countries of the EEC. For West Germany, as for the United States, Portugal’s African empire, notably Angola, became a privileged area of multinational investment for resource extraction. Throughout the 1960s, Portugal served as the political guarantor for multinational investors in the face of colonial war. At this juncture, the Janus-faced empire-state aimed at financial globalization, on the one hand, while, on the other hand, regulating an escudo zone in which income from colonial raw material exports ought to facilitate Portugal’s opening towards liberal economies in Europe. However, the experiment of gearing a colonial currency area to metropolitan objectives was short-lived at a time when most of the colonies of Britain and France had become independent.80 The escudo zone faltered as metropolitan Portugal was unable to provide sufficient capital goods to construct the infrastructure needed to enhance the export capacity of colonial raw materials, and burdened by exports from Portugal of materials for the colonial war. The foregoing account identified the ways in which overseas relations became absorbed into the structural formation of European states. The following section adds specificity by explaining how state agency will be studied in this volume.

Expert-practitioners, state governance, and the world As economic globalization and diversification created new opportunities for economies in Europe in the late nineteenth century but also generated economic crises, conscious national development became a part of state agendas. Between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, policy designs associated overseas economies with doctrines and strategies of nationhood in Europe. Grasping these connections requires analysing how governance formed nationally with reference to the world order. In this essentially political process, a new breed of experts gained influence in the building of European nation-states in the course of the late nineteenth

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century. These experts specialized in national development and in the transnational relations of modernizing industrial states, engaging with states in relation to the economy, society, and the natural environment in a world setting. Expert opinion will be used in this book in two main ways. References to individual experts help anchor the discussion of complex structural relations of national economies with the world economy. More importantly, the opinion of experts serves as an analytical tool to advance an argument about how state agency formed at this nexus. The analysis focuses on expert-practitioners and their policy proposals; the objective is not to assess techniques of economic governance discussed by experts in an academic debate. Expert-practitioners played a role in setting norms for state governance as policy advisers. Here technicalities reveal wider connections with the welfare aspirations of nations. In important cases, moreover, experts like Helfferich and Hjalmar Schacht in Germany, Frederick LeithRoss in Britain, and François Bloch-Lainé in France themselves shaped policy because they occupied positions in state bureaucracies or as politicians engaging with external economic and imperial relations.81 It will be explored first how experts were involved in setting norms. This question concerned national governance with a global dimension as well as corresponding forms of international governance. Overseas regions mattered to meet objectives of debt-servicing, manage trade in raw materials, and settle payments in currency zones. Expert-practitioners often used historical reasoning in arguing about policy strategies and doctrines. Thus, history informed the search for functional problem-solving in economies. Since expert norms were embedded in particular readings of the historical record, historians need to step back to consider the relevant expert views in parallel to analysing their impact on policy formation. Second, experts conceived of economic and social development in terms of individual nations, thereby contributing to mass-producing traditions in modern nation-states. Here, overseas relations became a means to influence the predicament of the nation, ironically often as a counter-measure to its exposure to a globalizing world. Expert reasoning went well beyond the technical management of economies, and elaborated on the peculiar characteristics of the “non-Western” world in assessing its role for national societies in Europe. The tropics became laboratories for scientific progress aimed at bridging the transition towards self-sustaining universal capitalism.82 But, given the difficulties that this transition created, the tropics also became tools in a new armour gearing the projects of modern European nation-states to the world economy. Third, states and their doctrines formed in relation to national politics that conflated the pursuit of economic problem-solving among experts with arguments about the national interest. Telling examples include the issues of food security and food autonomy and the access to raw materials for the benefit of the nation’s core population.

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In these various ways, expert arguments lead the investigation to consider the different roles attributed by “advanced” states in Europe to overseas relations, whether in fostering universal development, or in formulating norms for national or international governance. In the mid-nineteenth century, influential thinkers like Richard Cobden and Jean-Baptiste Say believed progress and prosperity would flow from a hegemonic force that would one day encompass the entire world.83 According to classical liberal economic doctrine, the process would be spearheaded by progressive states offering public goods to the world rather than seeking its domination. This is also what neoliberals in the post–Cold War period of the 1990s hailed as the victory of one-world economic liberalism, where the United States, as the hyper-power, set the required norms of global governance attuned to this period’s technological modernity.84 Yet in the late nineteenth century, when the automaticity of economic liberalism turned out to be elusive, states and their experts became agents expected to assess the conditions favourable for universal progress. Colonies were deemed to be able to assist in this process. Even war might occasionally be necessary to open up new regions of the world for the exploitation of resources, and in order to establish forms of governance that would ultimately be conducive to prosperity in a capitalist system securing a peaceful world order.85 Economically and culturally advanced countries ought to do no less than create modernity in the backward “nonWest” that, according to this conception, played no part in driving the engine of universal progress. The role attributed to overseas governance in order to complement capitalist vanguard economies, however, also led away from the liberal ideals of a non-interventionist, minimal state. The book argues that the proclaimed rational properties of expert doctrine in modern states took shape in the shadow of nation-states. Experts of international economic relations became influential in states only to the extent to which their expertise appeared to be relevant to the predicament of nations in a transforming world. Consequently, expert conceptualizations were ambivalent, oscillating between an assumed ideal trajectory of modernity, on the one hand, and visions of the nation-state, on the other hand. At this point, nation-states also began to advocate colonies as a means to organize raw materials supplies, labour, and migration. As expertise acquired a more important role for national welfare during world economic crises, tensions between the functional requirements of economies and national welfare objectives became politically relevant. Investigating these tensions and ambivalences shows how economic policies ensued from a political debate about the nation. Caught between global and national development, policy principles show an ironic ambiguity. On the one hand, European states sought to create workable complementarities in economic organization, which they saw as requiring influence in backward regions of the world in order to allow access for trade, facilitate exchange, and secure labour to exploit

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raw material resources. The need of congenial conditions for universal progress also implied that overseas regions would remain agrarian and raw material producers rather than industrialize. Such an assessment was as much a matter of expediency as it was rooted in racial prejudice involving hierarchies of “races” and degrees of their suitability for the modern world. Diffusing Western regulatory principles in the tropics would help spread a rational economic order. Political influence and coercion could then be justified as necessary, be it in the course of the long-term prospects of liberalism, as in Britain, or according to positivist norms of modern society, as in Republican France.86 On the other hand, however, the alleged backwardness of tropical regions in terms of economic organization and political prowess was an essential requisite in bringing overseas economies in line with individual national projects in Europe. From the techniques of ordering trade relations to the management of imperial-colonial currency zones, expertpractitioners conceptualized a congenial economic order in the light of political conditions overseas.87 While doctrine is explicit and easy to incorporate in historical analysis, extra-economic techniques and strategies were equally relevant to state formation but are more difficult to research. However, divesting the processes in which modern states and economies formed from transnational relations of political power would hardly be persuasive. Especially with regard to the tropical and subtropical world, arguments about development in Europe conceptually separated the internal and external realms of the state. From the 1890s, the onus of development shifted from the private sector to the state, as the fork between elite interests in national economies and elite ambitions for universal progress widened. The distinction between an external realm and the domestic domain of the nation-state became generally more marked in economic practice. Overseas regions were no longer expected to be integrated in national modernization, as had been the case in the optimistic vision of economic universality in the mid-nineteenth century. The historical investigation needs to explore connections between overseas political control and approaches to economic policy in Europe. The ability of states to draw on transnational relations to build national economies hinged on the nexus with the world economy. Simply put, Britain was best able to use techniques of financial engineering and trade flow management to support its balance of payments and reserves in gold and later in dollars.88 These policies ultimately involved nation-focused political control, even if officials in the British Treasury and the Bank of England stressed theory-based and universally welfare-enhancing modernization. Late nineteenth century Italy, by contrast, showed few structural characteristics that allowed or required using external economic relations in a similar manner. Liberal economists like Pareto and Luigi Einaudi, therefore, considered colonial overseas expansion to be out of

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touch with Italy’s very limited role in the world economy. Nonetheless, in Italy and Germany, the role of colonial space for national development influenced the policy discourse until the defeat of the Axis powers in the Second World War put pay to colonial ambitions. In multiple ways, states also sought to influence international governance. However, only in the British case, where trade and capital exports were central to the national economy, was national and international economic governance running in parallel. In the other cases, considerable discrepancies existed between the building of national economies and the world order. In the 1920s and 1930s, expertise on international economic relations in the League of Nations competed with that conceived in nation-states. The depression heightened demands to seek international solutions for national economic problems. The book gives particular attention to the ambiguities in discussions about national predicaments and the international economic order. The League was a debating arena for designs of international economic cooperation. But it was also the object of politicking from within and from outside. The technocratic and political dimension were both intertwined with controversies surrounding the League of Nations’ enquiry into colonies and raw materials. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy lobbied against Britain’s influence in the world’s economic architecture and demanded colonial production zones as means to accommodate problems of payments settlements and foreign currency reserves in the depression. The colonial question was thrown into the mix of expert debates about necessary reforms in the international economic order.89 Meanwhile, expert cooperation in colonies was also proposed as a tool of peace making, namely in Franco-German relations in the 1930s. In practice, however, the depression heightened national approaches to expertise and stifled international governance. After 1945, international organizations generated new expertise on “developing economies,” while, until the late 1950s, national bureaucracies in Britain and France, and in Portugal throughout the 1960s, were still preoccupied with imperial-colonial development. More generally, economic re-liberalization in the Western hemisphere initiated by the Bretton Woods agreements made an international institutional setting relevant to nation-states. Nonetheless, this process did not fuse into international governance but exhibited defensive national approaches. Experts in states saw their role in national economy building enhanced, notably in gathering and interpreting economic statistics. Nation-states also tried to retain a high degree of autonomy vis-à-vis or via international institutions. This held true for French policy in the African franc zone and the EEC. In Britain, too, national civil servants initially viewed international organizations as competition. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, for instance, was seen in these terms because of a fear that its doctrine would undermine the role of the pound sterling in colonies and former colonies vis-à-vis the dollar. In the 1960s,

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expertise on overseas economic relations and national policy practices continued to be closely interrelated, as in British aid policies that replaced policies of colonial development after empire. The thread of enquiry into the role of external control for national economies does not end here. To be sure, by the late twentieth century, regimes of international management had become institutionalized to a greater extent. Consequently, the behaviour of states in the world economy took on markedly different forms. What mattered in exploiting nature, for instance, were universal patents rather than national control.90 Nonetheless, political strategies in economic policy still mattered in the 2000s. In the case of China’s classical path of industrialization, relations with states with a weak infrastructure in conflict regions served as alternatives to the lack of influence in international governance and formed part of a strategy to break into existing hegemonic structures, including the international financial system.91 Finally, a remark on the use of the term “overseas” in this book seems appropriate because the word has widely different meanings depending on geographical location and history. Here it will be used in line with its historical meaning in Europe between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Overseas, outre-mer, Übersee, oltremare, and ultramar, referred to the world’s tropical and subtropical regions in general, and especially to a country’s colonies. The term highlighted the mutual relationship between countries in Europe and in the non-European world without having to specify names of locations. Thus, the term serves as a convenient entry point into a historical period characterized by the claim that countries in Europe exported modernity to an “overseas world” that was also deemed necessary for the progress of nation-states in Europe.

The book’s organization The volume has an ambitious overall objective. It invites readers on a journey through historical processes of policy formation in states between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries – a period during which statehood in Europe became reconfigured within a shifting geo-economy. The book begins with the 1860s, when European nation-states came into their own with the unification of Italy. The book’s core analysis ends with the 1970s, when Portugal withdrew from its colonies as the last European imperial power. In the late nineteenth century, tropical and subtropical regions of the world were drawn into designs of development in Europe at a time when globalization posed challenges for emerging national economies. But ordered globalization also became a panacea for the very crises of globalization as well as a horizon of rational modernity. National economic management was politically conditioned, as shown by the significance attributed to “empire,” and to the outside world generally, by nation-focused

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states in Europe. Overseas regions ought to support nation-states based on assumptions of racial and developmental hierarchies and the feasibility of control. This was a world of unquestioned inequality, yet also one in which the West laid claim to advancing universal progress. The period under review witnessed fundamental transformations. However, by their very nature, arguments about agency are historically specific, and will, therefore, be presented in a layered manner, incorporating new perspectives in stages. The book’s core chapters are grouped in pairs according to three historical periods: first, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when national development in Europe converged with attempts to complete globalization. Second, during Europe’s interwar period and the years immediately after the Second World War, overseas economies appeared prominently in debates about national welfare in economic crises. In the 1950s and 1960s, during a new phase of economic liberalism, European states reconfigured overseas relationships in both economic and political terms. The argument identifies breaks in the metamorphosis of statehood in the 1900s and continuities beyond the Second World War. However, for reasons of readability, the organization of chapters retains the conventional periodization divided by the two world wars. The first of each of the twin chapters in the identified period slots discusses the economies of country cases in their geo-economic environment: mainly Germany, France, Italy, and Portugal, in relation to Britain as the economic hegemon. The second of the period chapters historicizes state agency by focusing on overseas and colonial relations. The analysis proceeds from expert views on national economic development in the globe to an argument about shifts in policy practices in the political and social contexts of individual nation-states. At the end of each period slot, a synthesis explores the characteristics of statehood in Europe. The thinking of expert-practitioners guides readers through the intricacies of state agency in the geo-economy. The shorter chapters 6 and 9 fall outside the organization of chapters in pairs. Chapter 6 focuses on the continuities in approaches to economic organization during the exceptional circumstances of the Second World War. The concluding chapter 9 looks back at the historical argument from the perspective of globalization, governance, and statehood during the late twentieth and early twentyfirst century that re-posited one-world globalism. The study’s overall aim is to convey how state agency was formulated and states changed as the result of complex transnational processes. Nonetheless, the book’s organization should also enable readers to engage with historical arguments at a less ambitions level. Some analytical perspectives reoccur in chapters in different periods. Reading these sections in succession provides insight into historical change in specific problem areas. These include the parameters of the external economic relations of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy; expert opinions on national development in

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the world economy in these countries; and not least the political controversies regarding frictions between the national and international order, whether related to supply chains for industries, balance of payments relations, or arguments about labour, migration, and welfare.

Notes 1 Edward B. Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers. How Economies Have Developed through Natural Resource Exploitation (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2011), ch.5; Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: Europe, China, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); A.G. Hopkins, An Economic History of West Africa (London: Longman, 1st ed. 1973), chs.3–5; and G. Balachandran, ed., India and the World Economy, 1850–1950 (Oxford: OUP, 2003). 2 John A. Hall and G. John Ikenberry, The State: Concepts in Social Science (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1989); Bertrand Badie and Pierre Birnbaum, The Sociology of the State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Gianfranco Poggi, The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1990); Michael Mann, States, War and Capitalism (Oxford: OUP, 1988); and Martin van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1999). 3 Christine Bolt, Victorian Attitudes to Race (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1971). 4 Edward Said, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1st ed. 1977); and Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 5 Catherine Hall, ed., Cultures of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000); and Frederick Cooper and Laura Stoler, Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 6 Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), ch.1. 7 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, revised edition 2006); and Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008, 1st ed. 1983). 8 Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Sociology of Imperialisms. In Imperial & Social Classes (Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books, 1955); original German edition Zur Soziologie der Imperialismen (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1919). 9 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). 10 As examples for different approaches and periods, see Michael Braddick, “The Early Modern English State and the Question of Differentiation, from 1550–1700,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 38, 1 (1996), 92–111; and Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back in (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1985), esp. 3–37. 11 For relevant studies, see Duncan Bell, The Idea of Greater Britain: Empire and the Future of World Order, 1860–1900 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); David Thackeray, Forging a British World Trade: Culture, Ethnicity, and Market in the Empire-Commonwealth, 1880–1975 (Oxford: OUP 2019); and Heidi Tworek, News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).

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12 Richard Sylla and Gianni Toniolo, eds., Patterns of European Industrialization: The Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1991). 13 A.G. Hopkins, American Empire: A Global History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018). 14 See, respectively, Jacques Marseille, “L’industrie cotonnière française et l’impérialisme colonial de 1885 à 1970,” Revue d’histoire économique et sociale no. 2–3 (1975), 386–412, Thaddeus Sunseri, “The Baumwollfrage: Cotton Colonialism in German East Africa,” Central European History 34, no. 1 (2001), 35–7; and Fabio Grassi, “L’industria tessile e l’imperialismo italiano in Somalia (1896–1911),” Storia Contemporanea 4, no. 4 (1973), 716–7. 15 E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1990), ch.3. 16 For Russia, see, for example, Dominic Lieven, “The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as Imperial Polities,” Journal of Contemporary History 30, no. 4 (1995), 607–36. 17 See, for instance, Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999); Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Chakrabarty, Provincializing; and Escobar, Encountering Development. 18 See chapters 3, 5, and 8. 19 Here readers are well served by Charles S. Maier, Leviathan 2.0 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012). 20 See, for instance, Roland Wenzlhuemer, Connecting the Nineteenth-Century World: The Telegraph and Communications (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2013). 21 Kevin H. O’Rourke and Jeffrey G. Williamson, “When Did Globalization Begin?” European Review of Economic History 6 (2002), 23–50. 22 See Jurgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014). 23 To shed light on this dimension, the book mainly uses contemporary sources from the countries under review. For Britain, however, a substantial body of research exists, for which see Bell, The Idea. 24 After 1945, Friedrich Hayek is often used as a point of reference. See also remarks in chapters 7 and 9. Note also the convergence between neoconservative and post-Marxist research. An example of the latter is Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2000). 25 See Charles Jones, The Pattern of International Business (New York: New York University Press, 1987), ch.3. 26 Sebastian Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2010), chs.5 and 6. 27 Schumpeter, The Sociology of Imperialisms, 5. 28 For cogent observations on developmental fascism, see Jon S. Cohen, “Was Italian Fascism a Developmental Dictatorship? Some Evidence to the Contrary,” Economic History Review 41, no. 1 (1988), 95–113. 29 See Gerold Krozewski, “Problematizing an ‘Imperialism of Intent’: Colonial Raw Materials, Globalism, and European Nation States, from the pre-1914 Period to the 1930s,” in Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell, eds., Africa, Empire and Globalization (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 357–76. 30 See, for instance, Lissa Roberts, “Situating Science in Global History: Local Exchanges and Networks of Circulation,” Itinerario 33, no. 1 (2009), 9–30, and P.J. Cain, “Empire and the Languages of Character and Virtue in Later Victorian and Edwardian Britain,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 2 (2007),

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32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44

45 46 47 48

49

31

249–73; also Peter Cain, Character, Ethics and Economics: British Debates on Empire, 1860–1914 (London: Routledge, 2019). For relevant aspects of the relations between colonizers and colonized, see, for instance, John L. Comaroff, “Reflections on the Colonial State, in South Africa and Elsewhere: Factions, Facts and Fictions,” Social Identities 4, no. 3 (1998), 321–61; and Lauren Benton, “Colonial Law and Cultural Difference: Jurisdictional Politics and the Formation of the Colonial State,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 41, no. 3 (1999), 563–88. For this perspective, see Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberallism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), ch.3. Francesco Boldizzoni, Foretelling the End of Global Capitalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2020). Susan Pedersen, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2015). An example is Patricia Clavin, Securing the World Economy: The Reinvention of the League of Nations, 1920–1946 (Oxford: OUP, 2015). See, for example, Herfried Münkler, Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007). For the nineteenth century, see C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern State (Cambridge. UK: CUP, 2003). M.P. Cowen and R.W. Shenton, Doctrines of Development (London: Routledge, 1996), 280. P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (Harlow: Longman, 2002). See, respectively, Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Bismarck und der Imperialismus (Cologne: Kiepenhauer & Witsch, 1969); and Boris Barth, Die deutsche Hochfinanz und die Imperialismen: Banken und Aussenpolitik vor 1914 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995). Giovanni Busino, L’Italia di Vilfredo Pareto. Economia e società in un carteggio del 1873–1923 (Milan: Banca commerciale italiana, 1989), ch.3. Anderson, Imagined Communities; and Gellner, Nations and Nationalism. For an explicit statement, see John Breuilly, Nationalism and the State (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 8. Eric Hobsbawm, “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914,” in Eric Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1st edition 1983), 263–307, also in David Boswell and Jessica Evans, eds., Representing the Nation: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1999), 61–86; and E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Penguin, 1991). See, for instance, Rhiannon Welch, Vital Subjects: Race and Biopolitics in Italy (1860–1920) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016). See Benjamin J. Cohen, The Geography of Money (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998); and Eric Helleiner, The Making of National Money: Territorial Currencies in Historical Perspective (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). For this discussion, see chapter 9. For relevant observations, see Marc Flandreau, “Central Bank Cooperation in Historical Perspective: A Sceptical View,” Economic History Review 50, no. 4 (1997), 735–36; and G. Balachandran, “Legacies beyond Empire: Reflections on Doing International History from Geneva,” Revue Suisse d’Histoire 64, no. 2 (2014), 242. See P.J. Cain, “Capitalism, Aristocracy and Empire: Some ‘Classical’ Theories of Imperialism Revisited,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 35, no. 1 (2007), 38–41. For the argument about the state, see chapter 8.

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50 Duncan S.A. Bell, “Dissolving Distance: Technology, Space, and Empire in British Political Thought, 1770–1900,” Journal of Modern History 77, no. 3 (2005), 523–63. 51 Hopkins, A.G., American Empire, 30 and 284. 52 See chapter 3. 53 See, for instance, Sidney Pollard, ed., Region und Industrialisierung: Studien zur Rolle der Region in der Wirtschaftsgeschichte der letzten zwei Jahrhunderte / Region and Industrialisation: Studies on the Role of the Region in the Economic History of the Last Two Centuries (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980). 54 Martin Lynn, “From Sail to Steam: The Impact of the Steamship Services on the British Palm Oil Trade with West Africa 1850–1890,” Journal of African History 30, no. 2 (1989), 227–45. 55 For the episodes mentioned in this paragraph, see chapter 2. 56 For the arguments sketched out in this and the next paragraph, see chapter 3. 57 As introductions to a vast literature see: Frederic C. Lane, Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973); Barbara Harlow and Mia Carter, Archives of Empire, vol. 1 (From the East India Company to the Suez Canal) (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2003–4); Victor Lieberman, “Transcending East-West Dichotomies: State and Culture Formation in Six Ostensibly Disparate Areas,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997), 463–546; Seymour Drescher, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Anti-Slavery (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2009); and Richard B. Allen, European Slave Trading in the Indian Ocean, 1500–1850 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2014). 58 Carlo M. Cipolla, Conquistadores, pirati, mercatanti. La saga dell’argento spagnuolo (Bologna: Mulino, 1st Italian ed.1996). 59 Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1988). 60 Geoffrey Parker, “The ‘Military Revolution,’ 1550–1650 – A Myth?,” Journal of Modern History 48, no. 2 (1976), 213; and Oliver Volckhart, “Early Beginnings of the Quantity Theory of Money and Their Context in Polish and Prussian Monetary Policies, c. 1520–1550,” Economic History Review 50, no. 3 (1997), 430–49. 61 Hopkins, An Economic History, ch.4. 62 A.G. Kenwood and A.L. Lougheed, The Growth of the International Economy, 1820–1980: An Introductory Text (London: Unwin Hyman, 1983), chs.4–7. 63 Marc Flandreau and Clement Jobst, “The Ties that Divide: A Network Analysis of the International Monetary System, 1890–1910,” Journal of Economic History 65, no. 4 (2005), 977–1006; Flandreau, “Central Bank Cooperation,” 735–63; and Filippo Cesarano, Monetary Theory and Bretton Woods: The Construction of an International Monetary Order (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2006). 64 Cohen, The Geography of Money, 32–4; and Helleiner, The Making of National Money, ch.7. 65 Arthur Crump, “The Baring Financial Crisis,” Economic Journal 1, no. 2 (1891), 392–3. 66 Bertrand Badie, The Imported State: The Westernization of the Political Order (English ed.: Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000); and Andreas Wimmer, “Globalizations avant la lettre: A Comparative View of Isomorphization and Heteromorphization in an Inter-Connecting World,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43, no. 3 (2001), 435–66. 67 Krozewski, “Problematizing.”

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68 Gerold Krozewski, Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–58 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), ch.5. 69 Bernhard Dernburg, Zielpunkte des deutschen Kolonialwesens (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Sohn, 1907). 70 See chapter 3. 71 These connections are not fully explored in Conrad, Globalisation. 72 Notker Hammerstein, Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in der Weimarer Republic und im Dritten Reich: Wissenschaftspolitik in Republik und Diktatur, 1920–1945 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999). 73 For the programme, see Albert Sarraut, La mise en valeur des colonies françaises (Paris: Payot, 1923), 15–33. 74 As evidence see, for instance, Hjalmar Schacht, “Germany’s Colonial Demands,” Foreign Affairs 15, no. 2 (1937). 75 In that respect the argument complements ch.3 of Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Contain World Population (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press for Harvard University Press, 2008). 76 Gerold Krozewski, “Ineguaglianza e ordine internazionale: Corrado Gini e le norme dello sviluppo moderno,” Afriche e Orienti [Bologna, Italy], 12, no. 3 (2011), 140–60. 77 Odon Por, Materie prime ed autarchia (Rome: Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista, 1937). 78 Note the “Milward thesis,” for which see chapter 8. 79 François Bloch-Lainé, “Etudes sur les zones monétaires,” Revue économique 4, no. 6 (1953); and Pierre Moussa, Les chances économiques de la communauté franco-africaine (Paris: A. Colin, 1957). 80 Fernando Rosas, História de Portugal: o Estado Novo (1926–1974) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1993), 479–94; also Adelino Torres, “Pacto colonial e industrialização de Angola (anos 60–70),” Análise Social 19, no. 77-78-79 (1983), 1101–19, and Maria Eugénia Mata, “Reorganizing the Escudo Zone: Portuguese Monetary Policy and Empire-Union in Africa in the 1960s,” in Gerold Krozewski and Tinashe Nyamunda, eds., Transnational Money and the Formation of Economies and States in Africa, 1860s–1960s, Forum Issue, African Studies Review (2023 forthcoming). 81 Among others, Schacht and Helfferich were ministers of finance; the latter was also a civil servant for colonial affairs. Leith-Ross was chief economic adviser to the British government, and also a “money doctor” for the League of Nations. Bloch-Lainé was head of the French Trésor. 82 Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). 83 Peter Cain, “Capitalism, War and Internationalism in the Thought of Richard Cobden,” British Journal of International Studies 5, no. 3 (1979), 220–47; and Anna Plassart, “‘Un impérialiste liberal?’: Jean-Baptiste Say on colonies and the extra-European world,” French Historical Studies 32, no. 2 (2009), 223–50. 84 Walter B. Wriston, The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution is Transforming Our World (New York: Scribner, 1992). 85 See chapter 3. 86 Arguments by contemporary thinkers like J.S. Mill and Paul Leroy-Beaulieu are relevant here. For examples, see also Gerold Krozewski, “Contextualising Violence in Colonial Africa – European National Development, Empire, and Lineages of Conflict,” Development Dialogue no. 50 (2008), 53–74. 87 See esp. chapters 3, 5, and 8.

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88 See for instance, G. Balachandran, John Bullion’s Empire: Britain’s Gold Problem and India between the Wars (London: Curzon, 1996, new edition Routledge, 2015); Olivier Accominotti, Marc Flandreau, Riad Rezzik, and Frédéric Zumer, “Black Man’s Burden, White Man’s Welfare: Control, Devolution, and Development in the British Empire, 1880–1914,” European Review of Economic History 14 (2009), 47–70; also Krozewski, Money. 89 See chapter 5. 90 Sheila Jasanoff, “Biotechnology and Empire: The Global Power of Seeds and Science,” Osiris 21, no. 1 (2006), 273–92. 91 See chapter 9.

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Cowen, M.P. and R.W. Shenton, Doctrines of Development (London: Routledge, 1996). Crump, Arthur, “The Baring Financial Crisis,” Economic Journal 1, no. 2 (1891), 392–393. 10.2307/2956257 Dernburg, Bernhard, Zielpunkte des deutschen Kolonialwesens (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Sohn, 1907). Drayton, Richard, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). Drescher, Seymour, Abolition: A History of Slavery and Anti-Slavery (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2009). Escobar, Arturo, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Evans, Peter, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back in (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1985). Flandreau, Marc, “Central Bank Cooperation in Historical Perspective: A Sceptical View,” Economic History Review 50, no. 4 (1997), 735–763. 10.1111/1468-0289.00076 Flandreau, Marc and Clement Jobst, “The Ties that Divide: A Network Analysis of the International Monetary System, 1890–1910,” Journal of Economic History 65, no. 4 (2005), 977–1006. 10.1017/S0022050705000379 Gellner, Ernest, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008, 1st ed. 1983). Grassi, Fabio, “L’industria tessile e l’imperialismo italiano in Somalia (1896–1911),” Storia Contemporanea 4, no. 4 (1973), 713–738. Hall, Catherine, ed., Cultures of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). Hall, John A. and G. John Ikenberry, The State: Concepts in Social Science (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1989). Hammerstein, Notker, Die Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft in der Weimarer Republic und im Dritten Reich: Wissenschaftspolitik in Republik und Diktatur, 1920–1945 (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1999). Hardt, Michael and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2000). Harlow, Barbara and Mia Carter, Archives of Empire, vol. 1 (From the East India Company to the Suez Canal) (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2003-4). Helleiner, Eric, The Making of National Money: Territorial Currencies in Historical Perspective (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003). Hobsbawm, E.J., Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1990). Hobsbawm, Eric, “Mass-Producing Traditions: Europe, 1870–1914,” in Eric Hobsbawm, Ericand Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1st edition 1983), 263–307. Hobsbawm, Eric, “Mass-Producing Traditions. Europe, 1870–1914,” in David Boswell and Jessica Evans, eds., Representing the Nation: A Reader (London: Routledge, 1999), 61–86. Hopkins, A.G., An Economic History of West Africa (London: Longman, 1st ed. 1973; revised edition Routledge 2020). Hopkins, A.G., American Empire: A Global History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018).

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Jasanoff, Sheila, “Biotechnology and Empire: The Global Power of Seeds and Science,” Osiris 21, no. 1 (2006), 273–292. 10.1086/507145 Jones, Charles, The Pattern of International Business (New York: New York University Press, 1987). Kenwood, A.G. and A.L. Lougheed, The Growth of the International Economy, 1820–1980: An Introductory Text (London: Unwin Hyman, 1983). Krozewski, Gerold, Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–58 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001). Krozewski, Gerold, “Contextualising Violence in Colonial Africa – European National Development, Empire, and Lineages of Conflict,” Development Dialogue no. 50 (2008), 53–74. Krozewski, Gerold, “Problematizing an ‘Imperialism of Intent’: Colonial Raw Materials, Globalism, and European Nation States, from the pre-1914 Period to the 1930s,” in Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell, eds., Africa, Empire and Globalization (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 357–376. Krozewski, Gerold, “Ineguaglianza e ordine internazionale: Corrado Gini e le norme dello sviluppo moderno,” Afriche e Orienti [Bologna, Italy], 12, no. 3 (2011), 140–160. Lane, Frederic C., Venice: A Maritime Republic (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). Lieberman, Victor, “Transcending East-West Dichotomies: State and Culture Formation in Six Ostensibly Disparate Areas,” Modern Asian Studies 31, no. 3 (1997), 463–546. 10.1017/S0026749X00017054 Lieven, Dominic, “The Russian Empire and the Soviet Union as Imperial Polities,” Journal of Contemporary History 30, no. 4 (1995), 607–636. 10.1177/ 002200949503000403 Lynn, Martin, “From Sail to Steam: The Impact of the Steamship Services on the British Palm Oil Trade with West Africa 1850–1890,” Journal of African History 30, no. 2 (1989), 227–245. 10.1017/S0021853700024117 Maier, Charles S. Leviathan 2.0 (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012). Mann, Michael, States, War and Capitalism (Oxford: OUP, 1988). Marseille, Jacques, “L’industrie cotonnière française et l’impérialisme colonial de 1885 à 1970,” Revue d’histoire économique et sociale 53, no. 2-3 (1975), 386–412. Mata, Maria Eugénia, “Reorganizing the Escudo Zone: Portuguese Monetary Policy and Empire-Union in Africa in the 1960s,” in Gerold Krozewski and Tinashe Nyamunda, eds., Transnational Money and the Formation of Economies and States in Africa, 1860s–1960s, Forum Issue, African Studies Review (2023 forthcoming). Mehta, Uday Singh, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). Moussa, Pierre, Les chances économiques de la communauté franco-africaine (Paris: A. Colin, 1957). Münkler, Herfried, Empires: The Logic of World Domination from Ancient Rome to the United States (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2007). O’Rourke, Kevin H. and Jeffrey G. Williamson, “When Did Globalization Begin?” European Review of Economic History 6 (2002), 23–50. 10.1017/S13 61491602000023 Osterhammel, Jurgen, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).

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Parker, Geoffrey, The Military Revolution and the Rise of the West, 1500–1800 (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1988). Parker, Geoffrey, “The ‘Military Revolution,’ 1550–1650 – A Myth?,” Journal of Modern History 48, no. 2 (1976), 195–214. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1879826 Pedersen, Susan, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2015). Plassart, Anna, “‘Un impérialiste liberal?’: Jean-Baptiste Say on colonies and the extra-European world,” French Historical Studies 32, no. 2 (2009), 223–250. 10.1215/00161071-2008-018 Poggi, Gianfranco, The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1990). Pollard, Sidney, ed., Region und Industrialisierung: Studien zur Rolle der Region in der Wirtschaftsgeschichte der letzten zwei Jahrhunderte / Region and Industrialisation: Studies on the Role of the Region in the Economic History of the Last Two Centuries (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980). Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: Europe, China, and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). Por, Odon, Materie prime ed autarchia (Rome: Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista, 1937). Roberts, Lissa, “Situating Science in Global History: Local Exchanges and Networks of Circulation,” Itinerario 33, no. 1 (2009), 9–30. 10.1017/S01651153 00002680 Rosas, Fernando, História de Portugal: o Estado Novo (1926–1974) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1993). Said, Edward, Orientalism (London: Penguin, 1st ed. 1977). Sarraut, Albert, La mise en valeur des colonies françaises (Paris: Payot, 1923). Schacht, Hjalmar, “Germany’s Colonial Demands,” Foreign Affairs 15, no. 2 (1937), 223–234. 10.2307/20028761 Schumpeter, Joseph A., The Sociology of Imperialisms. In Imperial & Social Classes (Cleveland and New York: Meridian Books, 1955); original German edition Zur Soziologie der Imperialismen (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1919). Scott, James C., Seeing Like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998). Slobodian, Quinn, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberallism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Sunseri, Thaddeus, “The Baumwollfrage: Cotton Colonialism in German East Africa,” Central European History 34, no. 1 (2001), 31–51. 10.1163/156916101 750149121 Sylla, Richard and Gianni Toniolo, eds., Patterns of European Industrialization: The Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1991). Thackeray, David, Forging a British World Trade: Culture, Ethnicity, and Market in the Empire-Commonwealth, 1880–1975 (Oxford: OUP 2019). Thompson, E.P., The Making of the English Working Class (London: Penguin, 1991). Torres, Adelino, “Pacto colonial e industrialização de Angola (anos 60–70),” Análise Social 19, no. 77-78-79 (1983), 1101–1119. https://www.jstor.org/stable/ 41010443 Tworek, Heidi J.S., News from Germany: The Competition to Control World Communications, 1900–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019).

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Van Creveld, Martin, The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1999). Volckhart, Oliver, “Early Beginnings of the Quantity Theory of Money and Their Context in Polish and Prussian Monetary Policies, c. 1520–1550,” Economic History Review 50, no. 3 (1997), 430–449. 10.1111/1468-0289.00063 Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, Bismarck und der Imperialismus (Cologne: Kiepenhauer & Witsch, 1969). Welch, Rhiannon, Vital Subjects: Race and Biopolitics in Italy (1860–1920) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2016). Wenzlhuemer, Roland, Connecting the Nineteenth-Century World: The Telegraph and Communications (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2013). Wimmer, Andreas, “Globalizations avant la lettre: A Comparative View of Isomorphization and Heteromorphization in an Inter-Connecting World,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43, no. 3 (2001), 435–466. 10.1017/ S0010417501004182 Wriston, Walter B., The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution is Transforming Our World (New York: Scribner, 1992).

Part 2

From interconnected regions to state formation in the globe

2

The world as Europe’s crisis and opportunity: Economic relations, 1860s–1900s

In the course of the nineteenth century, the world’s political map became redrawn, notably with the emergence of the Italian and German nationstates in Europe and the occupation of colonial territories in Africa and Asia by Britain, France, Italy, and Germany. Countries in Western Europe industrialized and diversified yet at the same time became more integrated and globally exposed than before. Economies on the continent moved away from agriculture, branching out into industrial sectors: first textiles, and in the last three decades of the century food processing, metal engineering, and chemical industries. In Britain, meanwhile, where textile manufacturing had been well established, the second half of the century saw the emergence of a pronounced economic duality between manufacturing in the North of England and global trading and financial services based in London. The twin processes of economic diversification and globalization impacted on the organization of economies and labour in nation-states, and affected migration movements and food sources. Regional economies were transformed as global exchanges intensified in scope and scale in line with the expanding resource environment, from agricultural raw materials to minerals, due to technical innovation and its diffusion. From the 1860s onwards, telegraph communications and steamship and railway transport changed the manner in which the nutritional needs of growing populations in Europe were met from overseas sources. Western European industrialization, though initially mainly regionally financed, eventually prompted a worldwide expansion of trading and banking services. The result was considerable financial integration and accumulation in the major economies. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the capital exports by the principal Western economies amounted to 4 or 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP), and in the case of Britain of up to 10 percent, exceeding the corresponding shares of the 1990s.1 Yet the processes of economic diversification, on the one hand, and economic interconnectedness and integration, on the other, were uneven. The envisaged unified world economy did not materialize but differentiated according to geographies of development across the world. DOI: 10.4324/9781003346425-4

44

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It will be argued in this and the following chapter that overseas relationships became a constitutive part of the gradual transformation of European economies into national economies in the late nineteenth century, and of states into nation-states.2 From the 1880s, new economic sectors formed often emerging from older regional clusters of specialized entrepreneurial activities. In some cases, global connections boosted regional economies. This applied, among others, to the port cities of Hamburg and Marseille, and to the textile producers of the Vosges region of France. In other cases, development was largely self-contained, as in Lombardy in the 1890s. Regional-global relationships subsequently fused with the formation of national economies and nation-states in Europe. In the wake of regional economic diversification and globalization, states increasingly adopted a conscious role in managing economies. For polities driven by the notion of progress, the tropics were an untapped reservoir of resources and a horizon for advancing scientific knowledge. Global interaction, moreover, posed questions of macroeconomic management and global governance, notably in terms of currency standards and trade regimes. From the 1890s onwards, the changing global environment prompted the emergence of a parallel trajectory of developmental designs. The management of nation-states needed to engage with processes of global integration. As regional development expanded to a national scale, the interaction between regional entrepreneurship with a global reach and national political forces became part of the power structure of modern states. Two tangents are important here. The study of transnational relationships gained prominence in expertise on economies and the welfare of mass societies. Experts debated the transition from “old” to “new” social forces and polities, often with reference to Britain as the model of development. Moreover, tropical regions became associated with the quest for controlling nation-states and defining their welfare. As a consequence, overseas relations became a factor that projected control into the world in terms of national governance, social relations, and territory. The crises of industrialization and discontent prompted by economic liberalization shaped the engagement with the overseas world in Europe. This chapter begins by discussing economic globalization and diversification. The analysis first establishes the patterns in which globalization related to regional economies in Europe, prefiguring an economic geography of national overseas relations that was consolidated in the 1900s. The narrative continues to discuss the crises emanating from the globalization of food supplies in the 1870s and the world financial crisis in 1890. A separate section weaves expert opinions into the argument in order to chart the structural problems for individual polities in engaging with a new global environment. The narrative then turns to the entrepreneurial forces that underpinned overseas and colonial relationships between the 1860s and 1880s. Globalization importantly involved private

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firms engaging in trade in foodstuffs, textile manufacturing, and banking. Entrepreneurs in new economic sectors were deemed by experts to be the innovative impulse of state progress. The integration of regional economies as national economies was also shaped by the specificities of these sectors and their influence on states. It will be demonstrated how tropical Africa and Asia related to Europe in this process, by adopting a regional perspective on France, focusing on Hamburg in Germany, and drawing comparisons with the Italian regions of Liguria and Lombardy. In the period down to the late 1880s, private-public relations impelled state formation. Subsequently, the functional and developmental nation-state came into its own, partly by co-opting territory overseas. The discussion of this dimension of state formation between the 1890s and 1910s will be the subject of the next chapter.

Overseas supplies, regional economies, and crises of globalization Linkages between economic globalization and the differentiation of economic sectors and regions will be investigated in three steps. The discussion first addresses the structural aspects and phases of globalization in communication and transport and how these affected world trade, especially between the tropics and Europe. These changes reconfigured how overseas supplies entered considerations about the formation of economies in Europe in the 1890s and 1900s. Secondly, the ways in which global supplies of food and raw materials involved regions will be related to emerging patterns of industrialization in Europe. Yet the progressive acceleration of globalization ought not to be confused with global economic integration or seen as triggering the integration of national economies in Europe. In this light, the discussion focuses on the crises provoked by globalization: importantly, the effects on European agriculture of the worldwide trade in food, on labour migration connected to industrialization, and on the global financial crises of the late 1880s and early 1890s. Global interaction accelerated in the second half of the nineteenth century. By the early twentieth century, contemporaries observed that the globe had become a “closed system.”3 An organizational speeding up of communications within Europe and in its overseas communications occurred already between the 1820s and 1850s. The steamship followed by the telegraph, and the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, then hastened the process. The communication network of the telegraphs that connected coasts and oceans for world trade became operational in a comprehensive manner within about 15 years between 1865 and 1880. Shipping and railway lines were less quickly established. The first transoceanic cables crossed the Atlantic between Britain and the Americas in the 1860s, after the Channel cable had linked Britain with France in 1851. Other communication lines setting out from Britain followed in quick succession:

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a trans-Siberian land cable in the 1860s, subsequently extended to Nagasaki in Japan; and the cable from Britain to Bombay (Mumbai) and Calcutta (Kolkata) in India in 1870, extended to Singapore, Hong Kong, and Shanghai in 1871, joining the continental Asian route at Nagasaki. An extension to Australia followed in 1872, and the Indian Ocean connection obtained a branch from Aden along the East African coast to Durban in South Africa in 1879.4 In 1870, telegraph communications to London took on average a mere two days from New York or Calcutta, and four days from Cape Town.5 The telegraph also made the management of shipping and port facilities more flexible and efficient.6 For an argument about the emergence of inter-related economic spaces, however, the acceleration of communications is less important than institutional change. New specialized commercial and financial services affected the form of economic integration and nation-state agency in Western Europe. While in the 1870s and 1880s the physical transport of overseas goods was still removed by weeks or months from prospective purchasers in Europe, the information regarding these goods was quickly available. As a result, trading techniques changed, and ultimately the multilateralization of trading networks became possible.7 Servicing trade, moreover, could become disconnected from its physical handling. Therefore, London could become the financial hub for commercial and banking services in the last quarter of the century.8 Forward trading emerged on Europe’s main commodity exchanges in London, Berlin, Paris, Rotterdam, and Liverpool. Goods and customers could be matched in advance. For example, traders made forward transactions via telegraph, so that goods destined for Africa could be sold while the cargo from Africa was en route to Europe. The result was more flexibility in the conduct of trade and an increase in profit margins.9 In West Africa, in the 1900s, while specie (in this case silver coin) was shipped for investment in Britain between seasons, traders made transactions for remittances by cable without involving any physical money flow.10 Similar practices of forward trading rapidly emerged in India, also involving South Asian traders in the Red Sea region.11 In South and Southeast Asia, improved communications triggered a boom in the involvement of foreign banking services, mainly from Europe, and some from the United States and Japan. It was now possible to carry out transcontinental business operations from one centre. Consequently, trading became less reliant on local intermediaries and now directly involved British imperial banks, such as the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank, the Chartered Bank of India, and Lloyds, but also the French Comptoir National d’Escompte de Paris and the German Deutsche Asiatische Bank, besides Yokohama Specie Bank from Japan and the National City Bank of New York.12 The facility of exchanges across the globe from the 1860s fuelled demand for new sources of supply and the quest for tropical resources by

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industrializing countries in Europe. As a result, new patterns formed in the ways in which supplies and consumption were mediated by economic sectors, regions, and transport links. Industrialization and urbanization increased the physical distance between producer and consumer, enhancing the role of retailing and markets. In turn, food processing emerged as an industry. As transport costs decreased, certain staple foods were shipped across the globe. Britain’s move to free trade set the trend from the 1840s after the repeal of the Corn Laws, inspired by Richard Cobden’s campaigns in the name of industry against the landed aristocracy in England.13 Moreover, dietary habits changed. A growing segment of the population in Britain, and in Germany and France later, consumed larger quantities of fats, sugar, and meat, in the last decades of the century.14 The trend had implications for the management of economies and transnational relations. An essential part of these now highly coveted components of the diet came from overseas sources. The mirror image of this trend was the steadily decreasing share of domestic supplies in the provision of food. The situation was most marked in Britain, where the local production of wheat and meat had decreased to a level of 20 percent for the former and 50 percent for the latter by the early 1900s.15 Fats and oils were mainly shipped from the tropics. From the 1880s, in turn, fat consumption in Western Europe moved away from animal fats and towards tropical vegetable fats.16 The new demand was importantly met from sources in West Africa and Central Africa, regions at the Guinea coast, and from the Congo, in addition to established provisions from South Asia. Supplies were mainly transported to Liverpool, Marseille, and Hamburg. Oil from palm kernels (palm seeds) or palm oil from the pulp, which required no crushing and refining but merely pressing, was used in soap as well as in food production, notably margarine, a process invented in 1867. British interests in palm oil from West Africa date back to the early nineteenth century. Germany principally imported palm kernels from West Africa, increasingly from the 1880s. However, West African palm oil exports stagnated between 1870 and 1900 as alternatives for candle production became available and petroleum lighting was introduced. In the Congo, too, the main export commodity in the late nineteenth century was palm oil before it was overtaken by wild rubber. In 1890, more than half of all the exports from the Congo Free State still consisted of palm kernels or palm oil. France, which, like Italy, had an important olive oil industry, imported groundnut oil from areas stretching from the Senegalese coast inland. Groundnuts required no refining and could be used for food as well as soap production.17 As meat consumption in Britain soared, supplies of chilled meat and livestock came principally from Argentina, which also provided significant quantities of wheat as British imports from the United States decreased in the 1900s. In 1904, Britain imported one-third of its fresh

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From regions to states in the globe

Brazil Sierra Leone Nigeria Gold Coast Belgian Congo French Togo French Cameroun French West Africa

0

500

1000

1500

2000

Figure 2.1 Exports by Main World Producers of Palm Oil (1909–1913 Average in Thousands of Metric Quintals). Source: Based on data in League of Nations, International Statistical Yearbook 1926, 70.

meat from Argentina, complemented by substantial livestock imports, and about a quarter from Australia and New Zealand. A commentator assessing Britain’s import dependence on food for the Economic Journal in 1905 shuddered, when calculating the combined killing capacity of Argentina’s slaughterhouses to be 125 animals per minute in 1903.18 France met its increasing demand in livestock from colonial sources of supply, from which it received between two-thirds and three-quarters of its total livestock imports in the 1890s and 1900s.19 Local production levels in France, Germany, and Italy, though, were much higher in relative terms than those in Britain. Sugar imports to Europe, meanwhile, originated primarily from the tropical suppliers in the Caribbean and the Dutch East Indies. By 1913, France obtained its entire import of raw sugar from colonial sources.20 The exception was Germany, which by the 1890s had become the world’s third-largest sugar exporter, based on beet sugar and some refining of imported cane sugar.21 A part from the food-related agricultural commodities, three other categories of produce require analysis: raw cotton, rubber, and minerals. Minerals had been a part of global exchanges since centuries, notably silver-based currencies were crucial to settle payments in commerce.22 In the nineteenth century, gold took this path, when Britain moved to the gold standard in 1815 and other European countries followed in the midcentury. New gold discoveries were made in Southern Africa and Australia from the 1880s, intensifying debates about currency standards in the world

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Table 2.1 Selected Raw Material Imports by France from Its Colonies, 1880–1938, as a Percentage of Total Imports in Each Category

Grain Rice Cocoa Palm kernels/Groundnuts Sugar Minerals/Metals Raw cotton Rubber Livestock

1880

1890

1913

1929

1938

5.4 15.8 3.0 17.1 36.4 6.3 n.a n.a. 15.0

10.2 11.1 3.8 17.8 71.8 1.8 n.a. n.a. 63.8

12.1 85.3 2.2 25.1 100 3.2 0.1 14.1 63.1

29.4 80.1 56.1 25.0 16.5 8.6 2.2 9.3 n.a.

80.5 93.7 88.4 54.4 77.8 5.6 3.6 25.1 n.a.

Source: Based on Jacques Marseille, “Les relations commerciales entre la France et son empire colonial de 1880 à 1913,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 31, no.2 (1984), 294; and Marseille, “Colonisation, décolonisation et capitalisme,” Vingtième Siècle 4 (1984), 41.

economy. Investment in gold mining augmented the supply of gold and fed back into the operation of the gold standard. However, other minerals became important only in stages, with the exploitation of diamonds in South Africa (Kimberley) in the 1880s and in Southwest Africa in 1908. Copper in South-Central Africa and the Congo followed gradually from 1902 onwards. The globalization of mineral resources was related principally to the expansion of Britain’s influence. Most mineral resources were within or in the borderlands of the British empire and influenced continental European economies only indirectly. The extent to which the discovery of minerals was demand-driven is a controversial subject.23 Nevertheless, it is clear that economies in Europe and South Africa also became entangled with speculative investment in mining shares on stock exchanges in both regions. Demand for rubber increased substantially only from the 1890s, notably for bicycle tyres and engines in industry, affecting Europe’s relations with the Congo, Southeast Asia (Malaya and Java), and Indochina. The resulting boom first took the form of the collection of wild rubber, spreading from Amazonia to the Congo and West Africa from the end of the 1880s. In the Congo, plunder for extraction intensified from 1896. Within ten years, rubber became the Congo’s main export commodity, increasing tenfold.24 Rubber was also sought in the interior of the Guinea coast.25 However, in the case of King Leopold’s Congo before 1908, rubber extraction was an incidental means to generate pecuniary income and provided opportunities for self-enrichment rather than relating to a clearly-defined commercial network or economic project in Belgium.26 The plantation production of rubber gained momentum only from the 1900s onwards, notably in Southeast Asia (Malaya, Java) and in Indochina.27

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Demand for diversifying raw cotton supplies away from North America, however, started much earlier, following the shock of shortages during the American civil war and the spread of textile manufacturing in Europe from the 1860s. In the established pattern, American raw cotton was shipped to Liverpool and from there served Lancashire textile manufacturers. Liverpool became the major cotton exchange, also for supplying continental European cotton textile firms.28 A twofold trend occurred from the 1870s. On the one hand, the sources of cotton shipped to Liverpool became more varied, including not only the United States and India but also Egypt. On the other hand, some continental European manufacturers turned to purchasing raw cotton directly overseas. From the 1880s, for instance, German firms bought supplies in India.29 In this manner, the trade in raw cotton became less centred on Britain and less uniform. What is more, the quest to diversify supplies prompted the search for new producers, especially in the 1900s. Tropical Africa became an area deemed fit for the expansion of cotton growing in plantations. By the 1910s, European textile manufacturers obtained their raw cotton from a variety of sources, including India, Egypt, West and East Africa, the Horn of Africa, Indochina, and Brazil. Nonetheless, in the case of France, compared to food and vegetable oils and fats, the share of raw cotton imports from the colonies was insignificant: it amounted to no more than 2 and 3 percent between 1880 and 1913.30 Overseas outlets, meanwhile, were important especially in the case of the British empire, where the settler colonies in the Pacific and the Dominion of Canada were the main buyers of British manufactures, notably agricultural machinery and consumer goods. Tropical regions were less important as markets for Europe. The exception was textiles. In the second half of the nineteenth century, India became the most important market for Lancashire cotton textile manufacturers, in spite of the growth in local textile production.31 From the 1880s, France exported a significant share of cotton textiles and yarn produced in the regions of the Vosges and around Lyon to the colonies. A third of all cotton textile exports from France went to the colonies in 1890 and 1913 respectively, and almost half of the total in 1900. The percentages for sugar and soap exports were also particularly high.32 Financial services independent of specific trade flows evolved since the mid-nineteenth century. By the 1890s, foreign indirect investment managed on Western stock exchanges had become a significant factor in the economies of Britain, Germany, and France. In Britain, one third of all investment was handled through the London stock exchange.33 There was a considerable concentration of capital in the Western world. In 1910, the portfolios of the London Stock Exchange comprised 24 percent British investment, but also 21 percent from the United States, 18 percent from France, and 16 percent from Germany.34 In Britain, the financial and service sector was now the principal sector of the economy whose

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invisible incomes compensated for the deteriorating performance in the visible balance of trade in manufactures.35 In the late nineteenth century, more than 40 percent of British indirect investment went to the empire. The pattern of cosmopolitan indirect investment linked back to the quest for overseas resources, their exploitation and transportation, through investment in the construction of harbours and railways and raw materials extraction.36 Regional development in Europe interacted with global economic networks as economies diversified during industrialization. Regional angles of analysis have been acknowledged, though quantitative research on economic growth in Europe adopted a national focus largely because of the convenience of available national statistics collected for a projected integrated nation-state.37 From the 1870s onwards, the maritime transport sector and the commercial sector expanded, centring on the main harbours: apart from London, Liverpool, Newcastle, and Rotterdam, now also Marseille and Bordeaux in France, and Hamburg and Bremen in Germany. In the Italian province of Liguria, too, the shipping sector grew in the 1870s, and established ties to the shipbuilding and metal sector in the 1880s. Regions in different continents also linked up with the emerging sectors of food processing. West African oil and fat sources, in addition to those from India, supplied food and soap manufacturers, like Lever in Northwest England. In the North of the new German state, firms processing dairy products emerged that used vegetable oils from the tropics imported through Hamburg.38 And the port of Marseille supplied the food and soap industries in the South of France, mainly with produce from West Africa.39 Sector-specific market connections also existed between textile manufactures in Lancashire and India, and those in the Vosges region of France and North Africa and Indochina from the 1880s onwards.40 For the textile sectors in Germany and Italy, East Africa and the Benadir coast (Somalia), respectively, attained some significance in the 1900s.41 As a consequence of the heightened presence of European traders, a duality emerged in some regions in Asia and Africa, notably in Indochina and in the Western Indian Ocean, between new trading networks geared towards Europe and regional ones. From the 1890s, Indochina became a part of a French network of imperial commerce.42 East Africa linked up more closely with British commercial networks only in the 1920s, though.43 Until the First World War, important exchanges occurred across the Indian Ocean with British India. Meanwhile, British trade with South America and Argentina in particular massively expanded. South American supplies were deemed secure due to the British navy’s control of the Atlantic.44 The evolving overseas relationships blended into the formation of national economies in Europe and country-specific paths of development. In France, textile manufacturing was the most important innovative and

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growth-oriented sector in terms of employment. Similarly, industries relying on colonial sources during the three decades before the First World War, namely food and rubber processing, and chemical industries using phosphates mined in North Africa, were the expanding competitive sectors of the economy.45 In Britain, by contrast, the role of the textile sector decreased relative to foreign producers. Moreover, while industries diversified, the role of manufacturing declined compared to the financial and service sector of the economy. In Italy and Germany, the path of development involved the incorporation of regional economies within the new political entity of the nationstate. Regarding Germany, the question was not only how Hamburg’s overseas commerce related to a regional economy, but also how it connected to the building of the national economy. In the 1870s and early 1880s, growth in commerce in a widening global context became an important factor creating a diversified economy. By the 1890s, however, manufacturing across a range of sectors, from metal industries and engineering to chemical industries and food processing, had grown considerably and was beginning to compete successfully in export markets, including in Britain and the United States.46 The Italian peninsula, by contrast, remained economically fragmented even after the formation of the Italian state in 1860. Overseas commerce mainly involved Liguria and the region around Genoa in Piedmont. A marked separation in terms of economic growth and industrialization in the triangle Milan-Turin-Genoa in the North occurred only from the mid1890s. However, this development was arguably more diverse than conveyed in classical accounts of Italy’s economic development, namely Marxisant studies of an industrial bloc of industrial capitalism or Alexander Gerschenkron’s paradigm of the decisive influence of joint-stock banks on industrialization.47 Rather, industrialization occurred in largely selfcontained regional contexts, notably in the Lombardian textile sector, with subsequent linkages to other sectors. Moreover, small businesses contributed substantially to economic growth.48 Connections with overseas commerce, resources, and markets to specific regions and eventually to the integration of an Italian national economy were much more limited than in Britain, France, and Germany. On the one hand, important linkages emerged between the rapidly developing heavy industry in the North and shipbuilding. On the other hand, until the mid-1910s, the expanding textile sector in Lombardy, unlike that in the Vosges, was geared towards markets in Italy and continental Europe, notably Germany. Overseas relationships were also mediated through the nexus of commerce and investment. Between the 1860s and 1880s (and in the British case earlier), the growth of imperial banking paralleled that in overseas commerce. In France and Germany, banking first served national traders. However, British imperial banks turned increasingly cosmopolitan, providing services as transnational actors. As the progressive integration of

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financial markets occurred in the late nineteenth century and stock exchanges in the West (and in Japan) gained significance, distinctions between individual countries dissolved in investment aggregates that transcended national boundaries.49 Nonetheless, some national and global-regional structuring pertained to stock exchanges. Investment in overseas transport in particular entered managerial decisions on the floating of loans which meshed with political considerations. A case in point is the difference between the close involvement of London finance in Argentina in the 1880s, and its reluctance to get involved in the Ottoman empire in the 1900s, unlike financiers in Berlin and Paris. Moreover, stock markets specialized, and were nationally regulated. Indirect investment in Russia was important on the Berlin stock exchange until 1887, when, as a consequence of new regulations aimed at reducing risk, this business shifted to Paris.50 The significance of foreign indirect investment, a hallmark of modern economies from the 1890s in the mirror image of Britain, varied considerably. Overseas investment in general was less important for the French and German economies than for Britain. In Italy, overseas finance occupied mere niches, as shown by the activities of the Bank of Rome in the Mediterranean and those of commercial, joint-stock banking in Milan from 1896.51 So far the narrative has emphasized structural changes in nineteenthcentury globalization as an example of widening economic opportunities. Yet it was globalization as a disruptive force, whether related to trade or finance, which heightened the political relevance of tropical regions for Europe. Cheap imports of agrarian produce, mainly of grain, from Russia and the United States in continental European markets from the late 1860s triggered a crisis of rural agriculture and employment.52 In Germany and Italy, this happened at a time when industry was still a marginal sector in the economy. Depending on when and where it occurred, the initial agrarian crisis in Europe had widely different repercussions. Two decades earlier, Britain’s endorsement of free trade had phased in the decline of the British landed aristocracy, segments of which, in turn, became significant players in London’s financial sector. The agrarian crisis occurred in the wake of the early globalization of food supplies, yet, in turn, ushered in Europe’s orientation towards food supplies from tropical regions for national economies before industrial competition intensified from the 1890s onwards. On the European continent, a dual dynamics was set in train: one was defined by the quest to reconfigure transnational economic relations and governance, with implications for economic protection and currency debates, the other by the search for resource reservoirs globally. For France, imports of wheat from colonial sources became essential, though protection only really mattered from the 1890s. Regarding Germany, the received historical account emphasized the alliances between “rye” and “iron” and protectionism, and those between heavy industry and finance in the economy.

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In this narrative, however, the analysis of overseas commerce appears to be insufficiently integrated with that of the formation of the national economy and the nation-state.53 In Italy, the agrarian crisis also triggered protection. But the move mainly affected the South, where emigration intensified at a time at which no vanguard industrial sector existed. Population growth in many European countries coincided with the depressing effect on rural agrarian production resulting from global trade in agrarian goods in the 1870s and 1880s, and impelled domestic, international, and intercontinental labour migration. The important exception was France, where population levels almost stagnated between 1866 and 1911.54 The failure to absorb growing populations in rural areas of Eastern Prussia-Germany and Northern Italy prompted emigration abroad and overseas after the 1830s.55 However, in Germany, emigration flows decreased from the 1890s, whereas in Italy, they focused on the rural South. The country continued to provide labour for overseas economies to such an extent that from 1887, migrants’ remittances made an important contribution to Italy’s balance of payments.56 Argentina became the destination of about a third of Italian emigrants in the 1890s and 1900s. Among others, these migrants became ranchers involved with the Argentine cattle industry.57 In the case of Germany, migration to the tropics was a residual category because of the dominance of the Americas as the recipient country of German migrants. Yet for this very reason, emigration entered debates about the need to create imperial polities that had been formulated in arguments about national economies in the midcentury. In the British case, emigration outside North America largely occurred in an imperial network, and differed in the sense that it involved mainly migrants from urban areas.58 The so-called colonies of settlement in Australasia and the Dominion of Canada received substantial numbers of British migrants. A financial crisis of globalization was epitomized by the shock to the world’s financial system in 1890–1891. Debt crises in overseas developing economies had occurred before, namely in Ottoman Egypt in the early 1870s, where debt was regulated under British occupation from 1881, and in South America in the mid-1870s.59 The crisis triggered by Argentina’s sovereign debt accumulated in the second half of the 1880s was different, however; it massively involved indirect investments from Britain, France, and Germany, notably in lending for railways.60 Argentina defaulted as the lending boom ended. The crash came because the country’s export-oriented development projects were slow in producing returns. As a result, the financial system based on London was on the verge of collapse.61 The crisis had been heightened by the use of new mortgage-related bonds. An accurate risk assessment was lacking at a time when Argentina’s boom was fuelled by information from investment banks largely unimpeded by regulation.62 Investment in Argentina had been so popular that, in 1889, it took up about 40 percent of all new investment on the London money

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market. When the crash occurred, the main holder of the Argentine sovereign debt, the investment bank, Barings, was unable to place this debt on the market and had to be bailed out. This was done jointly by the Bank of England, German banks, and the national banks of France and Russia in order to prevent a financial meltdown in Europe.64 The crisis revealed the hazards of poorly-monitored lending booms of the new concentrated financial markets that were becoming important for advanced economies. The Baring crisis remained largely confined to Latin America; its repercussions were not so much due to contagion as to the slowing down of financial flows and commerce in its aftermath.65 However, the rescue operation by the British government in the wider public interest even justified the fact that about half of the Bank of England’s capital was “locked up” in “unsellable securities.”66 Other financial crises, too, had repercussions on political and policy debates on how to reorder economies in Europe in the new globalization. In Egypt, in the 1870s, Britain and France cooperated in a formal debt administration in the 1880s. As a result, important parts of the Egyptian economy became owned by foreign banks. By 1911, France held 53 percent of the Egyptian debt and 50 percent of the stocks and bonds of local businesses.67 More generally, bracing against the side-effects of financial crisis could involve either the control of the investment mechanisms or sanctioning debtors. In a wider sense, this poses questions regarding the purpose of the governance of overseas economies and colonies in relation to national economies and thus of the ordering of knowledge, philanthropy, and self-interest, in the chaotic period of globalization before the First World War. These issues will be pursued in the next chapter.

Experts, universal development, and national progress Contemporary expert opinion engaged with the characteristics of globalization and the tropical world, considering strategies for steering embryonic national economies in Europe in their increasingly vulnerable external relationships. These assessments hinged on specific contexts, though Britain served as the model trajectory of modern development, especially in the mid-nineteenth century. From the 1890s, though, experts observed changes in Britain’s global relations, too. The discussion in this section concentrates on expert-practitioners with a vision of global relations and governance.68 Their views provide insight into the structural specificities of individual countries and periods. Their involvement with states, contemporary doctrines of development, and political opinion, offer convenient entry points for the discussion of private and public agency, social dynamics, and the politics of external relations. The analysis begins by linking expert opinion with the episodes and problems of globalization identified in the previous section.

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Subsequently, norms will be explored at the intersection between national and universal paths of development. The conclusion analyses how the selected expert views related to contemporary intellectual and political networks. While doctrines converged, political networks diverged according to national contexts. Arguments about global relationships in the late mid-nineteenth century followed the trends in industrialization and commerce. In France, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu’s major treatise of the history of colonization offered both an overall interpretation of global change and references to concrete events at the time, in the editions of 1874 and especially 1886.69 Beaulieu was professor of political economy at the Collège de France and editor of the weekly L’Économiste français. His work from the 1870s to his death in 1916 reflected the transformation of the global and national economic and social environment. Beaulieu’s views evolved from the thinking of his father-in-law, the engineer, economist, and politician, Michel Chevalier, rooted in the mid-century belief in scientific progress and open commerce, and epitomized by the Cobden-Chevalier treaty.70 Beaulieu offered an enthusiastic assessment of the role of trade in the British colonies of settlement, from Australasia to the Cape Colony in Africa and North America.71 Free-trading Singapore, he argued, had become one of the new “marvels” of the world.72 The Suez Canal had given a boost to British and French commerce as well as to capital exports conducive to encouraging further commercial exchanges.73 Open commerce and industrial growth would help to keep emigration at a level beneficial to countries in Europe as well as overseas. To be sure, commerce was at times prone to crisis, but these crises were temporary.74 There was, however, one crisis that Beaulieu singled out as permanent, that of agriculture.75 Progress in human society occurred in stages: as industry emerged, agriculture waned. The result was massive upheaval and human suffering; but these were unavoidable in the course of development.76 The inflow of cheap grain into Europe ushered in a profound yet inevitable transformation from the stage of agriculture to that of industry. As Europe was the first to embark on this course of modernity, the thrust of agricultural development would shift to other regions of the globe. For Beaulieu, the crisis was in fact an “agricultural revolution.” By the year 2000, all food would be produced from minerals, as a result of industrialization and scientific innovation. Beaulieu invoked Wilhelm Roscher’s view of the world’s historical transition from the “animal kingdom” and the “vegetable kingdom” to the “mineral kingdom.” Engaging with Cobdenism and free trade on the 50th anniversary of Britain’s abolition of the Corn Laws in 1896, Beaulieu emphasized, with hindsight, that the inherent forces of commerce and industry would have followed Cobden and Chevalier on the path towards free trade. Protection against cheap food imports was ultimately antimodern and related to the old landed classes.77

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Roscher followed Friedrich List in conceptualizing the evolution of Germany’s national economy before the unification of the state in 1871. His Nationalökonomik, written over a period of thirty years from the 1830s, was reprinted in numerous editions until the 1920s. In this connection, Roscher also theorized about emigration and colonial space.78 He based his arguments about national as well as global governance on the analysis of the rise of industry and the demise of agriculture, the globalization of agricultural markets, and rural surplus population and labour. In essence, this was the search for ways to spread a functioning capitalist modernity across the world. According to Beaulieu and Roscher, the demise of agriculture was reflected in population crises and emigration. Both thinkers followed Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the advocate of British colonial reform in the 1830s and 1840s, in analysing the modern problem of rising population levels and emigration. Roscher, writing in the context of the German states in the 1850s, observed that agricultural decline coincided with slow industrialization and rising population levels. The scenario was one of increasing competition on the labour market, decreasing wages, and rampant emigration; in short, the bloodletting of a forming nation.79 The argument also had a class component, because it was the labouring classes that were forced to emigrate rather than wealth-holders or entrepreneurs.80 Ultimately, this was the Malthusian spectre of social conflict as resources failed to keep up with population increases. Beaulieu echoed Roscher’s lament about a nation’s loss through emigration.81 Beaulieu, however, saw Germany also as proof that concerns about the negative effect of emigration could encourage the homeland’s propensity to marry and procreate.82 Beaulieu’s thinking shifted gradually from Malthusian views to the endorsement of natalism in the 1900s.83 Wakefield’s argument that emigration was necessary to stem poverty, given the decline of agricultural employment and rise of rural surplus labour appeared pertinent to Roscher and Beaulieu about thirty years later.84 The former established connections with the situation in East-Elbean Prussia; the latter stressed links to crises of employment more generally. The overseas world acquired a crucial role in policy designs aimed at solving population problems, in enhancing national prosperity, and in the process of universal modernization. The relevant arguments entwined trade, capital exports, and colonial economies, and advocated norms for states and societies to overcome old social forces through industrial modernity. When Roscher and Beaulieu discussed the socially disruptive effects of industrialization on the European continent, they stressed the benefits of both open commerce and the control over colonial economies. Roscher focused on a twin problem in the growing fork between industrial wealth and rural impoverishment. The increasing emigration of members of the middle class not only entailed a loss for the country’s wealth but also sharpened the antagonism between rich and poor within

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the country.85 In addition, as overpopulation reduced the welfare of the poor, so decreasing returns on investments affected the rich due to competition from an increasing number of investors. Having exhausted all profitable domestic niches, they placed their money abroad.86 Colonies would be a means of stopping the drain of wealth from the nation, both human and pecuniary. By ensuring a continued connection between emigrants and the home country, colonies would contribute to social harmony and counter moral degeneration at home. Yet colonies, rather than foreign lands as an outlet for emigrants would reinforce welfare in the home country as it supported industrialization, secured raw materials, and kept surplus savings within the nation.87 In this sense, colonies became an extension to the domestic economy. However, Roscher expressed no firm view on the question of free trade.88 Beaulieu essentially endorsed the theory of Jean-Baptiste Say, one of his predecessors in the chair of political economy at the Collège, namely that in a liberal economy all goods produced would necessarily be matched by consumption and savings, since ultimately all goods were bought with goods.89 According to Say’s Law, there could be no overproduction or under-consumption that paralyzed investment and wealth creation and meant that labour would lay idle. Supply creates its own demand. According to Beaulieu, however, this universal principle applied only to an open world economy. One could identify problems of overproduction in individual countries. Simply put, capital exports were, therefore, the means to prevent overproduction in a particular country, as the example of Britain showed.90 Investment would then find its most profitable outlet. Beaulieu referred to Robert Giffen’s calculation of Britain’s massive income from overseas investment.91 In line with the views of liberal and neoliberal economists one hundred years later, Beaulieu held that the “emigration” or “colonization” of capital would ultimately take the place of productive human emigration or colonization.92 The general public would contribute to capital exports and profitable overseas developments in infrastructure and agricultural production, from North and South America to Australasia. This investment would ultimately create new demand boosting European industrial exports. Income from capital exports also had the advantage of allowing a country to run a deficit in its visible trade balance. In principle, capital exports could go to any country, Beaulieu argued. Yet investment in colonies had the advantage of strengthening the nationstate. The French invested in their colonies because of their familiarity with the laws and customs there and their pride in supporting their nation.93 France’s modernization would benefit from colonies that provided raw materials and serve as markets, thus reinvigorating French industry.94 Beaulieu lived up to his dictum: at his death in 1916, about a quarter of his investment portfolio was in French colonial stock.95 Formulated in this way, Beaulieu’s ideas resemble the search for a territorially defined free

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trade area and extension of the domestic market. This progress required incorporating new territory into the principle of a liberal economic regime.96 Beaulieu found Cobden’s theory of free trade that rejected colonial acquisitions “wanting,” arguing that under certain economic conditions and in certain climates, resources needed to be organized by an external political authority.97 These visions of economic progress inevitably led to debates about the role of the modern state in economies, of which colonial rule was one aspect. For both Beaulieu and Roscher, the driving force in modern development ought to be the entrepreneur rather than the state. Roscher stressed the role of the assiduousness of industry and artisanship (Gewerbefleiß) as the central norm of progress in advanced societies, such as England. Colonies lacked this characteristic, though they reinforced it in their home country through their raw materials.98 In the early 1880s, Beaulieu was highly critical of the modern state in the form in which it was evolving in France and even in England. He thought that arguments comparing the existing state to a joint-stock company were mistaken, since the modern state was taking on altogether different features with its growing bureaucracy, taxation, and debt.99 The state was stifling the innovative energy of individual entrepreneurs and their firms. To achieve progress, these values needed to be preserved.100 Innovation was not a prerogative of states; their role was to oversee security, justice, the protection of individual liberty, and stability.101 Continuity would be found in the guidance provided by a business aristocracy, which “elective” states disrupted.102 Nonetheless, for Beaulieu, states did have a normative role to play, which consisted in creating the conditions and motivation for prosperity and perhaps even civilization, and in the planning, though not the financing or construction, of infrastructure.103 The state ought to assist the private sector in establishing these conditions for progress. The problem was that calls by Chevalier and J.S. Mill for such a moderate intervention by the state had been perverted. The state had turned from being an “auxiliary” of business into its “enemy.”104 Until the 1880s, writers in France and Germany engaged in wideranging discussions on human development in a changing world, influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment and the classical liberal economists in Britain. The experts who became important in Germany and Italy in the 1890s and 1900s belonged to a different period of industrial society; their economic analysis and engagement with the classics focused on specific problem solving. However, this thinking, too, was underpinned by broader assumptions about national development and the international order. Analytically, it is important to differentiate between views stressing the uses of colonies from those advocating protectionist economic policies and state-led development. For Beaulieu, colonies were ultimately a means to open up commerce and stimulate economic activity in France.105 His ideas

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resembled proposals in Britain for the reordering of the colonial empire under a common tariff.106 However, those British liberals who had turned political conservatives had, by the 1890s, also come to endorse constructive imperial development by the state. The opinion of prominent liberal economists in Italy in the 1890s differed. They rejected both protectionism and the acquisition of a colonial empire. Vilfredo Pareto, the economic expert and political observer, castigated the Italian state as irrational and wasteful. The state, Pareto argued, engaged in economically useless territorial expansion in Africa and turned to protectionism as a panacea.107 In his view, policy-makers used a “political” rather than a rational-technical approach to economic management, and in doing so represented the interests of an old, atavistic aristocratic society.108 Pareto, the economic theorist, also qualified the general equilibrium model of liberal trade theory. When Beaulieu pointed out the limitations of Say’s Law, he endorsed David Ricardo’s trade theory that stipulated that free trade would ensure that all goods produced would be matched by goods consumed due to comparative advantage and the division of labour between countries. In the 1890s, economists were specifying these conditions. Pareto added variables in order to determine how, why, and under what conditions, individual economies benefitted from international commerce, notably associating trade with factors of production. Ultimately, Pareto concluded that the choice between free trade and protection in terms of welfare effects also depended on the political and social situation within countries, for which a general equilibrium model would no longer apply.109 The debate extended to methodological arguments about quantitative economic theory vs. economies of the real world between Pareto’s Lausanne school and the advocates of a parsimonious economic theory, like Francis Ysidro Edgeworth, professor of political economy at Oxford, and Alfred Marshall.110 This perspective leads to an important example of how sociological and political analysis entered considerations of global economic development and the world order. Pareto theorized why certain groups dominated societies at specific points in time. In his famous theory of the circulation of elites, he compared the innovative industrial bourgeoisie to foxes and portrayed the old aristocracy related to militarism as rapacious lions. The latter benefitted disproportionately from economic protection. Militarism was entwined with colonialism and protectionism.111 Yet even if colonies had no economic function for Italy, it might nonetheless be advisable under certain conditions to incorporate overseas regions with productive capacity, including by military means. For Pareto, the peace activist and advocate of rational modernity, fostering world commerce was crucial. At the turn of the twentieth century, as Beaulieu had done earlier, some Italian pacifists distinguished between civilized and non-civilized societies to determine the permissible use of force to further the world’s economic development.112 Pareto, and liberals like Maffeo

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Pantaleoni and Antonio De Viti de Marco, advanced a system-oriented argument about the world economy geared towards economic growth. De Viti De Marco argued that there were societies, like the Chinese, whose economic potential was lying dormant. Stirring them into activity by the use of force would ultimately benefit global progress. He argued that military intervention merely hastened the natural process.113 Similarly, for Pareto and Pantaleoni, the Anglo-South African war had the function of incorporating an overseas region with potential into the world economy, against the Afrikaners who were, according to Pantaleoni, anyway racist.114 The young liberal, Luigi Einaudi, who later became a central banker and after 1945 president of Italy, offered a programmatic tale, rather than theory, that became famous for connecting emigration to a vision of vibrant Italian entrepreneurship. Italy’s economic development was not yet at a stage at which it could sustain income from visible exports, let alone from capital exports. Italy “exported” labour, notably from the South, the Mezzogiorno. Expansion in Africa was pointless because trade followed people rather than the flag.115 But emigration did not need to be a loss for Italy. Einaudi’s merchant prince, Enrico Dell’Acqua, the Lombardian textile entrepreneur who conducted business by engaging with the Italian communities in Argentina and Brazil, represented the virtues of commerce. He also represented the Italian nation.116 As Roscher and Beaulieu claimed, emigrants could invigorate the nation of their origin. Einaudi, however, replaced the colonial setting with the quest for a national commercial sphere that extended overseas in a way that diluted the distinction between an industrial Europe and overseas regions as support for advanced economies. Due to differences in power between countries, extra-economic factors became relevant to arguments about the external economic relations of emerging economies also for liberal thinkers. In Germany, Karl Helfferich, the country’s leading financial expert, and in the 1900s an official in the ministry in charge of colonial affairs and at Deutsche Bank, derived propositions about the state and its external agency from an analysis of the world economy and global commerce.117 In 1901, he argued that, as the British example showed, free trade between economies was mutually welfare enhancing.118 As for Beaulieu previously, it was the return on foreign investment, services such as shipping, and income from re-exports that mattered in a model of an advanced economy. Referring to Giffen, Helfferich, too, argued that the most advanced countries were able to run a negative trade balance because the trade deficit was offset by incomes from invisibles.119 In a world of open commerce, an economy’s export dependence was not worrying.120 Nonetheless, the world was still far from having reached the ideal conditions of peaceful commercial exchange. For Helfferich, the conflicts in South Africa and China, and the US occupation of the Philippines, were evidence of trade wars and not of a widening liberal world economy. Countries unable to cope with new economic competitors unavoidably risked resorting to militarism.121

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In this analysis, the management of the economy became entwined with the nation-state. Germany had evolved economically as a competitive Industriestaat. In 1918, Helfferich would attribute this achievement, in ways reminiscent of Roscher and List, to the diligence of the peaceful German trader, the backbone of Germany’s success. Germany had compensated for its limited ability to export capital by its labour capacity and industrial exports. Britain, by contrast, had betrayed its own ideals of fair commercial competition.122 German commerce was imbued with the spirit of the German Volk, its inventiveness and commitment.123 Unlike Pareto, Helfferich did not contrast peaceful free-trading states with militaristic ones. In fact, the political power of the German nation was a necessary line of defence for Germany’s industrial progress. Helfferich, too, saw little merit in protectionism and autarky, which he associated with the old agrarian Junker class rather than with the progressive industrial bourgeoisie to which he belonged. Yet, for Helfferich as for Beaulieu, colonies were a hallmark of the modern state and beneficial to global commerce, even if Germany’s development had come too late to allow it to acquire a substantial colonial empire. And in a protectionist world, colonies could be a bargaining chip to obtain openings in international commerce.124 Across Europe, these experts addressed similar problems in relation to globalization, and often advocated similar solutions, not least due to common references to British writers or the mutual exchange of ideas within the continent. However, these mutual influences were not always congruent. Moreover, noticeable differences existed in terms of broader political strands of thought and political networks within countries. Theories converged; but policy expertise diverged according to the deepening differences between developing national economies. As for the commonalities, experts in the mid-nineteenth century who conceptualized global relationships held free trade to be universally welfare-enhancing and peace-promoting. In doing so, their thinking was true to classical economic liberalism from Adam Smith and Ricardo to Cobden, and showed affinities with Immanuel Kant’s philosophical treatise on “perpetual peace.”125 Modern industrial economies impelled commercial interaction. Economic convergence, progress, and modern civilization became closely entwined. Global capitalism guaranteed prosperity and peace. Worldwide commerce ensured that capital matched producers with consumers and producers with materials and was a socialization process between “civilized” countries. In this way, the observed crises of industrialization would be remedied on the trajectory towards universal progress. This path both required and bore out the virtues of commercial diligence, innovative enterprise, and industrial society. The model was, however, extended and modified in relation to crises in the real world. From the 1870s onwards, overseas regions and colonies became a means to stimulate commerce in ways deemed to be conducive to the

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world trajectory of liberal development. Beaulieu’s Colonisation did not engage on this point with Cobden, Charles Dilke, or John Seeley.126 But the title page included a quote in which J.S. Mill heralded the foundation of colonies as the best way to invest the capital of old, rich countries. From this perspective, colonies benefitted the nation through liberal trade rather than through protection. The values of commerce and industry set norms for the state. In advocating the model of a non-interventionist state serving the needs of industrial capitalism, Herbert Spencer was a kindred spirit and a frequent reference for thinkers from Beaulieu to Pareto.127 In continental Europe, moreover, whether liberal writers endorsed or rejected the acquisition of colonies, open commerce defined the opposition between progressive industry and the old aristocracies associated with agriculture that advocated protectionist trade policies. In Britain, this episode belonged to an earlier phase of Cobdenism in the 1830s and 1840s. The matter came to a head in the bimetallism controversy of the 1890s. Beaulieu, Helfferich, and Giffen, all rejected demands for replacing the gold standard with a bimetallic gold-silver standard. They opposed the view that such a move would make European producers more competitive in relation to overseas producers, though not solely for technical reasons. Rather, Beaulieu and Helfferich saw in the campaign the rear-guard action of an outdated social class that represented agrarian interests and opposed modernity. In Germany, the bimetallist league, in turn, attacked the interests of “high finance” (Hochfinanz or Großkapital).128 And in Britain, debates often confronted industrialists in the North with finance in the City of London.129 Yet this did not mean that the state was absent as an agent in the wider world. In fact, from about 1890 onwards the discussion of colonies became increasingly connected to arguments about the external management of national economies. Helfferich, for instance, anchored his advocacy of national economic steering and colonies by highlighting the economic and political tensions inherent in international relations. For Pareto, social configurations at home mattered in determining whether free trade or protectionism was welfare-enhancing for the nation, while overseas expansion by the forces of progress ought to be determined by its economic potential. These expert views represented different strands of thought when it came to their nation’s relations with the world at large. Generically, Beaulieu and Helfferich, and in the 1900s even Pareto, can be subsumed under the category of liberal imperialists: they combined advocating or condoning overseas territorial expansion with a belief in the universal welfare benefits of global commercial integration. Nonetheless, doctrines in continental Europe and Britain differed considerable at the end of the nineteenth century. British liberal imperialism saw the existing British colonies as a means to maintain and foster cosmopolitan finance and free trade in an open

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world economy. This quest connected an imperial role of Britons to social reform “at home” as well as to world peace and prosperity. According to J.S. Mill, colonies served commerce. State intervention was called for in cases in which local conditions prevented their evolution. An imperial development doctrine was gradually evolving along these lines. For Seeley, the empire was the British nation writ large; an imperial polity was feasible in a world of rapid communications. For Dilke, “Greater Britain” ought to flow from conscious policy. By the 1890s, these views had turned into arguments about active, constructive development as in Joseph Chamberlain’s ideas of the “imperial estate.”130 Given the sheer territorial scope of the already existing empire, the shift towards an imperial development doctrine and imperial tariff protection was a small one. Unlike in continental Europe, it mattered that the move retained open commerce on an imperial scale. Creating an integrated empire would provide the British economy with markets beyond those of its protectionist European rivals. An important difference between free trade and a protectionist empire, however, was that the latter served industry rather than cosmopolitan finance. Halford Mackinder, the liberal imperialist pointed this out before endorsing his better known protectionist geopolitics.131 Given the military threat from Germany in the 1900s, however, industrial power was needed. It was then that free trade within an imperial bloc steered by the state took over the earlier role of cosmopolitanism as the promoter of peace and motor of social reform.132 France showed continuities in thinking derived from Jean-Baptiste Colbert during the ancien regime and the Saint-Simonians, who influenced Chevalier, regarding the modernizing role of the state in public works.133 Beaulieu added the liberal notion of the free bourgeois acting as a trustee for the state. However, both these roles were increasingly geared towards the French nation. Public works, including railways in West Africa, served as outlets for the French metal industries.134 And the colonial empire would be the nation’s free trade area rather than a global one. Identifying a German liberal imperialism similar to a British one is problematic.135 To be sure, in the mid-nineteenth century, Roscher established connections between the German economy and overseas settler colonies, even if he did not emphasize free trade. And in the 1900s, Helfferich combined global German commercial aspirations with an argument about German imperial statehood. Moreover, in the 1880s, German overseas traders endorsed imperial expansion. But British liberal imperialism promoted the commercial empire while also organizing the formal empire of settler colonies. In the absence of a significant German colonial empire, German trading firms, however, kept an eye on liberal commerce tout court, both in association and in competition with the British empire. Helfferich’s arguments supported a functionally and developmentally more consolidated German nation-state with an associated empire,

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though one for which a German colonial development doctrine was hardly relevant. Yet these changing approaches in Britain, Germany, and France, all show how liberal ideas of commerce were increasingly oriented towards the nation. Close connections existed between economic liberalism in Germany, empire, and nationalistic Weltpolitik. Under the spell of List, the German economy acquired a cultural tinge, which became universalized in Germany’s modernizing role for the world (Weltaufgabe).136 There are conceptual continuities running from List and Roscher to Helfferich, and further into the 1920s and 1930s, regarding the notion of the distinct German-ness of the commercial spirit of Weltpolitik. An even wider epistemological arch identifying the nation as the historical reality in a cosmopolitan economy stretches from List to the imperial unionism of W.A.S. Hewins, a close associate of Mackinder in the Fabian Coefficient club in the 1900s.137 In Italy, meanwhile, Pareto ironically assented to the South African war in a liberal imperialist mindset, whereas British liberal imperialists opposed the war due to its association with Chamberlain’s protectionist imperial unionism. This shift in Britain away from a liberal empire had been observed by Luigi Luzzatti, another prominent liberal economist and former Italian finance minister, who asked, in 1903, whether the British free trade doctrine had been an “idea” or rather an “interest.”138 The expert opinions on national and universal development sketched out in this section varied in terms of their intellectual and political networks. In Britain, the shift from free trade to imperial trade accompanied that from liberalism to conservatism in politics. In France, Beaulieu’s advocacy of a conscious building of empire was relevant in the 1880s, when French colonies became important as markets for textile manufacturing in the Vosges, and before the protectionist phase ushered in by the Méline tariff in 1892. Intellectual and personal links existed between him and Jules Ferry, the French prime minister of the time.139 Between the 1870s and 1910s, Beaulieu’s comments on empire also gave the semblance of cohesion to the particularistic lobbying of the diverse groups in the Parti colonial. With regard to Africa, he acted like one of countless lobbyists, often promoting natural riches and fertile lands in the face of little evidence.140 Yet, in the 1870s and 1880s, Georges Clemenceau also engaged with Say’s liberalism to argue the case against a colonial empire of the Republic. Pareto, by contrast, operated entirely outside the main frame of Italian politics in the 1890s. Since the late 1880s, he had been associated with the intellectual opponents of Italy’s expansion in Africa who grouped around Ernesto Teodoro Moneta (Nobel peace laureate in 1907), and until 1896, the editor of the democratic Milanese newspaper Il Secolo.141 In the new Germany of the 1870s and 1880s, Roscher left an indirect legacy in the advocacy of trade with the tropics, as liberal commerce gradually became associated with German nationhood and colonial acquisition. His arguments about emigration, however, were hardly relevant any more.

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In fact, the East-Elbean Junker, turned sugar producers, actively sought migrant labour. But Roscher’s concept of Gewerbefleiß became further racialized in a German settler nationalism in colonies and more generally in areas of settlement outside the ethnic core. This influence is visible in the thinking of Carl Peters and Friedrich Fabri, who advocated a trusteeship role for the state or for German missionaries, and who figure prominently in traditional accounts of Germany’s colonial expansion.142 These projects resonated with the lower stratum of the bourgeoisie and some small industrial producers and retailers, though not with the large commercial firms. In the 1900s and 1910s, Helfferich then tried to connect the colonial debate to the Weltpolitik of industry and high finance. Associated with national-liberal government circles, he shifted ambitions for a global Germany to those for a “Greater Germany.” Writing in 1906, the colonial lobbyist of the 1880s, Carl Peters, joined the bandwagon on empire and Weltpolitik. Overseas territory, he argued, was needed to ensure nutrition and prevent misery and revolution at a time when British free trade was bound to end and China and Japan had emerged as competitors. But, unlike Helfferich’s conception of modern statehood, in his view, commodities, not money, were ultimately crucial in global exchange.143 The national perspectives formulated by experts were visions rather than reality. These views had roots in a unifying view of world development but became gradually differentiated in national confines. Regions, however, initially constituted the material nexus between overseas relations and evolving national economies. The discussion in this chapter will now turn to questions of agency: first regional entrepreneurship in its global connections, and in the concluding section to the manner in which states acquired transnational functions at the private-public nexus.

Entrepreneurship, regional economies, and the globe Accelerating globalization and industrialization both offered new opportunities for commerce and investment, affecting the ways in which entrepreneurs in Europe engaged with the world between the 1860s and 1890s. Overseas food supplies, while depressing agricultural production in Europe, also intensified relations between regional entrepreneurship in industrializing Europe and resource regions across the globe. Moreover, economic exchanges began to transcend bilateral relations as trade was carried out in service hubs and became mediated by stock exchanges. However, transnational and regional-global economic integration was by no means a smooth process but occurred in an increasingly competitive environment. The deepening regional-global links of commerce and investment will be addressed first by discussing resource globalization at the nodes of Marseille, Bordeaux, Hamburg, and Liguria. Subsequently, the analysis

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focuses on how overseas entrepreneurial activities in the 1870s and 1880s blended into the process of the formation of national economies from regional ones in Europe. The question is how overseas business relations mattered for economies in Europe. In the case of the textile regions of France, for instance, there was a convergence; in Lombardy, overseas relations hardly mattered at the time. This leads on to an argument about how some private sectors in European regions became associated with nation-states in the 1870s and 1880s. At this juncture, colonies became a potential tool to solve crises of globalization or an alternative to oneworld liberalism through organizing national economies transnationally. New businesses formed in France from the 1840s onwards, initially in connection with overseas commercial investment, and later due to the construction of the Suez Canal, in accordance with Chevalier’s thinking about France’s global modernity.144 Modernizing France was not confined to industrialization and the mining sector in the Northeast but extended to trade, commercial services, and shipping, and thus to the vision of a French free trade empire.145 Economic opportunities outside Europe also gave rise to overseas merchant banks in both Britain and France in the mid-nineteenth century. In France, the Pereire brothers founded the Crédit mobilier in 1852 as part of a Saint-Simonian programme to finance infrastructural development.146 In the Mediterranean and in Ottoman Egypt, Anglo-French banking, including the Pereire bank, became involved in the Banque impériale ottomane from 1863. Saint-Simonian ideals also influenced Pereire overseas banking in Brazil.147 Meanwhile, the French Comptoir National d’Escompte was involved in North Africa and the Far East; the Banque d’Algérie had already been established in 1851 followed by the Banque de Sénégal in 1854.148 In Asia, French bankers with ties to regional manufacturing industries in France founded the Banque de l’Indochine in 1875.149 Beaulieu’s L’Économiste français argued that a connection with the markets of China could be established via Tonkin. There, luxury silk products from Lyon could be exchanged for cotton and sugar, among other commodities.150 In this way, France would be better able to compete with Britain in Asia. French overseas commercial banking (banques d’affaires) became more widespread in the 1880s.151 Ventures extended to overseas railways involving the Crédit Lyonnais and Paribas (Banque de Paris et des Pays-Bas) in the 1880s.152 These linkages also integrated overseas resource domains, thus reinforcing industrialization in Europe.153 It was the demand for raw cotton that prompted the Crédit Lyonnais to establish operations in Egypt in 1875.154 In Britain, imperial banks already existed. The mid-century, however, saw a move towards joint-stock companies in Anglo-international banks, including those in Egypt. This happened often in speculative ventures and complex webs connected to the City of London, and was part of a trend that gave rise to cosmopolitan enterprises which also involved imperial

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banks, such as the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank.155 The foundation of the Imperial Ottoman Bank involved London bankers, such as Glyns, as well as the French Crédit mobilier.156 In South America, the London & Brazilian Bank established links to the Anglo-Portuguese Bank. As in Egypt and India, here too, the raw cotton connection mattered, and was initially prompted by the disruption of supplies during the American civil war.157 In the boom of the 1870s, twelve new foreign and two new colonial banks registered themselves in London; one of them was the Mercantile Bank of the River Plate (Argentina) backed by the London banking association and by Paribas in Paris under Baron Louis d’Erlanger.158 The resource nexus was of particular relevance in some regions. Trading and shipping from the ports of Marseille and Bordeaux with Indochina and West Africa grew mainly from the 1890s onwards. Previously, French shipping had prioritized the Mediterranean, as was the case with entrepreneurs from Liguria in Italy. Tropical oils and fats drove trade in Liverpool between the 1830s and 1870s and in Hamburg between the 1850s and 1880s. Here, a separation eventually occurred between shipping, trading, and resource exploitation. As steamships cut the costs of transport, the trade became more competitive and the price of palm products decreased.159 Firms established at Hamburg followed an older tradition of merchant shipping with sailing ships in the world’s oceans. By the mid-century, some firms were also importing new food supplies, namely palm oil from West Africa and copra from Samoa as a source of vegetable oil. The firm J.C. Godeffroy & Sohn had been trading between Hamburg and Central and South America since the 1830s. After the late 1850s, the firm not only established trade relations with the Pacific but also bought land and was running copra plantations on Samoa.160 The copra trade between New Guinea, Samoa, and Hamburg became important after the invention of margarine in 1869.161 The C. Woermann firm, under its founder, Carl, and from 1880 his son Adolph, had originally diversified from linen exports in Bielefeld. The business had been involved in trade with West Africa since the end of the 1840s, and from the late 1860s especially with Cameroun, first with sailing ships, and from 1879 with steamships. In the course of the 1870s, the firm established warehouses for the palm oil trade in the region and also engaged in plantation developments. Specialized regional shipping lines branched out from the business in the 1880s and 1890s. Another Hamburg firm in the region was Jantzen & Thormählen, an associate of Woermann’s.162 The palm oil trade was dominated, however, from the 1840s by Liverpool traders specializing in trade with West Africa, and mainly the Niger delta. Between the 1850s and 1870s, firms from London, Bristol, and Glasgow joined this trade.163 They all participated in the boom, shipping cheap African palm oil for soap production in Northern England and lubricants for the tinplate industries near Bristol.164 Steamship services

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between Britain and West Africa started in 1852, and became important during the 1870s. Due to the dominance of steamers from Liverpool from the 1870s, palm oil traders (with some exceptions, such as John Holt) no longer used their own ships to transport their cargo.165 Hamburg trading interests differed because their focus was on kernels for processing food after new technology allowed them to be crushed for this purpose. However, the Woermann firm, too, separated shipping from trading as it moved to steam as competition for resources intensified.166 As a result, shipping became concentrated on a few firms. By the 1890s, two firms, Elder Dempster and Woermann, dominated the trade between West Africa and Europe; in 1895, these firms agreed to divide the market. However, while the change in shipping arrangements allowed smaller palm oil traders to ship their cargo, the competition for produce made their position precarious. Individual traders were increasingly replaced by joint-stock companies, as in the creation of the African Association in 1889, which competed for market shares with the soap producer, William Lever, who established his business near Liverpool in 1884.167 This competitive environment encouraged private firms to seek state support from the 1880s. Shipping was an important globalizing force in terms of both commerce and the organization of communications. These were capital-intensive and high-risk undertakings which, therefore, involved financial services. Steamships became a part of imperial and global infrastructures. In 1852, Macgregor Laird’s African Steamship Company started its operations to West Africa, first from London and then from Liverpool, on the basis of a mail contract with the British government.168 Meanwhile, the William Mackinnon Company had been operating at the nexus between shipping, trade, and the exploitation of primary agricultural resources in the tropics from the 1850s, mainly on routes in the British Empire to India and the Pacific, as well as to the Dutch East Indies.169 However, from around 1860, Mackinnon was no longer a merchant shipping company but was essentially a part of British imperial organization, specializing in the transport of mail and people to and from British India and subsequently East Africa.170 As the name indicates, the French Messageries maritimes, with the British Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Navigation Company (P & O) the main shipping line from Europe to South and Southeast Asia, also originated with mail contracts. Some links existed between the two. For instance, the Messagerie had a contract for British mail deliveries to Mauritius.171 The Genoese shipowner Raffaele Rubattino, whose ships operated from Genoa in Piedmont and the Ligurian port cities Livorno and La Spezia, also benefitted from government concessions. His shipping services in the Mediterranean were considered to be routes conducive to Italian commerce: from 1851 Rubbatino’s ships ran services to Sardinia and subsequently to Tunis in North Africa.172 In 1869, after the opening of the Suez Canal, the firm leased some land at Assab on the African Red Sea coast to serve as a shipping dock.173 In the course of the 1870s,

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Rubattino obtained further contracts to Egypt and India; other Italian companies were given concessions to the Black Sea, South America, and also India.174 In various ways, shipping and trading again related to banking. In Germany, banking became involved in overseas ventures in part by coincidence and in part by conscious design. The Diskonto-Gesellschaft was a part of a rescue operation in 1878 to bail out the Godeffroy shipping and trading firm, which had failed due to financial speculation in the German Reich’s emerging mining sector.175 The Diskonto-Gesellschaft was formed as a joint-stock company in 1852, mirroring the creation of the French Crédit mobilier. Unlike in France and Britain, most German banks specializing in overseas activities were created starting from the late 1880s, branching out from existing joint-stock banks. The exception was Deutsche Bank founded in 1870 to compete with British cosmopolitan banking. And in the mid-1880s the Bleichröder bank, which had been instrumental in setting up Deutsche Bank, eventually felt that under British rule in Egypt it could become involved in the country’s debt management alongside Britain, France, and Russia.176 In Italy, in the late 1870s and 1880s, the large joint-stock banks, founded in and after the 1860s according to the model of the French Crédit mobilier, invested, among others, in high-risk shipping ventures. The strategy in case of failure was that the firms would be transformed into joint-stock companies, turning credits into shares. Rubattino, however, was a family firm in a regional tradition where banking and trading were closely entwined; its owner resisted being drawn into a new business model until his death in 1882.177 In some cases, commercial shipping and trading firms also combined these functions with overseas banking services. The Hamburg firms Hansing & Co and O’Swald & Co had been involved in trading cowrie shells, which were used as currency, between West and East Africa in the 1850s and 1860s, and also in the regional trade between East Africa, the Seychelles, and British India. They had operated mainly through their connections with the Sultan of Zanzibar, as did British firms at that time. From the 1870s, these firms shifted to trade with Europe, and Hansing diversified into banking, providing money exchange services for traders in East Africa, and also representing the Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China Ltd.178 O’Swald later became the main shipping line between East Africa and Germany. Meanwhile, as the boom in shipping and trade turned into a depression in the 1880s and British shipping faced increasing competition from continental European firms, the Mackinnon group sought to transform itself into an investment group in global transport infrastructure: shipping and railways. In the course of these entrepreneurial activities, the boundaries in which overseas commerce operated changed. At the same time, entrepreneurship with a global reach became a force for restructuring the economies of

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Europe. As commerce with the tropics intensified, businesses reorganized. This was not only the case in terms of specialization, as in the separation of shipping from trading. The manner in which overseas operations related to Europe also changed significantly. In India, trade and banking had been nearly exclusively conducted through indigenous middlemen. From the 1860s, however, many local middlemen were squeezed out of those activities. Nonetheless, other local firms with the necessary skills, such as the Gujarati Bania, became a substantial part of the redefined and reoriented commercial networks by cooperating with European firms or serving as their regional or upcountry agents, particularly in regions of political instability, such as China.179 Operating through these local agents allowed European firms to spread the credit risks in dealing with traders in the interior.180 During the American civil war, local bankers (shroffs) played a particular role for European buyers of raw cotton.181 As exchange banks, such as the London Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China Ltd., expanded throughout the British empire, they cooperated with regional banks, for instance with the Nattukottai Chettiar bankers of Tamil Nadu, in trade with Ceylon, Southeast Asia, Burma (Myanmar), and China.182 With the construction of inland railways in India, though, the role of local intermediaries decreased. European cotton merchants now increasingly accessed the interior themselves.183 As commodity markets globalized and prices for agrarian commodities fell, competition between the different European networks increased and commodity trading became decentralized. As a result, Liverpool lost its quasi-monopoly in providing raw cotton for European textile manufacturers; from 1880, German firms obtained cotton directly from India.184 Similarly, on the new cotton frontier, French firms established direct relationships with Egyptian suppliers through the intermediaries of French banks.185 On the West African palm oil frontier, too, there was a tendency to use fewer intermediaries, notably in the Niger delta and on the Gold Coast. In the Niger delta, the most important trading area for palm oil in terms of volume, frequent disputes occurred between foreign and local traders, especially in the 1880s.186 British traders had occasionally moved upcountry since the 1840s but also operated through intermediaries.187 With falling produce prices there was growing competition for a commodity that had attracted large numbers of local and foreign traders when access was easier. Between the 1860s and 1880s, successive mergers occurred that allowed some business groups to acquire virtual monopolies, as was the case with the group under George Goldie on the Niger from the early 1880s.188 In the region initially controlled by Duala intermediaries, which later became German Cameroun, British palm oil traders had been directly involved in the interior on occasions since the 1840s.189 In the mid-1880s, the firms Woermann and Jantzen & Thormählen were at loggerheads over whether they should tap palm oil resources in the interior

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by moving their own agents inland or operate through Duala middlemen after a plan for cooperation with the newly-formed Syndicate of West African merchants had failed after the Syndicate proposed to discontinue the practice of extending trade credit to Duala merchants.190 In East Africa, however, where trading involved South Asian traders as intermediaries in dealing with the Omani Sultan of Zanzibar, the German trading firms were reluctant to circumvent this viable connection, and also took no part in plantation production. French colonial exports of groundnuts were rather differently organized. Exports from the Senegalese coast started in the 1840s. The territory for groundnut cultivation needed to be extended because only three or four seasons of crops could be harvested from the same land. Cultivation first shifted southwards from Saint Louis to Dakar, and moved inland towards Kayes from 1907, once a railway line had been established.191 The foregoing account illustrates that the manner in which tropical regions engaged with European businesses markedly changed between the 1860s and 1880s, as did business organization. Transport and resource globalization were giving rise to cosmopolitan forms of entrepreneurial organization in the late mid-nineteenth century. But there were countervailing forces, too. Changes in business organization were cutting out local intermediaries due to technological innovation and intensifying price competition. As a result, entrepreneurial connections extending into the tropics along national lines became both more feasible and also more coveted. In Europe, meanwhile, overseas business activities posed questions about their purpose for national economies and their ability to compete globally. In the formation of European nation-states, economy building was conceptually fluid until the 1880s and conceived of largely in terms of the role of private entrepreneurship in modernizing national economies. Historical periodization mattered in these processes because of the phased nature of state formation and differences in country cases. The case can be put concisely as follows. In Britain and France, a financial sector with a global reach existed before the 1890s: in France with a national outlook and in Britain increasingly with a cosmopolitan one. Both countries, moreover, had important textile sectors. In the British case, however, cosmopolitan finance was outperforming textile manufacturing by the late nineteenth century. As a consequence, colonies began to matter for this industry. The French textile sector, though competitive before 1890, required market outlets. Moreover, the financial sector was smaller and more closely connected to manufacturing than was the case in Britain. Italian economic integration was slow and development was regionally oriented before the 1890s. Moreover, Italy was largely agrarian, with little export orientation and a small financial sector. Industrial growth occurred mainly in Northern Italy from the late 1890s. In Germany, the industrial

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export economy boomed only from the 1890s, as did a global financial sector. Before then, textiles were the main viable sector serving the domestic market. However, the question of how merchants from Northern Germany engaging in international commerce could relate to the national economy of the Reich became acute in the 1870s and 1880s. As for the smaller European imperial states, after the independence of Brazil, Portugal’s aristocratic entrepreneurs in the mid-nineteenth century were mainly interested in extracting income from plantations in the old colonial possessions in Africa, with some connections to British banking.192 The economy of the Netherlands, by contrast, was characterized by rapid industrialization at this time. Here firms also benefitted from existing colonial rubber production in the East Indies.193 The final section of this chapter focuses on the period of the 1870s and 1880s, when states constituted themselves importantly in terms of privatepublic relations. This happened before national economic management became more pronounced in the 1890s and also before nation-states projected themselves as national developers globally. Chapter 3 will explore these issues.

Agency and the private-public nexus The deepening global relationships between the 1860s and 1880s did not relate to clearly formed industrial economies or, as in the cases of Germany and Italy, national economies and nation-states. The following argument highlights how private agency in the globalizing economy related to the process of state formation and economic integration in Europe. The focus will be put on the emerging German nation-state and Hamburg’s global commerce, the textile manufacturers in the Northeast of France, and on regional and national development in Italy. The analysis first connects the perspective on private and regional agency to the expert views discussed earlier in the chapter. Subsequently, the argument refers back to the structural changes at the time to address the contextual nature of state agency. Three debates intersected in Germany in the late 1870s and early 1880s: the problem of the economic integration of the nation-state, the question of the need for protectionism, and the definition of private-public relations in overseas business ventures on the tropical resource frontier. What Friedrich List had deemed unacceptable in his quest for a “well-rounded national body” (abgerundeten Nationalkörper) conducive to a viable national economy, was still a fact in 1880: the old Hanse city states in the North were not part of the German tariff union, the Zollverein, but operating under a free trade regime.194 The question of the integration of Northern Germany into the economic governance of the Reich posed itself at a time when cheap grain imports politicized debates about free trade or protectionism in the elections of 1877 and 1878. The issue was

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crucial to Hamburg’s role in world commerce and shipping and its growing activities in the tropics. The question of state intervention arose in cases of overseas business failures. But the ensuing deliberations also invoked arguments about national welfare in relation to resource exploitation, as in the case of the German East Africa Company (DeutschOstafrikanische Gesellschaft, DOAG). Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had initially supported free trade. However, a massive government campaign, whether prompted by the search for economic cohesion or state income, resulted in a protectionist majority in the Reichstag after the 1878 elections, arguably prompted by a swing of votes in the agrarian sector.195 Nonetheless, even after the elections, sizeable majorities advocating free trade persisted in and near port towns, namely Hamburg but also Danzig (Gdansk). At that time, moreover, the national-liberals in the Reichstag still adhered to free trade, as did the Social democrat and the Polish delegates.196 Some advocates of a conscious building of the German national economy, like Roscher and Gustav Schmoller, endorsed protectionism.197 But the national-liberal historian of the nation-state, Heinrich von Treitschke, advocated a free trade regime. Drawing on Beaulieu and Dilke, he favoured both free trade and the acquisition of colonies.198 Hamburg’s integration with the German tariff union began in 1881 and was completed in 1888.199 In the early 1880s, Hamburg retained some concessions as a free port. By 1883–1884, however, city state politics had come into line with the German nation-state, associating the majority of merchants in the Hamburg Senate in this move. Hamburg traders were caught in a dilemma between their close association with world commerce and the potential losses or benefits of being part of the new national economy of the Reich. Ultimately, the German firms involved with tropical trade spearheaded a turnaround in the Hamburg Senate and press, seeing protection not necessarily as detrimental to their overseas activities. Most firms remained wary of a direct role of the state in the conduct of their businesses. Yet an association with the nation-state was expected to boost the prestige of overseas ventures. This purpose had led Carl Woermann in 1868 to advocate Hamburg’s integration with the Zollverein, arguing that the state would remain outside the private domain.200 In 1883, Adolph Woermann was the merchant who persuaded the Hamburg Senate and Chamber of Commerce to endorse colonial expansion in West Africa. As a member of the German Reichstag, he subsequently bridged disagreements between the German government and the Hamburg Senate.201 Other trading firms, though, had vested interests in state support for financial reasons, as had the Godeffroy firm in its Samoa activities. Such intervention was sneered upon by the majority of merchants, since it distorted entrepreneurial competition, and attracted firms to overseas trading that were not deemed viable. Subsidies were a controversial subject, too.

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Woermann opposed them in 1881 but favoured them after 1883, though the Hamburg Chamber of Commerce remained opposed to the move.202 Parallel developments connected overseas relations with a distinctly German nation-state and national economy, as epitomized by the lobbying for German colonies by Carl Peters and Friedrich Fabri. Peters sought to associate big names of German banking, like Bleichröder, with an exploratory company in Africa. In this, he failed. But he succeeded in rallying some financiers under a state guarantee in a patriotic project rather than a business venture.203 The state eventually endorsed Peters’ DOAG, though the move led to tensions with Hamburg traders rather than to national consolidation based on colonial cooperation. Once Germany required some expertise to formulate a colonial policy in the course of the 1880s, the expelled director of the Rhineland missionary society (Rheinische Mission), Fabri, became a confidant of Bismarck. Fabri’s project for a German colonial empire, first advanced in 1879, bore out developmental designs for the nation-state representing Germans as a civilizing race and colonies as a means for social and moral reproduction. Fabri’s lobbying in the 1880s has been described as mirroring the growth of export manufacturing in Germany. He lobbied for tropical colonies for the West German association for colonization and export (Westdeutscher Verein für Colonisation und Export).204 Similar to Roscher, Fabri hailed migration to colonies as a sign of productive national energy. Colonies were a means to solve the social, moral, and political crises in Germany, including the rise of Social democracy. Settler colonies would absorb surplus population but keep it for the nation and serve as protected markets. In French political debates in the 1880s, meanwhile, overseas relations converged on the textile industry in the Vosges. The region reveals the juncture between external economic policy under Prime Minister Jules Ferry, who was the region’s deputy in Parliament, and the initiatives of textile entrepreneurs and the Chamber of Commerce. The result was a further French expansion in Indochina with the occupation of Tonkin in 1885.205 The silk industry in Lyon competed for influence in the state in this expansion.206 Ferry reminisced about the logic of French rule in a book published five years after the annexation.207 In Ferry’s reasoning, overseas economies were a means to manage relations between emerging national economies in Europe at a time of industrial transformation. Colonial expansion was inevitably crisis management: the means to counter negative social repercussions due to pressures on employment and incomes. Free trade had not given rise to the required division of labour between countries. In his famous phrase, everybody in Europe wanted “to thread, weave, forge, and distil,” resulting in protectionist policies, as in Germany. Colonies were then needed to remedy the deficiencies aggravated by protectionist policies borne out of the crisis of competitive industrialization, especially from the late 1870s. Had liberal

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economic specialization worked, or Europe agreed on its planning, there would have been no need for overseas expansion.208 Ferry referred to Beaulieu to establish the link between the need for colonies and the imperfections in the global division of labour, given the negative effect of decreasing demand on employment and wages. Robert Torrens’ book on the uses of Australia as a colony had served Beaulieu as the anchor to argue that Say’s Law would only apply to an open world economy and colonies were a step in that direction.209 For France, colonies mattered primarily to extend the domestic market for cotton textiles.210 As one of Ferry’s sources elaborated, Tonkin had a large population; it would not require immigrants, which France was unable to provide. Consequently, Tonkin offered a large number of consumers for French cotton cloth, if textiles could be sold at a low price. By the late 1880s, French textile exporters had made important inroads into the Tonkin market, though there were still considerable quantities of imports, notably of Bombay (Mumbai) textiles.211 But the reasoning relates back to the competition between cotton textile manufacturers in Europe. Tonkin itself was deemed to have potential to develop its own cotton textile industry, which would put France at an advantage in accessing a market of about 80 million people in the neighbouring regions of China. This market was dominated by cotton textiles from Lancashire and Bombay.212 The frontier character of colonial empires is also in evidence in Ferry’s book. Tonkin was both about existing and potential resources, from raw cotton to mining.213 What then mattered in the 1880s were mainly networks of small export firms supported by the institutional framework of chambers of commerce in France, notably in the North and in the Vosges, as well as overseas, importantly the Chamber of Commerce of Tonkin. For instance, the industrial association at Lille helped establish a geographical association in 1880 which recruited its members from among the textile bourgeoisie of the region and spread information about French colonization.214 These were networks rather than pressure Table 2.2 Selected Exports from France to Its Colonies, 1880–1938, as a Percentage of Total Exports in Each Category

Groundnut oil Refined sugar Cotton textiles Soap Metal tools Machinery

1880

1890

1913

1929

1938

n.a. 8.9 32.7 55.4 11.7 10.0

n.a. 12.7 34.8 56.2 13.3 8.1

7.9 67.6 33.1 65.1 41.4 29.9

68.2 83.5 49.9 24.2 32.3 30.7

89.6 98.5 84.6 44.3 47.0 41.2

Source: Based on Jacques Marseille, “Colonisation, décolonisation et capitalisme (1880–1960),” Vingtième Siècle 4 (1984), 44.

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groups, and not all textile manufactures were part of the colonial webs. Nonetheless, these webs defined a new juncture between small businesses and commerce within specific colonial confines in extending the domestic market, especially after 1887, when tariff protection was introduced in Indochina. Ferry was an essential link between this national-colonial economy and high politics. The colonial cotton textile connection intensified the protectionist turn in France, too, in 1892. During the 1880s, textile entrepreneurs had been the main advocates of protectionism. Their role in the Vosges had been acknowledged publicly already in 1885 by Jules Méline, the main advocate of protection and honorary president of the association of French textile manufacturers.215 Yet in the 1880s, Ferry himself saw colonial expansion from the perspective of a liberal in the tradition of J.S. Mill. In commenting on France’s occupation of Tunis in 1882, he used Mill’s quote on the benefits of capital exports that Beaulieu had put on the cover of his volume on colonization.216 Italy contrasts with both France and Germany because of the limited integration of the state. Economic activities centred on regional political power, which often resisted economic integration. Regional chambers of commerce were closely entwined with local power holders of the old aristocracy and the commercial bourgeoisie. The result was that Italy for a long time had regional stock exchanges which refused to be connected by telegraph cable. In the early 1880s, only Genoa and Turin operated with telegraph communications; the Milan Stock Exchange connected only in 1898.217 In some cases, links with the central state were important, as for Rubattino’s shipping firm. However, in the 1870s and 1880s, commercial overseas relations were organized in regions. Lombardy, for instance, had an association, founded in 1879, that explored overseas commercial opportunities in Africa and initially rejected any formal role by the Italian state to acquire territory.218 Lombardy’s cotton textile industry only diversified towards external markets from the 1890s. Textile manufacturers in Lombardy were the core of an emerging industrial bourgeoisie in what became known as the Milanese state (stato di Milano). This modern bourgeoisie, hailed as vanguard developers by Pareto and Einaudi in the 1890s, included local textile firms, such as Einaudi’s “Prince,” dell’Acqua from Varese, as well as immigrant entrepreneurs from Switzerland and Austria. These eventually diversified into local industrial banking and linked up with firms in other sectors, notably Pirelli’s factory of rubber cables and tyres. Technical innovation was driven by the largely privately financed Politecnico College in Milan. This regional industrial-social network kept itself aloof from the central Italian state and opposed the traditional local power holders in Milan, too. These industrialists lobbied via the Corriere della Sera, which they had founded in 1876. They were also firmly opposed to Italian overseas expansion, especially in Africa.219 Arguments in Milan combining the

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advocacy of a colonial empire with national development were rare, but can be found. Leone Carpi, the prominent journalist, for instance, saw colonies as a prolongation of the Italian Risorgimento.220 But in the 1880s, the agrarian crisis profoundly affected the Italian South. As the large aristocratic landowners, the latifundisti, failed to adjust to market-oriented production in the competitive global environment, the rural labour problem and social tensions in the South worsened and emigration increased.221 Italy introduced protectionist tariffs from 1887. It was also the latifundisti who were most interested in expansion in Africa as an emigration outlet. Moreover, conservatives from Tuscany, like Sidney Sonnino and Leopoldo Franchetti, argued that expansion was needed to maintain the influence of the old regional bourgeoisie. The remainder of this chapter will make explicit what defined the nexus between private firms and emerging states in economic overseas relations during the late mid-nineteenth century. The states under review show peculiarities during the period as they lent support to overseas enterprise. Policies involved licensing concessionary or chartered companies and as a corollary the creation of a form of private colonial state. Nation-states gradually became developers as they embraced welfare functions. These could become entangled with overseas exploration and resource frontiers. Development objectives encouraged states to subsidize global transport infrastructure and fulfil a role in marketing through commercial diplomacy. Along this trajectory, European states progressively embarked upon transnational governance geared towards their nations. The support that German palm kernel traders in West Africa expected from the central state, in some sense as the quid pro quo for Hamburg’s incorporation into a common national tariff zone, was a political presence that would improve trading logistics overseas. This could mean a legal regime and arbitration or military intervention, as in the formal annexation of Cameroun in 1884. The aim was to access resources in the interior, where indigenous traders at times opted out of the market and had close contacts with Britain.222 These objectives were both local and localized. Hamburg merchants rarely took part in colonial propaganda.223 Yet the reference of their business activities became national. Previously, Hamburg traders had acted as representatives and consuls of their city state in areas from Africa to the Pacific and South America.224 In the 1880s, however, political representatives from the Reich ought to enhance the profile of German traders in overseas locations. This national dimension also entered the political debate. Regarding the rescue of the Godeffroy firm with Bismarck’s support in the late 1870s and the Samoa treaties of 1880, the debate had been less whether the state ought to support private businesses but rather whether Godeffroy was a firm in the national interest. The Hamburg Senate did not think so and approved the move only as a goodwill gesture towards the Reich. But the company’s shares had been sold to Baring Brothers and John H. Schröder

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in London. In this connection, the association of commercial geography in Berlin emphasized the need to defend the firm’s national legacy of commercial colonization in the Pacific.225 The case coincided with the lobbying in circles by Peters and Fabri for an enhanced state role in organizing Germany’s relations with the tropics. From their perspective, this was not merely a matter of the state’s involvement in economic planning with regard to overseas natural resources, but one of national economy building. At this juncture, however, it seems, managing the commercial frontier overseas and consolidating the German nation-state converged in Bismarck’s policies. The DOAG’s lobby groups hardly mattered for the German economy. But endorsing the DOAG might help bridge acute tensions between liberalism and nationalism in the nation-state. German colonial occupation was not the result of the move towards protectionism. Rather, it was a means to allow national integration under protectionism while keeping the door to liberal commerce ajar and bearing out Bismarck’s vision of Germany’s Weltaufgabe, namely its destiny in the world. More generally, traders would also gain from being associated with the international planning of commercial governance in the tropics at the West Africa/Congo conference in Berlin during 1884–1885. In France, the private-public nexus in overseas relations was differently circumscribed, and positioned at the core of the state rather than on its fringes. Both an economic dimension and the concept of the French Republic were at work here. The French state became a commercial agent in its colonies following the conquest of Annam and Tonkin in the first half of the 1880s, though the occupation itself arguably had a different purpose. Ferry said he was much driven by circumstance in his policy and observed that Léon Gambetta intended to compensate France for losing out to Britain in the occupation of Egypt in 1882.226 Nonetheless, from the mid-1880s, the state took on an active role in promoting textile exports in Indochinese markets hitherto dominated by British and Indian exporters. For instance, at Lille, the French ministry of commerce established a commercial and colonial museum, which, among others, provided samples for industrialists of the textile fabrics sold by rival producers in colonial markets.227 Empire gave rise to its own commercial networks organized by chambers of commerce and the state. The state and private enterprise also converged in conceptual ways in the thrust of a French Republican version of empire. In some of its manifestations, colonization exhibited continuities with the French revolution, socially as well as economically.228 Gambetta, holding posts as foreign minister and prime minister in the 1880s, had declared in the late 1870s that he would go wherever French commerce and the ideal of the revolution would take him.229 Progress, then, mirrored conceptions of Auguste Comte’s positivist philosophy for which new social groups, like bankers and industrialists, acted as trustees.

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Such views had influenced J.S. Mill in Britain. Beaulieu and Ferry followed Mill in advocating a global ordering role for the state in colonial empires. Modern trusteeship ought to imbue revolutionary industrial society on a world scale, including a coercive function. A new brand of Republican French colonialism was thus able to emerge in opposition to that of the ancien regime based on the slave trade. Clemenceau, who was closest to Mill, ironically did not follow this reasoning. For Gambetta, however, expansion in Tonkin was a pre-emptive measure to prevent France from getting crushed between the British and the Slavs in Asia as well as enabling it to face the expansion of the massive Chinese population. Globalizing France was also a means to liberate it from the obsession with the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany.230 Here the revolutionary Republican and the Saint-Simonian commercial motives for expansion in the name of modernization meshed with views on the “yellow peril” that was to become more widespread in Europe at the end of the century. In Africa, the spectre of Republican globalism combined with visions of a new resource frontier, could also have practical implications, especially regarding infrastructure, the core of the Saint-Simonian modernization doctrine. Lobbying the state for expansion in the name of progress could be selfserving in speculative business ventures involving railway firms in their quest for construction contracts in West Africa.231 Italy’s overseas relations during the 1870s and 1880s were largely defined by information webs between the state and private sector rather than related to arguments about the need to build a national economy. The exception were shipping subsidies, and arguably the government’s involvement in the Bank of Rome’s financing and monitoring of Vincenzo Filonardi’s company on the Southern Somali coast from 1884. Contacts between the government and Italian traders and residents in North Africa from Egypt to Morocco existed, first with the Kingdom of Sardinia, and from 1861 with Italy. From the 1870s, such information flows became more organized. In 1878, the Milanese association for commercial exploration in Africa co-sponsored an expedition to Ethiopia together with the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Commerce, Agriculture and Industry, and the Italian geographical society under Cristoforo Negri.232 In the 1870s and 1880s, Italy and the Ethiopian Shoa monarchy discussed infrastructural modernization in Ethiopia, ranging from bridge-building, initiated by the engineer Augusto Salimbeni, to the minting of an Ethiopian currency. But these ideas did not materialize, and the discussions were not about territory but about trade, as was the treaty of Ucciali in 1883.233 The Berlin Congo/West Africa conference of 1884–1885, extended the ordering of emerging European nation-states into the tropics, without the participation of any African delegates, though including the Ottoman empire. This ordering fits in the mould of the fluid boundaries of globalization between public and private and ideas of one-world liberalism and conceptions of national economies. The deliberations were about

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international economic governance. King Léopold II of Belgium emerged as the force to broker a consensus among European powers in the interior of Africa on the Congo River towards which the palm oil frontier was advancing.234 Beaulieu described the international association for the Congo Free State as an entirely novel form of organization that transcended national sovereignty, even if he doubted its viability for efficient resource exploitation due to its lack of political power.235 In essence, the conference was the attempt to adjust the European order to globalizing economies. The conference demarcated zones of influence and gave an air of international legitimacy to the territorial annexation of coastal areas. These corresponded to the commercial concerns of European traders in specific regions of Africa at the time. It is telling that Bismarck only opened and closed the conference and left the negotiations to a merchant, Adolph Woermann, officially Germany’s délégué adjoint at the conference.236 The principal initiator of the conference, Heinrich von Küsserow, a senior official at the German foreign office, had links to lobbyists for colonial expansion, namely his brother in law, the manager of the Diskonto-Gesellschaft.237 Woermann was able to lobby for his Hamburg-based overseas firm. Baron de Courcel, the French delegate, later became a manager of the Suez Canal Company and was involved in French railway administration. Bismarck contacted Ferry, then the French foreign minister, and agreed on the conference even before Britain was invited. The overall agenda was in line with British official thinking, though. In the opening speech, Bismarck stressed the need for open commerce in Africa, and its outcome was free trade in the Congo basin, which was renewed in 1919.238 At this point, some concluding observations are due regarding the private-public nexus and the characteristics of states in the late midcentury. Returning to the argument about structural economic changes at the time, it is instructive to compare continental Europe with Britain. Free trade boosted British commerce on a global scale in the midnineteenth century, though highly dependent on intermediaries in overseas regions. Britain became the model that many continental European competitors strove to emulate. However, in analysing private-public relations in Britain’s overseas trade, one needs to distinguish longestablished relationships with the colonies of settlement and India from commercial activities in regions in Africa and Asia that contemporaries saw as the globalizing frontier. In the latter, British traders regularly enlisted state support in consular services as well as the military, such as in palm oil trading in West Africa. Another striking example was the support for commerce by the Colonial Office under Lord Carnarvon in the British Cape Colony in the 1870s by incorporating the location of newly found diamond mines at Kimberley into colonial territory and regulating black labour through pass laws.239 Temporary support by the imperial government for colonial

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governments in supplying indentured labour, as for Natal, followed a similar logic. Meanwhile, Britain had led the way where France, Germany, and Italy followed, namely subsidized certain international transport services, such as the postal shipping of the P&O, as continental European observers like Carpi did not fail to point out.240 Free trading Britain was generally reluctant to involve the state as a developer or entrepreneur, as apparent from the refusal to endorse explorative companies on the Niger or territorial expansion in Bechuanaland in search to explore the mineral frontier even in the 1880s. But the state intervened when open commerce seemed to be impeded. Yet until the 1870s and 1880s, the emerging, or transforming, continental Europe nation-states differed from Britain due to the virtual absence of a doctrine of external economic policy in the state. For Britain, in turn, national economic governance amounted to global governance. It is crucial to consider how the two converged in the last decade of the century. For various reasons, experts and politicians in Britain reckoned that there was a need for more formal economic and financial governance in both the national and global domains. Orthodoxies formed regarding financial governance, as advocated by Walter Bagehot. Bagehot’s legacy was a regulative doctrine of central bank management, namely the role of the Bank of England as the lender of last resort.241 Once the crisis of the landed aristocracy was over, another crisis affected Britain. Giffen, for instance, lamented the permanent decline in British export trade, in what appeared to contemporaries as a long economic decline.242 Practical reconsiderations were running parallel to the reconfiguration of political-philosophical thinking. The utilitarian ideas of organizing world society advanced by Jeremy Bentham shifted to an imperial version of the world order.243 This involved the global regulation of debt. The state nexus was also epitomized by the new emphasis in the 1890s on government securities as trusted, “trustee investment” in the empire. The constructive development of empires, as advocated by Mill, and by Joseph Chamberlain later, was a further step. Conscious state regulation in colonies became elevated to a principle to ensure congenial economic governance. At the juncture at which experts and state officials in Britain and continental European countries arrived in the 1870s and 1880s, namely that liberal globalization had its limits, they discussed the need for more systematic management. Reconsiderations concerned the automaticity of free trade, the conditions under which economies were able to benefit from free trade, the gold standard as an automatic equilibrating mechanism or one that needed to be made to work through the Bank of England’s intervention, the regulation of trade and financial flows through debt management, and thus generally the governance of economic development as theory and practice. The contradiction between empire and free trade dissolved, and conscious debates about doctrines of imperial development emerged. In spite of the diverse conditions faced by

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European countries in the crises of economic globalism, statehood became a national tool of development in the 1890s and 1900s in all the cases under review. In this process, the control of overseas regions became a part of the toolkit of the European nation-state as a regulative mechanism, as the next chapter will argue.

Notes 1 François Crouzet, “De la mondialisation,” Historiens et Géographes no. 378 (2002), 234. 2 The diversity of these processes makes it difficult to establish a concise summary of published sources. Published research will be introduced in the relevant sub-categories throughout the chapter. 3 Daniel Deudney, “Greater Britain or Greater Synthesis: Seeley, Mackinder, and Wells on Britain in the Global Industrial Era,” Review of International Studies 27 (2001), 190. 4 A.N. Porter, ed., Atlas of British Overseas Expansion (London: Routledge, 1991), 148–51, and Rajat Kanta Ray, “Asian Capital in the Age of European Domination: The Rise of the Bazaar, 1800–1914,” Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 3 (1995), 476–7. 5 See the table in Yrkö Kaukiainen, “Shrinking the World: Improvements in the Speed of Information Transmission, c. 1820–1870,” European Review of Economic History 5, no. 1 (2001), 20. 6 Byron Lew and Bruce Cater, “The Telegraph, Co-Ordination of Tramp Shipping, and Growth in World Trade, 1870–1910,” European Review of Economic History 10, no. 2 (2006), 149–50. 7 A.G. Kenwood and A.L. Lougheed, The Growth of the International Economy, 1820–1980: An Introductory Text (London: Unwin Hyman, 1983), chs.5 and 6. 8 R.C. Mitchie, “The International Trade in Food and the City of London since 1850,” Journal of European Economic History 25, no. 2 (1996), 369–404. 9 Lew and Cater, “The telegraph,” 149. 10 A.G. Hopkins, “The Creation of a Colonial Monetary System: The Origins of the West African Currency Board,” African Historical Studies 3, no. 1 (1970), 113. 11 Ray, “Asian Capital,” 501. 12 Ray, “Asian capital,” 479. 13 Peter Cain, “Capitalism, War and Internationalism in the Thought of Richard Cobden,” British Journal of International Studies 5, no. 3 (1979), 229–47. 14 David Grigg, “The Nutritional Transition in Western Europe,” Journal of Historical Geography 22, no. 1 (1995), esp. 250–4. 15 Walter T. Layton, “Argentina and Food Supply,” Economic Journal 15, no. 58 (1905), 197–204. 16 Grigg, “The nutritional transition,” 154. 17 Leo Waibel, “The Political Significance of Tropical Vegetable Fats for the Industrials Countries of Europe,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 33, no. 2 (1943), 120–3. 18 Layton, “Argentina and Food Supply,” 199. 19 Jacques Marseille, “Les relations commerciales entre la France et son empire colonial de 1880 à 1913,” Relations internationales 6 (1976), 156. 20 Marseille, “Les relations commerciales,” 156.

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21 John Perkins, “Sugar Production, Consumption and Propaganda in Germany, 1850–1914,” German History 15, no. 1 (1997), 23. 22 Carlo Cipolla, Conquistadores, pirati, mercatanti. La saga del argento Spagnuolo (Bologna: il Mulino, 1996), and Peter Gordon, The Silver Way: China, Spanish America, and the Birth of Globalisation, 1565–1815 (London: Penguin Books, 2017). 23 Charles Harvey and Jon Press, “Issues in the History of Mining and Metallurgy,” Business History 32, no. 3 (1990), 1–14. 24 Samuel H. Nelson, Colonialism in the Congo Basin, 1880–1940 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994), ch.4, 79–112. 25 Emily Lynn Osborn, “‘Rubber Fever’: Commerce and French Colonial Rule in Upper Guinée, 1890–1913,” Journal of African History 45, no. 3 (2004), esp. 456. 26 Aldwin Roes, “Towards a History of Mass Violence in the Etat Indépendant du Congo,” South African Historical Journal 62, no. 4 (2010), 634–70. 27 Marianne Boucheret, “La liaison monétaire caoutchouc-franc-piastre en Indochine,” in La France et l’outre-mer. Un siècle de relations monétaires et financières, Jacques Marseille, ed. (Paris: Editions du Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1996), 44. 28 William Mass and William Lazonick, “The British Cotton Industry and International Competitive Advantage,” Business History 32, no. 4 (1990), 9–65. 29 Mass and Lazonick, “The British Cotton Industry,” 14. 30 Marseille, “Les relations commerciales,” 156. 31 Peter Harnetty, “The Indian Cotton Duties Controversy, 1894–1896,” English Historical Review 77, no. 305 (1962), 684–702. 32 Marseille, “Les relations commerciales,” 157 and 153. 33 Larry Neal and Lance Davis, “The Evolution of the Structure and Performance of the London Stock Exchange in the First Global Financial Market, 1812–1914,” European Review of Economic History 10, no. 3 (2006), 279. 34 Neal and Davis, “The Evolution,” 280. 35 P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism (Harlow: Longman, 2001), ch.3. 36 Michael D. Bordo and Christopher M. Meissner, “Foreign Capital, Financial Crises and Incomes in the First Era of Globalization,” European Review of Economic History 15 (2010), 64–5. 37 Richard Sylla and Gianni Toniolo, eds., Patterns of European Industrialization: The Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1991), 14. 38 Waibel, “The Political Significance,” 118–28. 39 Jean Georgelin, “Marseille, ville portuaire: d’hier à aujourd’hui,” Méditerranée 2, no. 3 (1991), 97–101. 40 Jean-François Eck, “Le patronat du Nord et la question coloniale au XXe siècle,” in L’esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l’empire, Hubert Bonin, JeanFrançois Klein and Catherine Hodeir, eds. (Paris: SFHOM, 2008), 329–43. 41 Thaddeus Sunseri, “The Baumwollfrage: Cotton Colonialism in German East Africa,” Central European History 34, no. 1 (2001), 31–51; and Fabio Grassi, Le origini dell’imperialismo italiano. Il caso somalo, 1896–1914 (Lecce: Milella, 1980), ch.1. 42 Irene Nørlund, “The French Empire, the Colonial State in Vietnam and Economic Policy: 1885–1940,” Australian Economic History Review 31, no. 1 (1991), 84. 43 E.A. Brett, Colonialism and Underdevelopment in East Africa. The Politics of Economic Change, 1919–1939 (London: Heinemann, 1973).

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44 Layton, “Argentina and Food Supplies,” 203; also “The Report of the Royal Commission on Food and Raw Materials in Time of War,” Economic Journal 15, no. 60 (1905), 609–16. 45 Marseille, “Les relations commerciales,” 156–8; also Jacques Marseille, Empire colonial et capitalisme français. Histoire d’un divorce (Paris: Albin Michel, 1984), ch.2. 46 Richard H. Tilly, From Zollverein zum Industriestaat. Die wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung Deutschlands 1834–1914 (Munich: dtv, 1990), part II, ch.3. 47 Alexander Gerschenkron, “Notes on the Rate of Industrial Growth in Italy,” Journal of Economic History 15, no. 4 (1955), 360–75; and Giorgio Mori, Il capitalismo industriale in Italia. Processo d’industrializzazione e storia d’Italia (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1977). 48 Giovanni Federico, “Italy, 1860–1940: A Little Known Success Story,” Economic History Review 49, no. 4 (1996), 764–86. 49 The London City epitomized this cosmopolitanism. See David Kynaston, The City of London, Volume II: Golden Years, 1890–1914 (London: Pimlico, 1995). 50 For the “Lombardverbot,” see Tilly, Vom Zollverein zum Industriestaat, 121; also René Girault, Emprunts russes et investissements français en Russie, 1887–1914 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1973). 51 Antonio Confalonieri, Banca e industria in Italia, 1894–1906, vol.2: Il sistema bancario tra due crisi (Bologna: il Mulino, 1980), 269–72. 52 Jan Tore Klovland, “Commodity Market Integration 1850–1913,” European Review of Economic History 9, no. 2 (2005), 168. 53 For cogent observations on the latter, see Nikolaus Wolf, “Was Germany Ever United? Evidence from Intra- and International Trade 1885–1933,” Journal of Economic History 69, no. 3 (2009), 846–81. 54 François Crouzet, ed., The Economic Development of France since 1870, volume 1 (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1993), xi and xvii. 55 Tilly, Vom Zollverein zum Industriestaat, 126; and Dudley Baines, “European Emigration, 1815–1930: Looking at the Emigration Decision Again,” Economic History Review 47, no. 3 (1994), 533. 56 Rui Esteves and David Khoudour-Castéras, “Remittances, Capital Flows and Financial Development during the Mass Migration Period, 1870–1913,” European Review of Economic History 15, no. 3 (2011), 444. 57 Gianni Toniolo, Storia economica dell’Italia liberale (1850–1918) (Bologna: il Mulino, 1988), 178, and Layton, “Argentina,” 201. 58 Baines, “European Emigration,” 538. 59 See A.G. Hopkins, “The Victorians and Africa: A Reconsideration of the Occupation of Egypt,” Journal of African History 27, no. 2 (1986), 363–92; also Olivier Accominotti, Marc Flandreau, Riad Rezzik, and Frédéric Zumer, “Black Man’s Burden, White Man’s Welfare: Control, Devolution and Development in the British Empire, 1880–1914,” European Review of Economic History 14 (2009), 47–70. 60 W.H. Bishop, “The Argentine Crisis,” Economic Journal 1, no. 3 (1891), 533–8. 61 Kris James Mitchener and Marc D. Weidenmier, “The Baring Crisis and the Great Latin American Meltdown of the 1890s,” Journal of Economic History 68, no. 2 (2008), 465–6. 62 Juan H. Flores, “Information Asymmetries and Conflict of Interest during the Baring Crisis, 1880–1890’, Financial History Review 18, no. 2 (2011), 192. 63 Mitchener and Weidenmier, “The Baring Crisis,” 464. 64 Mitchener and Weidenmier, “The Baring crisis,” 467.

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65 Mitchener and Weidenmier, “The Baring crisis,” passim. 66 Arthur Crump, “The Baring Financial Crisis,” Economic Journal 1, no. 2 (1891), 392–3. 67 Hubert Bonin, Suez: du canal à la finance (1858–1987) (Paris: Economica, 1987), 48. 68 For the concept, see chapter 1. 69 Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation chez les peuples modernes (Paris: Librairie Guillaumin, 3rd revised edition, 1886). The references in this chapter are to this edition. 70 Xavier Daumalin, “La doctrine coloniale africaine de Paul Leroy Beaulieu (1870–1916): essai d’analyse thématique,” in L’esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l’empire, Hubert Bonin, Jean-François Klein and Catherine Hodeir, eds. (Paris: SFHOM, 2008), 104; and Bonin, Suez, 50–1, 14, and 28; also David Todd, “A French Imperial Meridian, 1814–1870,” Past & Present 210, no. 1 (2011), 175 and 177. 71 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 551 and 583. 72 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 600. 73 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 595, 599, and 641. 74 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 624. 75 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 620. 76 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 620. 77 Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, “Richard Cobden: His Work, and the Outcome of His Ideas,” in Richard Cobden and the Jubilee of Free Trade (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1896), 111, 114–5, and 120. 78 Wilhelm Roscher, Geschichte der Nationalökonomik in Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1874), and Wilhelm Roscher, Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung (Leipzig: Winter, 1856, second revised and augmented edition 1885). 79 Roscher, Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung, 36–7. 80 Roscher, Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung, 355. 81 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 612. 82 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 613. 83 Georges Photios Tapinos, “Paul Leroy-Beaulieu et la question de la population. L’impératif démographique, limite du libéralisme économique,” Population 54, no. 1 (1999), 105 and 109. 84 Edward Gibbon Wakefield, “A View of the Art of Colonization (1849),” in The British Empire, Jane Samson, ed. (Oxford: OUP, 2001), 140–1. For other relevant documents, see 142–7. 85 Roscher, Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung, 355. 86 Roscher, Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung, 41. 87 Roscher, Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung, 356. 88 Roscher, Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung, 271. 89 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 635. 90 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 636. 91 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 639–40. 92 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 637. 93 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 642–3. 94 Daumalin, “La doctrine,” 110. 95 Daumalin, “La doctrine,” 120. 96 Leroy-Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 306–7. 97 Leroy-Beaulieu “Richard Cobden,” 90–1. For the editor’s remark, see 19. 98 Roscher, Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung, 257.

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99 Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, The Modern State in Relation to Society and the Individual (London: Swan Sonnenschein & Co, 1891), 29, 117, and Book 2, ch.3. The book is based on a lecture course in the early 1880s. 100 Leroy-Beaulieu, The Modern State, 63, 147. 101 Leroy-Beaulieu, The Modern State, 121, 93–6, 103, and 157. 102 Leroy-Beaulieu, The Modern State, 133. 103 Leroy-Beaulieu, The Modern State, 19–20 and 158. 104 Leroy-Beaulieu, The Modern State, 19. 105 Daumalin, “La doctrine,” 112–3. 106 E.H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880–1914 (London: Routledge, 1995), chs.6 and 7. 107 Vilfredo Pareto, “State Expenditures in Italy as Compared with the National Wealth,” Economic Journal 2, no. 7 (1892), 563–4; on Africa: Giovanni Busino, L’Italia di Vilfredo Pareto. Economia e società in un carteggio del 1873–1923 (Milan: Banca Commerciale Italiana, 1989), 82–3. 108 Giuseppe Are, La scoperta dell’imperialismo. Il dibattito nella cultura italiana del primo Novecento (Rome: Ed. Lavoro 1985), 202. 109 Andrea Maneschi, “Pareto on International Trade Theory and Policy,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 15, no. 2 (1993), esp. 212 and 224. 110 Maneschi, “Pareto,” 213; and F.Y. Edgeworth, “Theory of International Values,” Economic Journal 4, no. 15 (1894), 424–43. 111 Busino, L’Italia di Vilfredo Pareto, 92, 84, and 74. 112 Busino, L’Italia di Vilfredo Pareto, 96–7. 113 Are, La scoperta, 41–2. 114 Are, La scoperta, 55–6. 115 Luigi Einaudi, Un principe mercante. Studio sulla espansione coloniale italiana (Turin: Fratelli Bocca Editore, 1900), 22–3, 161, and 167. 116 Are, La scoperta, 19–26. 117 John G. Williamson, Karl Helfferich 1872–1924: Economist, Financier, Politician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 18–9. 118 Karl Helfferich, Handelspolitik (Leipzig: Duncker and Humblot, 1901), 201–3. 119 Helfferich, Handelspolitik, 61. 120 Helfferich, Handelspolitik, 197–8. 121 Helfferich, Handelspolitik, 83. 122 Karl Helfferich, England und wir: Rede über Wirtschaftskrieg und Wirtschaftsfrieden (Berlin: Stilke, 1918), 10–2. 123 Helfferich, England und wir, 18–9. 124 Williamson, Karl Helfferich, 52–3, 25. 125 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Essay (original German edition, Königsberg, 1795). 126 Charles W. Dilke, Greater Britain (London: Macmillan, 1868); John R. Seeley, The Expansion of England (London: Macmillan, 1883). 127 Leroy-Beaulieu, The Modern State, 4–5; Daumalin, “La doctrine,” 105; and Busino, L’Italia di Vilfredo Pareto, 74. 128 Carl Theodor Helfferich, Bimetallistische Kampfesart. Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Herrn Dr. O. Arendt (Neustadt am Hdt.: Kommissionsverlag, 1895), 4; Williamson, Karl Helfferich, 21–4; and Edmonde Théry, “Monsieur Paul LeroyBeaulieu on Bi-Metallism” (London: Bi-Metallic League, 1896), in response to Leroy-Beaulieu’s article in the Journal des Débats 19 (December 1895). 129 For a parallel controversy among academic historians, see E.H.H. Green, “The Bimetallic Controversy: Empiricism Belimed or the Case for the Issues,” English Historical Review 105, no. 416 (1990), 673–83, engaging with A.C. Howe.

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130 Green, The Crisis of Conservatism, ch.7. 131 Bernard Semmel, “Sir Halford Mackinder: Theorist of Imperialism,” Canadian Journal of Economies and Political Science 24, no. 4 (1958), 555–7. 132 Semmel, “Sir Halford Mackinder,” 559. 133 Bonin et al, eds., L’esprit économique, 49–50. 134 Daumalin, “La doctrine,” 106 and 113. 135 Some of these misconceptions underpin the analysis in Matthew P. Fitzpatrick, Liberal Imperialism in Germany (New York: Berghahn, 2008). See esp. 118–21. 136 For the term, see Fitzpatrick, Liberal Imperialism, 125. 137 Michael Cowen and Robert Shenton, “The Origins and Course of Fabian Colonialism in Africa,” Journal of Historical Sociology 4, no. 2 (1991), 147; Semmel, “Sir Halford Mackinder,” 557; and Green, The Crisis of Conservatism, 194–206; also H.G.C. Matthew, The Liberal Imperialists (Oxford: OUP, 1973); and Bernard Semmel, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy, the Empire of Free Trade and Imperialism, 1750–1850 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970). 138 Are, La scoperta, 45. 139 Girardet, L’idée coloniale, 55 and 76. 140 Daumalin, “La doctrine,” 116–8. 141 Busino, L’Italia di Vilfredo Pareto, 71–2. 142 Arne Perras, Carl Peters and German Imperialism, 1856–1918: A Political Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004). 143 Dr. Carl Peters, Zur Weltpolitik (Berlin: Karl Siegismund, 1912), 9–11 and 162–4. 144 Bonin, Suez, 25–6. 145 Bonin, Suez, 14, 28. 146 Sylla and Toniolo, Patterns. 147 Charles A. Jones, International Business in the Nineteenth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1987), ch.2. 148 Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 398. 149 Yasuo Gonjo, Banque coloniale ou banque d’affaires. La Banque de l’Indochine sous la IIIe République (Paris: Ministère de l’Économie et du Budget, 1993); and Marc Meuleau, Des pionniers en Extrême-Orient. Histoire de la Banque de l’Indochine (1875–1975) (Paris: Fayard, 1990). 150 Girardet, L’idée coloniale, 40. 151 Stefano Battilossi, “The Determinants of Multinational Banking during the First Globalisation,” European Review of Economic History 10 (2006), 361–88. 152 T.W. Roberts, “Republicanism, Railway Imperialism, and the French Empire in Africa, 1879–1889,” Historical Journal 54, no. 2 (2011), 401–20. 153 For this conceptualization of global economic relations at the time, see Jones, International Business, esp. ch.3. 154 Bonin, Suez, 47–8. 155 P.L. Cottrell, “The Coalescence of a Cluster of Corporate International Banks, 1855–75,” Business History 33, no. 3 (1991), 32–3. 156 Cottrell, “The Coalescence,” 35. 157 Cottrell, “The Coalescence,” 40. 158 Cottrell, “The Coalescence,” 45. 159 Martin Lynn, “From Sail to Steam: The Impact of the Steamship Services on the British Palm Oil Trade with West Africa 1850–1890,” Journal of African History 30, no. 2 (1989), 230–1. 160 Helmut Washausen, Hamburg und die Kolonialpolitik des deutschen Reiches: 1880 bis 1890 (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1968), 55–6.

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Waibel, “The Political Significance,” 125. Washausen, Hamburg, 68–9. Lynn, “From Sail to Steam,” 227 and 235. Martin Lynn, “British Business and the African Trade: Richard & William King Ltd. of Bristol and West Africa, 1833–1918,” Business History 34, no. 4 (1991), 21 and 31. Lynn, “From Sail to Steam,” 228 and 234. Lynn, “From Sail to Steam,” 229; and Washausen, Hamburg, 68. David J. Jeremy, “Paternalist in Action: William Hesketh Lever at Port Sunlight before 1914,” Business History 33, no. 1 (1991), 58–81. Lynn, “From Sail to Steam,” 229. J. Forbes Munro, “Shipping Subsidies and Railway Guarantees: William Mackinnon, Eastern Africa, and the Indian Ocean, 1860–93,” Journal of African History 28, no. 2 (1987), 211 and 213. Munro, “Shipping Subsidies,” 213–4. Munro, “Shipping Subsidies,” 226. Jean-Louis Miège, L’impérialisme colonial italien de 1870 à nos jours (Paris: Société d’édition d’enseignement supérieur, 1968), 17–8; also Giorgio Doria, Debiti e navi. La compagnia di Rubattino 1839–1881 (Genoa: Marietti, 1990). Jana Mrázková, “The Colonial War in Ethiopia 1885–1896 (Its Place in Italian Nationalist Tradition),” Archív Orentální 48 (1980), 196. Miège, L’impérialisme colonial italien, 27. Washausen, Hamburg, 57. Fritz Stern, Gold and Iron. Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977), 423–4. Alessandro Polsi, “Financial Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Italy. The Rise of a Banking System,” Financial History Review 3, no. 2 (1996), 126. Washausen, Hamburg, 85 and 90. Ray, “Asian capital,” 479–80. Ray, “Asian capital,” 493 and 479. Ray, “Asian capital,” 497. Ray, “Asian capital,” 501, 531–2. Ray, “Asian capital,” 493. Mass and Lazonick, “The British Cotton Industry,” 14. Bonin, Suez, 48. Lynn, “Sail to Steam,” 244. Christopher Chamberlin, “Bulk Exports, Trade Tiers, Regulation and Development: An Economic Approach to the Study of West Africa’s ‘Legitimate Commerce,’” Journal of Economic History 39, no. 2 (1979), 428. Lynn, “British Business,” 27. Ralph A. Austen, “The Metamorphosis of Middlemen: The Duala, Europeans, and the Cameroon Hinterland, ca. 1800 - ca. 1960,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 16, no. 1 (1983), 7. Austen, “The Metamorphosis,” 12. Waibel, “The Political Significance,” 121. William Gervase Clarence-Smith, “The Myth of Uneconomic Imperialism: the Portuguese in Angola, 1836–1926,” Journal of Southern African Studies 7, no. 1 (1978), 172. Maarten Kuitenbrouwer, The Netherlands and the Rise of Modern Capitalism: Colonies and Foreign Policy, 1870–1902 (Oxford: OUP, 1991). Ludwig Sevin, Die Entwicklung von Friedrich Lists kolonial= und weltpolitischen Ideen bis zum Plane einer englischen Allianz 1846 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1909), 318.

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195 Adam Klug, “Why Chamberlain Failed and Bismarck Succeeded: The Political Economy of Tariffs in British and German Elections,” European Review of Economic History 5, no. 2 (2001), 225–7 and 245; also Sybille H. Lehmann, “The German Elections in the 1870s: Why Germany Turned from Liberalism to Protectionism,” Journal of Economic History 70, no. 1 (2010), 146–78. The argument about state revenue has been advanced by John M. Hobson, The Wealth of States: A Comparative Sociology of International Economic and Political Change (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1997). 196 See the map in Lehmann, “The German Elections,” 151; also Klug, “Why Chamberlain Failed and Bismarck Succeeded,” 227. 197 Klug, “Why Chamberlain Failed and Bismarck Succeeded,” 224. 198 Washausen, Hamburg, 34. 199 Washausen, Hamburg, 23. 200 Washausen, Hamburg, 24. 201 Washausen, Hamburg, 34, 39, 69–72, and 121. 202 Washausen, Hamburg, 44–7. 203 Perras, Carl Peters, 67 and 75–8. 204 Klaus J. Bade, Friedrich Fabri und der Imperialismus in der Bismarckzeit. Revolution-Depression-Expansion (Freiburg i. Br.: Atlantis, 1975), 25 and 84–94. For the relevant local history in the Rhineland, see Ulrich S. Soénius Koloniale Begeisterung im Rheinland während des Kaiserreichs (Cologne: Selbstverlag Rheinisch Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, 1992), ch.3. 205 Marseille, “Les relations commerciales,” 159; also Jacques Marseille, “L’industrie cotonnière française et l’impérialisme colonial de 1885 à 1970,” Revue d’histoire économique et sociale 2–3 (1975), 386–412. 206 John F. Laffey, “Roots of French Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Lyon,” French Historical Studies 6, no. 1 (1969), 78–92. 207 Jules Ferry, Le Tonkin et la Mère-Patrie. Témoignages et documents (Paris: Victor-Havard, 1890). 208 Ferry, Tonkin, 40–1 and 43. “La politique coloniale est la fille de la politique industrielle.” “Mais tout le monde aujourd’hui veut filer et tisser, forger et distiller.” 209 Ferry, Tonkin, 42; and Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 634–5. 210 Marseille, Empire colonial, 80. 211 Ferry, Tonkin, 307–8 and 110. See also the table on page 306 for the changing situation in Tonkin’s relations with France in the 1880s. 212 Ferry, Tonkin, 300–4, with reference to a study by H. Perret; also 20. 213 Ferry, Tonkin, 139–40 and 24. 214 Eck, “Le patronat du Nord,” 1; also L’esprit économique, eds. Bonin et al, 329–45. 215 Marseille, “Les relations commerciale,” 158–9. 216 François Manchuelle, “Origines républicaine de la politique d’expansion coloniale de Jules Ferry,” Revue française de l’histoire d’outre-mer 75, no. 279 (1988), 201–2, esp. note 48. 217 Gianni Toniolo, Leandro Conte, and Giovanni Vecchi, “Monetary Union, Institutions and Financial Market Integration: Italy, 1862–1905,” Explorations in Economic History 40, no.4 (2003), 456. 218 Anna Milanini Kemény, La Società di esplorazioni commerciali in Africa e la politica coloniale (1879–1914) (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1973). 219 Valerio Castronovo, “Cent’anni di imprenditoria lombarda,” in La Lombardia moderna (Milan: Electa, 1989), 53–4 and 60–1; Stefania Licini, “Francesco Saverio Amman: An Austrian Cotton Entrepreneur in Lombardy, 1838–82,” Business History 41, no. 3 (1999); and Francesca Polese, “In Search of a

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220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234

235 236 237 238 239

240 241

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New Industry: Giovanni Battista Pirelli and His Educational Journey through Europe, 1870–1871,” Business History 48, no. 3 (206), 354–75. Leone Carpi, Delle colonie e delle emigrazione d’italiani all’estero sotto l’aspetto dell’industria, commercio, agricoltura, e con tratazzione d’importanti questioni sociali, vol. IV (Milan: Tip. Editrice Lombarda, 1874). Giuseppe Chierichiello, “L’Economia italiana negli anni 1880–1895: una riesposizione,” Economia e Storia 3, no. 3 (1982), 343–5. Austen, “The Metamorphoses of Middlemen,” 10–1. Washausen, Hamburg, 35. Washausen, Hamburg, 54. Washausen, Hamburg, 27 and 30–1. Ferry, Le Tonkin, 36. Eck, “Le patronat du Nord,” 2. Manchuelle, “Origines républicaines,” passim. Charles-Robert Ageron, “Gambetta et la reprise de l’expansion coloniale,” Revue française de l’histoire d’outre-mer 59, no. 215 (1972), 173. Ageron, “Gambetta,” 190. Roberts, “Republicanism, Railway Imperialism, and the French Empire in Africa,” 401–20. Robert L. Hess, “Italian Imperialism in its Ethiopian Context,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 6, no. 1 (1973), 99–100. Hess, “Italian Imperialism,” 101–6. Ronald Robinson, “The Conference in Berlin and the Future of Africa, 1884–1885,” in Bismarck, Europe and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference and the Onset of Partition, Stig Förster, Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Ronald Robinson, eds. (Oxford: OUP, 1988). Beaulieu, De la colonisation, 312–3. Washausen, Hamburg, 70. Jean Suret-Canale, “La conférence ‘africaine’ de Berlin (15 novembre 1884 – 26 février 1885),” la pensée no. 241 (September/October 1984), 111 and 113. Suret-Canale, “La conférence,” 114–7. R.L. Cope, “Local Imperatives and Imperial Policy: The Sources of Lord Carnarvon’s South African Confederation Policy,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 20, no. 4 (1987), 601–26; also John M. Smalberger, “The Role of the Diamond-Mining Industry in the Development of the PassLaw System in South Africa,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 9, no. 3 (1976), 419–34. Carpi, Delle colonie, 121. Gregory C.G. Moore, “The Practical Economics of Walter Bagehot,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 18, no. 2 (1996), 229–49; and Vincent Bignon, Marc Flandreau, and Stefano Ugolini, “Bagehot for Beginners: The Making of Lender-of-Last-Resort Operations in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Economic History Review 65, no. 2 (2012), 580–608. Cope, “Local Imperatives,” 612. David Armitage, “Globalizing Jeremy Bentham,” History of Political Thought 32, no. 1 (2011), 63–82.

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Maneschi, Andrea, “Pareto on International Trade Theory and Policy,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 15, no. 2 (1993), 210–228. 10.1017/S105383 7200000948 Marseille, Jacques, Empire colonial et capitalisme français. Histoire d’un divorce (Paris: Albin Michel, 1984). Marseille, Jacques, “L’industrie cotonnière française et l’impérialisme colonial de 1885 à 1970,” Revue d’histoire économique et sociale 2-3 (1975), 386–412. Marseille, Jacques, “Les relations commerciales entre la France et son empire colonial de 1880 à 1913,” Relations internationales 6 (1976), 145–160. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/45343624 Marseille, Jacques, “Colonisation, décolonisation et capitalisme,” Vingtième Siècle 4 (1984), 39–48. 10.2307/3769485 Marseille, Jacques. “Les relations commerciales entre la France et son empire colonial de 1880 à 1913,” Revue d’Histoire Moderne et Contemporaine 31, no. 2 (1984), 286–307. 10.3406/rhmc.1984.1274 Mass, William and William Lazonick, “The British Cotton Industry and International Competitive Advantage,” Business History 32, no. 4 (1990), 9–65. 10.1080/ 00076799000000143 Matthew, H.G.C., The Liberal Imperialists (Oxford: OUP, 1973). Meuleau, Marc, Des pionniers en Extrême-Orient. Histoire de la Banque de l’Indochine (1875–1975) (Paris: Fayard, 1990). Miège, Jean-Louis, L’impérialisme colonial italien de 1870 à nos jours (Paris: Société d’édition d’enseignement supérieur, 1968). Milanini Kemény, Anna, La Società di esplorazioni commerciali in Africa e la politica coloniale (1879–1914) (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1973). Mitchener, Kris James and Marc D. Weidenmier, “The Baring Crisis and the Great Latin American Meltdown of the 1890s,” Journal of Economic History 68, no. 2 (2008), 462–500. 10.1017/S0022050708000375 Mitchie, R.C., “The International Trade in Food and the City of London since 1850,” Journal of European Economic History 25, no. 2 (1996), 369–404. Moore, Gregory C.G., “The Practical Economics of Walter Bagehot,” Journal of the History of Economic Thought 18, no. 2 (1996), 229–249. 10.1017/S10538372 00003254 Mori, Giorgio, Il capitalismo industriale in Italia. Processo d’industrializzazione e storia d’Italia (Rome: Editori Riuniti, 1977). Mrázková, Jana, “The Colonial War in Ethiopia 1885–1896 (Its Place in Italian Nationalist Tradition),” Archív Orentální 48 (1980), 195–216. Munro, J. Forbes, “Shipping Subsidies and Railway Guarantees: William Mackinnon, Eastern Africa, and the Indian Ocean, 1860–93,” Journal of African History 28, no. 2 (1987), 209–230. 10.1017/S0021853700029753 Neal, Larry and Lance Davis, “The Evolution of the Structure and Performance of the London Stock Exchange in the First Global Financial Market, 1812–1914,” European Review of Economic History 10, no. 3 (2006), 279–300. 10.1017/S1361491606001766 Nelson, Samuel H., Colonialism in the Congo Basin, 1880–1940 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1994). Nørlund, Irene, “The French Empire, the Colonial State in Vietnam and Economic Policy: 1885–1940,” Australian Economic History Review 31, no. 1 (1991), 72–89. 10.1111/aehr.311005

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Osborn, Emily Lynn, “‘Rubber Fever’: Commerce and French Colonial Rule in Upper Guinée, 1890–1913,” Journal of African History 45, no. 3 (2004), 445–465. 10.1017/S0021853704009867 Pareto, Vilfredo, “State Expenditures in Italy as Compared with the National Wealth,” Economic Journal 2, no. 7 (1892), 561–564. 10.2307/2955991 Perkins, John, “Sugar Production, Consumption and Propaganda in Germany, 1850–1914,” German History 15, no. 1 (1997), 22–33. 10.1093/gh/15.1.22 Perras, Arne, Carl Peters and German Imperialism, 1856–1918: A Political Biography (Oxford: OUP, 2004). Peters, Dr. Carl, Zur Weltpolitik (Berlin: Karl Siegismund, 1912). Polese, Francesca, “In Search of a New Industry: Giovanni Battista Pirelli and His Educational Journey through Europe, 1870–1871,” Business History 48, no. 3 (206), 354–375. 10.1080/00076790600791797 Polsi, Alessandro, “Financial Institutions in Nineteenth-Century Italy. The Rise of a Banking System,” Financial History Review 3, no. 2 (1996), 117–137. 10.1017/ S0968565000000627 Porter, A.N., ed., Atlas of British Overseas Expansion (London: Routledge, 1991). Ray, Rajat Kanta, “Asian Capital in the Age of European Domination: The Rise of the Bazaar, 1800–1914,” Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 3 (1995), 449–554. 10.1017/S0026749X00013986 Roberts, T.W., “Republicanism, Railway Imperialism, and the French Empire in Africa, 1879–1889,” Historical Journal 54, no. 2 (2011), 401–420. 10.1017/S001 8246X11000070 Robinson, Ronald, “The Conference in Berlin and the Future of Africa, 1884–1885,” in Stig Förster, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, and Ronald Robinson, eds., Bismarck, Europe and Africa: The Berlin Africa Conference and the Onset of Partition (Oxford: OUP, 1988). Roes, Aldwin, “Towards a History of Mass Violence in the Etat Indépendant du Congo,” South African Historical Journal 62, no. 4 (2010), 634–670. 10.1080/ 02582473.2010.519937 Roscher, Wilhelm, Geschichte der Nationalökonomik in Deutschland (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1874). Roscher, Wilhelm, Kolonien, Kolonialpolitik und Auswanderung (Leipzig: Winter, 1856, second revised and augmented edition 1885). Seeley, John R., The Expansion of England (London: Macmillan, 1883). Semmel, Bernard, The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: Classical Political Economy, the Empire of Free Trade and Imperialism, 1750–1850 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970). Semmel, Bernard, “Sir Halford Mackinder: Theorist of Imperialism,” Canadian Journal of Economies and Political Science 24, no. 4 (1958), 554–561. 10.2307/ 139091 Sevin, Ludwig, Die Entwicklung von Friedrich Lists kolonial= und weltpolitischen Ideen bis zum Plane einer englischen Allianz 1846 (Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot, 1909). Smalberger, John M., “The Role of the Diamond-Mining Industry in the Development of the Pass-Law System in South Africa,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 9, no. 3 (1976), 419–434. 10.2307/216846 Soénius, Ulrich S., Koloniale Begeisterung im Rheinland während des Kaiserreichs (Cologne: Selbstverlag Rheinisch Westfälisches Wirtschaftsarchiv, 1992).

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Stern, Fritz, Gold and Iron. Bismarck, Bleichröder, and the Building of the German Empire (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977). Sunseri, Thaddeus, “The Baumwollfrage: Cotton Colonialism in German East Africa,” Central European History 34, no. 1 (2001), 31–51. 10.1163/156916101 750149121 Suret-Canale, Jean, “La conférence ‘africaine’ de Berlin (15 novembre 1884 – 26 février 1885),” la pensée no. 241 (September/October 1984), 103–121. Sylla, Richard and Gianni Toniolo, eds., Patterns of European Industrialization: The Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 1991). Tapinos, Georges Photios, “Paul Leroy-Beaulieu et la question de la population. L’impératif démographique, limite du libéralisme économique,” Population 54, no. 1 (1999), 103–124. 10.2307/1535021 Théry, Edmonde, “Monsieur Paul Leroy-Beaulieu on Bi-Metallism” (London: BiMetallic League, 1896). Tilly, Richard H., From Zollverein zum Industriestaat. Die wirtschaftlich-soziale Entwicklung Deutschlands 1834–1914 (Munich: dtv, 1990). Todd, David “A French Imperial Meridian, 1814–1870,” Past & Present 210, no. 1 (2011), 155–186. 10.1093/pastj/gtq063 Toniolo, Gianni, Storia economica dell’Italia liberale (1850–1918) (Bologna: il Mulino, 1988). Toniolo, Gianni, Conte, Leandro and Giovanni Vecchi, “Monetary Union, Institutions and Financial Market Integration: Italy, 1862–1905,” Explorations in Economic History 40, no. 4 (2003), 443–461. 10.1016/j.eeh.2003.08.001 Waibel, Leo, “The Political Significance of Tropical Vegetable Fats for the Industrials Countries of Europe,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 33, no. 2 (1943), 118–128. 10.2307/2561004 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, “A View of the Art of Colonization (1849),” in Jane Samson, ed., The British Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2001), 140–141. Washausen, Helmut, Hamburg und die Kolonialpolitik des deutschen Reiches: 1880 bis 1890 (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1968). Williamson, John G., Karl Helfferich 1872–1924: Economist, Financier, Politician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971). Wolf, Nikolaus, “Was Germany Ever United? Evidence from Intra- and International Trade 1885–1933,” Journal of Economic History 69, no. 3 (2009), 846–881. 10.1017/S0022050709001144

3

Governance for the nation’s progress: The tropics and modern European statehood, 1890s–1910s

Tropical regions became associated with transforming regional economies in Europe in the course of globalizing raw material supplies in the midnineteenth century. Many contemporary experts on economic progress viewed modern state agency as the extension of the ideal of liberal or positivist entrepreneurship in the globe. Tropical colonies became a part of the completion of the world’s development in line with assumptions of economic liberalism and its civilizing function. Yet in the 1890s and especially in the 1900s, the major states in Europe constituted themselves more explicitly as managers of external economic relations. Ideas of how the world’s tropical and subtropical regions ought to be associated with progressive nation-states in Europe also changed. As liberal cosmopolitanism declined, and states took on a more pronounced development function, overseas economies were explicitly linked to doctrines of European nation-states and national economies. This was also true of free-trading Britain, where the nation’s quest for global governance became more consciously defined in terms of its self-interest. To be sure, global commerce had been a reality since centuries. Moreover, states had long organized their economies as part of the wider world. Well-known examples in Europe include techniques in Britain connecting state finances to overseas trade in the fiscal-military state, and the conscious regulation of timber resources for shipbuilding in the economy of the city state of Venice.1 Nonetheless, late nineteenth-century Europe differed in the sense that a tangible outside world was becoming relevant to the scientization and professionalization required to govern states, economies, and people.2 At the same time, emancipating core nation-states meant embracing a concept of national development. In policy designs and practices, notions of the industrial economy, money, labour markets, and welfare became territorialized and national.3 Conceptually, colonies became a constituent part of national statehood from about 1900 onwards. Relations with the tropics were part of how nation-states delineated themselves in a global environment. Knowledge and state techniques entwined progress for nations in Europe with the organization of tropical and subtropical economies. Rational statehood DOI: 10.4324/9781003346425-5

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was defined as controlling governance for the nation. These processes show a different quality from the period between the 1870s and early 1890s. Then, colonial space was an extension to liberal modernity and the transition to industrial society, as in France, Britain, and to a lesser extent in Bismarck’s Germany. Or overseas conquest ought to allow a state to consolidate a viable society in view of future economy building, as was the case of Italy in the 1890s. The first three sections of this chapter will argue how states acquired a role as developers of nations and reproduced themselves socially as nations in a transnational setting. It will be discussed how states in Europe sought to incorporate the overseas world in external economic policies and scientific knowledge creation, as tensions grew between liberal economic globalization and the management of national economies between the late 1880s and the 1900s. Considerations of economic governance involved fundamental debates about currency standards, world trade, and the cooption of overseas regions. The case will be made with regard to French imperial statehood, Germany’s relations with Southwest Africa and the Ottoman empire, and for Italy with the example of the emerging links of the textile sector in Lombardy with East Africa after 1905. A separate section examines how overseas economies became aligned with the development policy of nations at a time of a generalized ethnicization and racialization of doctrines of development. The argument leads on, more specifically, to the question of the cohesion and reproduction of the respective polities. Tensions arose from external pressures on economies, hampering the welfare aspirations of national polities. Some socioeconomic groups became or remained privileged while others were marginalized. What is more, industrial states were, by definition, projects of mass participation if not mass emancipation. Ideals of national consolidation were part of a collective projection of the nation into the outside world. By the 1900s, empire had become pervasive in the British and French states. In Britain, this took the form of hegemonic economic governance; in France, imperial social networks impelled state agency. In Germany and Italy, projects of empire reflected competing social forces and doctrines. At this point, the chapter returns to the mid-1880s to take up the discussion of the characteristics of statehood. It will be explored how relations of control were implicit in overseas agency and in the role attributed to colonial territory in national development. Moreover, the analysis probes the characteristics and conceptions of the overseas extension of modern European statehood. Between the 1860s and the 1880s, states acquired a role in relation to global business networks. Subsequently, nation-states coopted some overseas regions to support businesses and as an alternative to a world of open commerce. By the 1900s, however, the manner in which nation-states organized their economies and conceived of development

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changed. Imperial statehood became the model of the modern state in Britain, Germany, and France.

States as organizers in a global setting Capturing state formation in terms of shifts in abstract models is elusive because of the complex layers of policies and political doctrines that prompted institutional change in specific cases and contexts. Nonetheless, it is apparent that, from the 1890s onwards, the large states in Europe reinvented themselves as managers of economies with regard to trade, debt, and money, and as organizers of bureaucracies and knowledge with references to the outside world. Moreover, officials attempted to organize existing colonies more consciously in relation to the centre’s nation-state rather than as allies of private business lobbies. As the export propensity of industrial economies increased, monitoring trade flows became more important. The question of free trade or protection was debated in terms of the rationality of economic management. Ultimately, though, monitoring turned into regulation. The turn to protectionism occurred, simply put, in Germany and Italy in the late 1880s, and in metropolitan France in 1892. On the capital side, too, it was ironically the rise of financial integration and the increasing relevance of indirect investment for advanced economies that heightened the role of the state in the national economy. The unprecedented intervention by the British and continental European states in bailing out the Barings bank in 1890/1 involved arguments about the regulation of sovereign debt across the globe. From the 1880s, a more systematic overseas debt management became an essential part of managing Britain’s service sector economy. After the rescue operation for Barings, Argentina was allowed to default and restructure its finances. In areas under British control, by contrast, Britain’s direct involvement in debt management ought to pre-empt debt crises. It has also been argued that direct political control in non-settler colonies served this purpose while inhibiting the access to credit in colonial economies.4 In Britain, the role of the finance sector in the economy coincided with the move away, under the liberal Prime Minister William Gladstone, from the previous government’s Cobdenite opposition to formal colonial rule. Britain’s occupation of Egypt in 1882 was connected to the objective of debt management.5 The Bank of England and the British Treasury saw their role enhanced during this period. By the end of the nineteenth century, the British economy obtained balance of payments surpluses thanks to earnings from capital exports. States in Europe now legislated to regulate territorial money in national economies. In colonial empires, this quest was extended to overseas and colonial regions whose economies showed fluid boundaries and the use of multiple currencies. The standardization of monetary regimes was contested

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between European imperial states and sheds light on the purpose of overseas control relations for different economies in Europe. The Bank of England gradually obtained the monopoly of issuing currency under the Bank Charter Act of 1844, as did the Bank of France from the 1850s. After the financial crisis of the mid-1890s, Italy established one central bank in charge of monetary management separate from commercial functions. In Germany, the Reichsbank was founded in 1876, but some regional banks of issue still existed until the First World War.6 As in Britain, economic officials in Germany, like Karl Helfferich, attributed a critical role to expert-led, independent institutions of central banking at the heart of a modern economy with a global commercial reach.7 Currency management and standardization became relevant in overseas regions to facilitate trade with the national economy and control debt, as shown by the creation of issuing banks in British settler colonies under the aegis of the Bank of England in the second half of the nineteenth century. But regulation was also deemed necessary at points at which different monetary standards might pose risks for economies in Europe. The purposes of shaping transnational monetary regimes by nation-states in the 1900s and 1910s will be illustrated with the following cases: Helfferich’s monetary policy in German colonies in Africa, the creation of the West African Currency Board (WACB) by Britain, and international initiatives aimed at establishing an Ethiopian central bank. The reordering of monetary relations in German East Africa and British West Africa was prompted by concerns about the prospects of trade and the mounting discrepancy between gold-based and silver-based currencies as a consequence of the appeal of the gold standard. In both cases, regulation aimed to standardize the relationship with the national currency. As silver progressively depreciated, South Asia and Africa absorbed silver coinage that was overvalued. France was an exception in the sense that it absorbed silver until the interwar period, though its silver also flowed into French colonies in West Africa and Indochina. For the British and German economies, among others, the relationship between silver currencies overseas and gold-based currencies at home became problematic due to the widening fork between the metal value of silver currencies and the “fictitious” face value of silver coins as colonial currencies were linked to gold standard currencies and ultimately needed to be backed by gold. Policy-makers, therefore, sought ways to regulate relations with colonial and overseas moneys not only in order to sustain and promote trade relations. Rather, they aimed to align overseas economies with national economies also in order to prevent negative repercussions on the national currency system that might arise from monetary developments in the colonies. Following an official enquiry in 1893, Britain revised currency regulations in colonial India, abolishing the free minting of silver rupees. Thus, the Indian rupee’s metal value became disconnected from its face

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value by law while Britain regulated the conversion of the rupee into gold. In 1899, the rupee was linked at a fixed rate to the British gold sovereign. Germany had adopted the gold standard following unification in 1871. Prominent German currency experts, first Ludwig Bamberger and later his protégé Helfferich, closely observed the decline of silver and shifts in Britain’s approach to the Indian currency. India operated on a gold exchange standard, which was in fact a sterling standard, rather than on a full gold standard. In Helfferich’s words, Britain had put the Indian rupee on a “limping” gold standard.8 Gold was not used in India, and British monetary authorities controlled the exchange between the Indian silver rupee and gold. The special monetary arrangements had long-term implications for Anglo-Indian monetary relations.9 In line with the objective to intensify commercial exchange with Europe, the British and German colonial authorities attempted to reduce the parallel circulation of moneys in colonies from the 1890s onwards. Currency laws prohibited imports of cowrie shells and Maria-Theresa Thaler, among others. In most German colonies, German coins became legal tender, and an exchange rate for foreign coins was fixed.10 In German East Africa, however, the problem was complicated by the fact that, in the 1890s, trade with Germany was tenuous and largely outweighed by trade with India. The German East Africa Company (Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Gesellschaft, DOAG) was, therefore, granted the right to mint its own company rupee for a territory where the Indian rupee was most widely in use. However, once India operated on a sterling standard, it became increasingly difficult to maintain the par value between the German company rupee and the Indian rupee. By the early 1900s, the value of the German East African rupee had become twice as high as the value of the silver content of the coins. As a consequence, traders in Zanzibar refused to accept German rupees as payment.11 The episode gave rise to a policy that reflected the designs of imperial and colonial statehood in Germany.12 Helfferich, Germany’s most prominent monetary expert, addressed the problem as an official in the colonial department of the foreign ministry. The ensuing policy was in line with his aim to establish a rational state with a colonial component supporting progressive German entrepreneurs. First, Helfferich pegged the German East African rupee to the Reichsmark. Second, he insisted on creating a small version of the Reichsbank with the help of private banks in order to monitor the currency and attract more German businesses to the colony. German bankers, though, were reluctant to become East Africa’s central bankers, and agreed to do so only when Helfferich lured them to the colony with the railway license of 1904. Helfferich created the German East African rupee in 1905 based on his analysis of the role of gold as an international monetary standard and in view of his project of associating a colonial empire with economy building in the Reich. In order to manage the relationship between a colonial circulation of silver

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coin in East Africa and the gold standard of the Reichsmark, he adapted to local currency legacies in the Indian Ocean region. But he created a mark standard for German East Africa by pegging the German rupee to the mark while keeping the German gold circulation separate from the German East African silver circulation. In doing so, he consciously followed the playbook which Britain had used in putting the Indian rupee on a sterling standard. Helfferich’s wider objective was to establish international monetary governance of a German design in the image of, but also in opposition to, the British sterling system. After its creation, the German rupee was controversially debated in the Reichstag. Many delegates failed to comprehend why German policy in East Africa did not follow the practice in other German colonies and did not introduce the Reichsmark. Hamburg traders grasped the logic of political financial engineering for the sake of German imperial monetary and economic governance. For them, however, unlike for Helfferich, operating with a sterling standard in German East Africa would not have been a concern. Helfferich’s aim, however, was transnational state governance and not the support for specific economic interest groups. Helfferich’s currency stabilization, moreover, conflicted with the alternative project of an overseas Germany of planters, advocated by the Catholic Centre Party (Zentrum) under Matthias Erzberger. As other critics of the East African rupee, Erzberger argued that introducing the Reichsmark would have best served the interests of German traders and settlers. However, he also claimed that Helfferich’s monetary policy had led to the lowering of the wages of African plantation workers by German planters. Erzberger held that the decrease of purchasing power had contributed to the rebellion on German cotton plantations in 1905, known as Maji Maji, which German troops brutally supressed. The validity of this connection is difficult to assess and has not been researched.13 In British West Africa, meanwhile, local currencies had not been demonetized, though their exchange rates with the pound sterling were regulated by law. The idea was that the old currencies would become redundant, since Britain dominated commerce. However, British West African colonial currencies continued to operate with a silver circulation. This meant that silver shillings circulating in Nigeria and on the Gold Coast were, albeit indirectly, ultimately backed by British gold reserves. British officials, therefore, became increasingly concerned that a problem might arise due to the growing discrepancy between the exchange rates of currencies based on silver and those based on gold. During a trade depression, silver shillings shipped to Britain and exchanged for gold might put pressure on Britain’s gold reserves. The model of the West African Currency Board, created in 1912, dealt with this problem by fully backing currency locally in a mechanism through which the money in circulation was essentially earned by the colony’s commodity exports. These colonial currency arrangements were a part of the British state’s

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imperial and global monetary governance, and excluded local agency.14 Currency boards were subsequently established in other British colonies, like Malaya and East Africa. They became a model for currency stabilization in agricultural export economies in the “Third World” well into the postcolonial period, notably in debt management by the International Monetary Fund in the 1980s. The establishment of an Ethiopian central bank, the Bank of Abyssinia, differed from the two preceding cases in the sense that the project had been part of the Shoa monarchy’s aspirations to modern statehood. In enlisting expatriate firms who were vying for concessions, whether for railways or central banking, Menilek II tried to balance out the influence of foreign powers. Nonetheless, in the 1900s, this attempt to regulate Ethiopia’s national currency, too, became drawn into the maelstrom of Britain’s wider imperial currency and trade policy. The British-led Bank of Egypt obtained the concession for creating an Ethiopian central bank. Menilek had granted the railway concession to France, and the British negotiators had been able to diffuse his concerns regarding undue national influence by establishing a board for the bank that included one Italian and one French citizen. Independent central banking, though, was compromised by partisan views. The British Foreign Office held that the bank should serve British commercial interests, and Lord Cromer, the British Controller-General of Egypt, argued that the Bank of Abyssinia ought to come under direct British government control. The Foreign Office changed course fearing the sensitivity of Ethiopian officials; yet the Bank of Egypt did not. However, the Bank of Abyssinia was eventually indigenized during the First World War.15 How European nation-states formulated techniques of administration in the globe during the late nineteenth century can also be demonstrated with the twin processes of knowledge creation and the organization of information flows. The latter had long been a requirement of world trade. The former connected state governance with academia, involving states in education and research from the earth sciences and medicine to social anthropology. The prerequisite for conscious state governance was the systematic collection of data about national populations and economies. In the West (and Japan), population censuses became a feature of emerging social statistics. Figures on import and export trade and state expenditure were collected within the framework of nation-states rather than regions. Figures on capital movements, however, were in most cases slower in entering the evaluation of the national balance of payments. Calculations of the national wealth by Robert Giffen for Britain, Alfred de Foville for France, and Maffeo Pantaleoni for Italy were part of this assessment. As nation-states consolidated, specialists on the nation’s relations with the outside world were in demand. New specialized periodicals straddled the realms between universal and national development. From 1890, the

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Economic Journal in Britain published articles on economic theory and the global British economy as well as on topics related to other national economies. In Italy, the second series of the Giornale degli Economisti published mostly articles on economics and the Italian economy but also offered views on economic policy and politics. Paul Leroy-Beaulieu’s L’Économiste français, going back to the 1870s, provided information to assist the construction of the new colonial empire, to which Beaulieu added some analysis of France’s position in the world economy as he did in the Revue des Deux Mondes.16 In Germany, a dedicated periodical on international economic relations was founded in 1912. The Weltwirtschaftliche[s] Archiv offered political and legal information regarding trade, but also analysis of German external economic policy. It took longer, though, for experts to enter government bureaucracies. Helfferich was such an example of an economist-civil servant engaging with the nation-state’s external relations. From the 1870s, states became increasingly involved as facilitators of overseas commerce by systematizing the availability of information and training. The public domain gradually acquired a role distinct from private entrepreneurial interest groups. The function of nation-states was debated from a comparative perspective. For instance, writing about Italy in 1874, Leone Carpi, the Italian economist and journalist, endorsed a quote from an official French report stressing the need for conscious organization and training by the state to promote overseas trade. The French report referred to British officials who had attributed the fact that German trading houses in the China Sea outnumbered British ones to the teaching of relevant skills in German commercial schools.17 In France, the formation of expert functionaries followed British and Dutch examples, as Beaulieu had advocated. From the late 1880s, a convergence occurred between professional education and research in economic geography, private regional geographical associations, and their representatives in Parliament.18 By that time, the existence of the French colonial empire in Indochina and North Africa had become generally accepted among French economists.19 The École coloniale, a college, taught “colonial sciences,” including knowledge of “the Orient” to students primarily recruited in metropolitan France. By 1914, about one-fifth of colonial administrators came from the École, which established itself among the grandes écoles that formed the elite of the Republican state. The empire had also acquired a role in institution building for the Republic. The new French colonies fell under the responsibility of an under-secretary for colonies associated with the Ministry of Commerce before a fully-fledged Ministry of Colonies was created in 1894. The creation of new specialized bureaux accompanied this move.20 Britain recruited its colonial civil service through special examinations. The creation of the Indian Civil Service with officials from Britain had

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been a reaction to the Indian rebellion of 1857. By the 1890s, the state aimed to ensure that candidates held a university degree from Oxford or Cambridge. British rule in India was deeply rooted in class, however. The British-Indian elite sneered at such practice as diluting the aristocratic bond, even if, by the late nineteenth century, it considered a state bureaucracy based on competitive recruitment to be necessary.21 In France, by contrast, the colonial civil service defined its ethos as that of the Republican teacher. On the colonial frontier, where destruction was at times deemed inevitable, the devastation that ensued from conquest ought to be compensated by Republican reconstruction, namely by reestablishing the market place and by appointing a teacher.22 By the 1890s, the model of the modern state formed at a world scale at the nexus of entrepreneurship, resource exploitation, and the organization of scientific knowledge. The state was involved in this knowledge production, whether as a planner, sponsor, or mediator, through its research institutions. The process impacted on institutions, orthodoxies in management, and the techniques of governance of a mass state. Overseas exploration was becoming a distinguishing feature of modern statehood. This was a conscious quest for state rationalization circumscribed by assumptions of both universal and national development, as will be argued further. Botanical research had been encouraged by the British East India Company since the eighteenth century, and manifested itself with the establishment of company gardens in tropical and sub-tropical regions from South Asia to South Africa since the eighteenth century.23 However, in the late nineteenth century, such research connected to the new frontier in resource exploitation. Especially from the late 1880s, information on tropical plants and their uses were more systematically propagated, notably through the bulletin of the British botanical gardens at Kew.24 Botanical research in France and Germany consciously drew on the Kew experience in establishing their own research centres and gardens. These also fulfilled an explicit role in supporting national objectives of resource exploitation. The botanical gardens in Berlin were founded in the 1890s both with the aim to establish German expertise on tropical natural resources as part of a modern state but also by linking such research with entrepreneurship. The German research centre at Amani in East Africa had a function in introducing appropriate varieties of cotton seeds into the colony in 1900s.25 In British West Africa, cocoa was introduced as a new crop for smallholder production on the Gold Coast in the 1890s as an alternative to the diminishing returns in the palm oil trade.26 The Empire Cotton Growing Association, moreover, experimented with new cotton seeds.27 African wild rubber was researched and exploited from the 1880s. Rubber seeds were introduced from Brazil to Southeast Asia at a time of increasing debates about an imminent rubber shortage in the 1900s.28 In France, economic geographers were the backbone of colonial associations; Cristoforo Negri played a similar role in Italy.29 The engagement with

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knowledge overseas and in the tropics also served to position European states as the vanguard of universal progress in ways not directly connected to resource exploitation.30 The relevance of academia to the nation-state’s role in the world permeated the discourse in the humanities, too, especially with regard to knowledge of “the Orient,” which included Africa. In Germany, connections between national economy, geography, and ethnology were particularly close. The ethnographer and geographer Karl Ratzel was well known for his activities in the colonial association and nationalliberal party from the mid-1880s, establishing links between a German presence for the sake of research and the exploitation of raw materials for Germany. And the missionaries and academic Africanists Karl Meinhof and Diedrich Westermann stressed the distinct role of German culture in educating Africans in view of economic and political development at the German colonial congress in 1905.31

Overseas relations, states, and national economies The preceding account argued that overseas relations fused with the ways in which states in Europe constituted themselves as modern at the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century. In the following, it will be discussed how these relationships connected to national economies at a time when states endorsed an active role in their formation. In the 1900s, the German state was closely associated with industrial-financial interest groups. Overseas relations, therefore, related differently to the national economy than at the time of the debates about commerce and tariffs in the 1880s. The case will be argued first by focusing on the German financial sector and its entanglement with industry. Officials in both Germany and France compared their economy with that of Britain. Secondly, a comparative analysis of cotton textile sectors and colonies shows how this relationship and state involvement changed. It has been argued that the French state was closely involved in colonial textile marketing from the 1880s onwards, whereas Britain’s cotton manufacturers progressively withdrew into colonial markets in the final decades of the nineteenth century as the sector became less relevant to the national economy. But, in the 1900s, colonies became also important for the German economy, and for the Italian region of Lombardy, connected to government policies supporting textile manufacturing. As states became developers of their national economies, they sought to align policies in overseas frontier regions with economic steering at home. Finally, the discussion of South Africa, the Congo, and China, illustrates, once again, the thrust of this chapter in showing how change in the characteristics of economies and their perception shifted state agency towards conceptions of transnational control. By the 1890s, the German economy had become reliant on industrial exports. What is more, by the 1900s, the German state emphasized national

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economy building in relation to a cosmopolitan banking sector. According to Helfferich, labour-intensive growth promoting exports “made in Germany” would ultimately allow Germany to compete with Britain, though capital-led growth ought to be the primary objective in a modern economy.32 The first strategy was the assertive building of German commercial networks as part of a programme of Nationalökonomie. Helfferich increasingly stressed this need during the First World War, when he alleged that British policy was intent on keeping German commerce at bay by political means. On the other hand, the state’s diplomatic and logistical assistance for commerce gave Germany a reputation of hegemonic selfpromotion rather than as a defender of open commerce. The French economic historian Henri Hauser portrayed German external business relations as systematically planned, geared towards world domination, and tightly controlled by the German-Prussian state, though he conceded that the export drive followed rather than preceded the saturation of Germany’s domestic market.33 Hauser harked back to the “German” joint-stock banks with close links to manufacturing, the formation of producer cartels, and monopolization, which facilitated concerted action and price control in foreign markets, as endorsed by Helfferich.34 Hauser argued that in Germany research conducive to industrial development occurred at the nexus between education and production, where the laboratory met the factory. The state, moreover, sustained monopolistic price dumping by coordinating the export drive and by its active involvement in overseas marketing.35 Historical research since has qualified the significance of joint-stock banks for Germany’s manufacturing growth. Arguments stressing Germany’s need for overseas outlets for its manufactures and capital, as advanced at the time by Richard Hilferding in his study of finance capital, have also been revised. Nonetheless, the growing economic tensions between Britain and Germany, alongside the military ones, have been well researched.36 Incidentally, in 1900, Vilfredo Pareto asked one of his associates to investigate the link between the two, who concluded that there was a strong likelihood of the economic competition resulting in war.37 Besides, especially in South America, Germany had conquered important markets with the help of overseas banks, created mainly as branches of Deutsche Bank from the 1890s. These institutions often successfully rivalled British banks in the region in the 1900s. Two directions of analysis merit further attention with regard to state agency: the tools required to manage the German national economy, and the place of colonies in this endeavour. In essence, Helfferich presented both as a tool in defence of economic liberalism. Weltpolitik emerged as a solution to a global problem. Britain and France abused their capitalist superiority. When German competition grew, British Manchesterism, which had presented itself as cosmopolitan, turned again into British imperialism. Economic and colonial war, Helfferich suggested, ought to

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subdue German competition in trade and was a sign of commercial “envy,” notably due to the fact that Germany performed better even in “neutral” markets.38 Helfferich’s principal concern in economic management was de-globalization, fuelled by debates in Britain about imperial protection, as in Joseph Chamberlain’s initiative for tariff reform in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Domestic economic growth hinged on external economic conditions. Securing raw material imports to boost manufacturing exports thus depended on Germany’s position in an open global economy.39 For officials in the German state of the 1900s, colonies were not only deemed to have potential as markets. More importantly, markets ought to help organize the export drive by reducing the exposure of German manufacturers to hostile action by foreign raw material suppliers. The case will be examined with regard to the cotton textile sector further. Colonies were not a programme of economic protectionism but rather an alternative support for modern states to make global commerce work. The state fulfilled a function in planning supplies from the colonies for the national economy, notably raw cotton resources, but also vegetable fats and natural rubber. Especially with regard to rubber, however, the private sector judged such initiatives to be premature in 1907.40 Nonetheless, by 1910, German East Africa experienced a rubber boom.41 Researching tropical resources became a part of the scientific outlook of the German national economy. In some conceptions, the research laboratory for the factory was expected to operate eventually in the colonial tropics, namely on the mineral and agricultural frontier to which scientists would migrate. In doing so, Africa would not only be an alternative to increasing competition in Asia but also a means to support German modernity.42 During the First World War, Africa was an important war theatre. But the continent had a wider significance in conceptions of German statehood. Germany attempted to secure British neutrality at the outbreak of the war, among others, by offering assurances that Germany would abstain from conquering French colonial territory. Friedrich Naumann, the German social reformer and advocate of the concept of German hegemony in central Europe, assumed that Germany would take over the Belgian Congo. Meanwhile, political liberals like Bernhard Dernburg, who had followed Helfferich in the colonial ministry and also served briefly as minister of finance in 1915, sought assurances that the British empire would not become a protected commercial zone.43 The German state’s engagement with the finance sector as the hallmark of universal modernity spearheaded by Britain can be illustrated with the Baghdad railway project and with policy in German Southwest Africa. In 1906, Helfferich joined Deutsche Bank. The episode demonstrates the state’s involvement with Deutsche Bank in the railway project, and how Helfferich in the Bank acted at times for the state.44 Importantly, moreover, the case exhibits conflicting approaches to national development,

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namely Germany’s ambition to promote its commercial expansion, as opposed to Britain’s preoccupation with international debt regulation. For Helfferich, the railway project served to carve out a high profile investment realm. In doing so, it served to establish the German state in a vanguard economic role. Britain was not interested in the project, relying instead on the shipping connection to India. German officials were, therefore, able to agree on a German sphere of influence with Britain and France in line with Helfferich’s view that economic competition could sometimes be wasteful. Agreements on spheres of control ought to assist the common quest for economic progress. The floating of loans in Berlin and internationally required assurances for investors regarding the construction and eventual completion of the railways. Financing the project implicated legal arrangements because of the restrictions on the spending of Ottoman revenues imposed by international debt management. The situation was aggravated by politics, namely by the Young Turk revolution that brought a nationalist government to power. The project was eventually able to proceed in the 1910s, when the government agreed to guarantee the loans for the railways with the Turkish custom revenues.45 While financing the Baghdad railways involved a range of cosmopolitan banks, there was ultimately a connection to the German state. In 1908, and again in 1914, Helfferich attempted to convert the railways into a nationalized German enterprise.46 This attempt, though, ought not to be interpreted in terms of the temporary influence of the state over the otherwise dominant private sector of “high finance.”47 Rather, Helfferich’s strategy was consistent with the conception of managing a modern economy as a national one, with the Janus-faced state operating in a mutually symbiotic relationship between ordering the German economy and promoting its development in the globe. Policy towards German Southwest Africa demonstrates the counterpoint to an investment-induced expansionist agency driven by “high finance,” but also shows the state as a developer of the national economy. The tenancy of the German colonial office under Dernburg, a banker turned civil servant and politician, has generally been viewed as the attempt to reform colonial policy in the aftermath of the exterminationist military operations against the Herero and Nama populations in 1905–1906.48 But Dernburg’s main concern was regulating the colonial mining and cotton resources in connection with Germany’s position in the world economy. The principal diamond discoveries in the region occurred only in 1908 and were productively exploited from 1912. However, there had been uncontrolled exploratory activity earlier in the 1900s. Dernburg went to considerable length to establish a consortium composed of important German financial houses in order to secure the finances of the colony and explorative work in mining for the German Colonial Company for Southwest Africa (Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft für Südwestafrika).49

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German “high finance” had hitherto been reticent to engage in high risk investment in the colony. Dernburg aimed to associate powerful modern entrepreneurship with the development of the nation-state overseas as a political guarantor. With the discovery of the world’s second-largest diamond fields, the state’s development function increased in significance. Dernburg negotiated the cooperation between the Colonial Company and German banking, notably the Berliner Handesgesellschaft, a jointstock bank. The objective was, apart from ensuring substantial tax revenue for the state, to manage the diamond exploitation in a way that would stabilize the world price, promote relevant industries in Germany, and stimulate German banking.50 Meanwhile, colonial links became important for the cotton textile industries of Germany and Italy. As a major employer, the sector epitomized the connection between the development of national economies and the running of mass nation-states. Between the 1890s and 1910s, Lombardian and German textile manufacturing suggest both differences and parallels with the overseas relations of the older industries of Lancashire and Northern France. Two contrasting phases are apparent in Lombardy’s textile sector in relation to the question of the economic uses of Italian colonies. The sector’s self-reliant modernization in the early 1890s was a part of a new industrial identity that opposed Italy’s colonial expansion under Prime Minister Francesco Crispi. Some cotton textile manufacturers, including Enrico Dell’Acqua, had engaged in scientific research and also explored outlets and sources of supply, especially in Northeast Africa after 1879.51 However, this was not a quest for colonies. Yet in the late 1890s, and especially in the mid-1900s, the textile sector in Lombardy gradually endorsed colonial rule in Africa. Pareto’s contemporary vision of an antagonism between the peaceful commerce of the liberal industrial bourgeoisie and the militaristic and expansionist state got diluted. In 1895, before Italy’s defeat in the war in Ethiopia, Crispi involved Milanese textile circles in establishing a new company for the Southern Somali coast with some government support and finance.52 In 1898, when Milan witnessed large anti-government demonstrations due to the social crisis after Italy’s failure to occupy Ethiopia, Lombardian entrepreneurs and the Italian state joined forces in organizing economic expansion. Between 1898 and 1905, the defunct Filonardi Company reemerged as the Benadir Company under a state charter. Its shareholders included entrepreneurs from the booming cotton textile sector, notably Giorgio Mylius, Silvio Benigno Crespi (who co-owned the Corriere della Sera), Ernesto De Angeli, and Edoardo Amman, as well as the rubber firm Pirelli, and the Milanese Banca commerciale, the joint-stock bank founded in 1894. The Benadir Company also obtained government finance.53 The aim was to get involved in cotton plantations and perhaps in existing local production in order to supply Italian manufacturers.54 These initiatives gained momentum, when an industrial sector began to matter for the

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national economy and when the state moved to a national project instead of balancing regional political power blocs in trasformismo. When the Southern Italian market, which had sustained Lombardian textile production, reached saturation in the late 1900s, Foreign Minister Tommaso Tittoni declared formal colonial rule over Somalia. Moreover, since Italian cotton piece goods found it difficult to compete with those from India or the United States on the Somali market, Somalia became part of the Italian lira zone and customs area in 1911.55 In this phase, Italy’s expansion in Somalia was triggered by the Lombardian textile industry in crisis. The government of Giovanni Giolitti essentially incorporated Somalia into Italy’s national economic space. Somalia now fulfilled a role that was similar to the one that Indochina played for French producers in supporting a textile sector that struggled to compete in an open world economy. Thus, unlike Eritrea and Ethiopia in the 1880s and 1890s, Somalia and Libya became associated with an industrial Italy with a more integrated national economy. The Banca commerciale, meanwhile, preferred other overseas outlets to Somalia, investing, among others, in the Baghdad railways, and in Katanga in the Congo, which became in 1908 formally a Belgian colony.56 Here too, the state was involved. Tittoni promoted cooperation with Belgium geared towards boosting Italian commerce in the Congo as a source of rubber for Italian firms.57 German East Africa was of increasing importance as a supplier of raw cotton for the world’s third-largest producer of cotton textiles after Britain and the United States in the 1900s rather than as a market outlet for the German Reich’s textile manufacturers of Saxony and Silesia. Plantation production on a large scale involved German textile firms and settler producers and was helped by the German cotton lobby’s connections with the colonial governor, Count G.A. von Götzen. His coercive labour policies had contributed to the Maji Maji rebellion of 1906. From 1907, with Dernburg now presiding over a colonial ministry separate from the department of foreign affairs, the state promoted smallholder production to meet the needs of the German textile sector.58 Raw cotton had become the largest share of expenditure for raw material imports. The policy was in line with the aim to establish Germany as a functioning industrial economy. From 1900 onwards, and especially in 1904, Germany’s principal US supplier of raw cotton had provoked a supply and labour crisis in the sector due to sudden price increases. The search for alternative supplies from German colonial sources, therefore, reflected a short-term need in a vulnerable sector. In the longer perspective, moreover, such production, it was hoped, might allow Germany to influence the world price.59 In this vein, debates about colonies entered the realm of politics related to concerns about the nation’s welfare, including among Social democrat and trade unionists, failures of colonial commodity schemes notwithstanding.60

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In Britain’s relations with Africa, the state stepped in rather reluctantly in different regions in the 1890s in support of the private sector. The transformation from chartered company rule to direct colonial rule in West Africa, East Africa, and Southern Africa is well-researched.61 In the West African palm oil regions, British traders obtained more systematic official support with the concession of the Royal Niger Company (1886) and the creation of a British colony in the Niger delta in 1894. In East Africa, William Mackinnon’s officially sanctioned British East Africa Company (BEAC), established in 1888, gave way to British protectorates in 1895 and 1899 after the company’s bankruptcy. With its own currency, the company rupee, the firm had already held one of the paraphernalia of a state.62 But in the 1890s and 1900s, the British state, too, adopted roles in regulating overseas extensions of the British economy. Cocoa growing on the Gold Coast connected to research in Kew Gardens. The British Cotton Growing Association (BCGA) obtained a royal charter in 1902, precisely at the time of renewed doubts regarding Europe’s import dependence on North American cotton. The BCGA focused its activities on Britain’s new colonies in West Africa. The association leased land near Ibadan in Nigeria in 1905.63 In the 1890s, Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company administered the colony of Rhodesia for Britain but failed to discover new mining resources in the interior.64 In the 1900s, the grievances of European cotton textile firms with US suppliers and the initiatives of the BCGA were seen as an opportunity to give the company some profile and raise tax revenue for the colony.65 These were often coincidental connections that entwined Africa with the British state in its global commercial and scientific reach. In France, meanwhile, political networks in the state served as the rallying point for French entrepreneurs in Africa. These were mainly small and medium merchant houses in search of new markets. Eugène Etienne’s Comité de l’Afrique française in the 1900s was an economic lobby group in Parliament with close links to commerce in Marseille.66 But as raw cotton supplies became a growing concern, France’s textile firms, too, founded a colonial cotton association in 1904. In this context, the governor of Côte d’Ivoire, for instance, advocated systematic cotton growing in 1911 as a viable alternative to volatile wild rubber exports.67 The preceding discussion focused on two related ways in which states gained relevance in overseas relations in the 1900s: in the aim to increase the economic uses of existing dependent territory, and as extensions to national economies. The latter subject poses questions regarding the link between nation-state governance and international regimes of economic governance. This function was especially important in the British case, but also involved the cooperation between European states in overseas regions with economic potential that were deemed to be politically unstable: South Africa, the Congo, and China.

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The academic literature on Britain and the South African mining frontier in the 1890s and 1900s is vast, and does not need to be rehearsed here. A comment is due, however, regarding the characteristics of the British state at the time. Simply put, studies have emphasized influences of the finance sector and its social relations, Joseph Chamberlain’s imperial unionism, and the significance of mining capitalism, in regulating the South African frontier culminating in the Anglo-South African war of 1899–1902.68 However, the purpose of state involvement is worth exploring. The British state was in flux in the aftermath of the Baring crisis and at a time of a growing service sector economy. One should not assume one consistent trajectory of agency or view relations with South Africa in isolation from Britain’s wider economic relationships. On the one hand, mining was a field of intense speculation that shows connections with the British state. On the other hand, the state took on a regulative function. The Colonial Stock Act of 1900 that guaranteed trustee investment in colonies is an important example. It has been argued that the state adopted this regulatory role only reluctantly.69 The reason for this prudence in the late 1890s included concerns by the British Treasury regarding risky overseas investments. Financial stability was assured by limiting borrowing to colonial governments (excluding municipalities or private firms) and by reaffirming the legal responsibility of the governments of settler colonies in British courts in case of defaults, thereby connecting financial governance to a political hierarchy in the empire.70 In non-settler colonies, Britain managed access to borrowing via the Crown Agents. Financial regulation was part of the territorialization of money as well as conceived of in terms of debt control. Ironically, at this nexus pressure group interests of finance converged in a tenuous alliance with those of industry, and economic liberalism with the lobbying for a “white” imperial union, notwithstanding the sharp differences regarding tariffs. Colonial trustee status served British investors and was also needed for Chamberlain’s project of a federal empire-state. The empire became a secure outlet for British middle class investors, thanks to an investment regime that only changed in 1960. By 1928, the share of British investment in colonial stock of total British overseas investment had reached 74 percent.71 Moreover, in the case of Britain, policy entwined national with global governance, and the nation with empire. Besides, in the 1900s, the Congo continued to play its de facto role in global governance allowing access to resources under an international legal regime, a status that was temporarily threatened during the First World War. However, abuses in King Leopold’s Congo prompted protests by humanitarian activists calling for state regulation.72 From 1908, the Belgian state ordered the Congo more explicitly with Belgian development in mind, for instance by inviting the British firm of William Lever in 1911 to establish palm oil plantations in the Congo.73

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The Congo’s role for Belgium was much enhanced as copper resources were found in Katanga. Other countries, like Italy, concluded agreements with the Congo for raw material supplies, as they became more active as developers. China was the big prize of economic liberalism or its worst nightmare, depending on the observer’s views of its implications. China held out hopes for a huge market, and was an immediate outlet for European investments in railways and mining. The latter bore risks, however, whereas the former might lead to a mighty competitor in the future. Initially, though, the horizon of immediate economic prospects outweighed concerns about ultimate competition from emerging Chinese producers. A sustainable investment regime was the ethical principle advocated by Charles Addis, financial advisor to the British government and banker in China. In practice, however, the line between liberal governance and practices of competitive plunder were fluid, for which the nexus between the British state and British mining investment in China is an instructive example. In the 1900s, Addis, too, was hardly aloof from dubious business practices when it came to bolstering investment in China.74 Yet the more European nation-states became involved in the active construction of national economies, the more they saw contradictions between global development and national development. It was difficult to find a consensus on so-called China policy and delineate spheres of influence. The West agreed on a joint military intervention as punishment for the attacks on the foreign legions during the “boxer rebellion” between 1899 and 1901. Some European liberals and liberal imperialists had anyway argued that China ought to be made conducive to cosmopolitan trade and finance, if necessary by force.75 In the aftermath of the rebellion, however, tensions aggravated between those observers in continental Europe who saw an open China as a market and those warning of its competitive potential. For France and Germany in particular, China’s development was a double-edged sword. In the 1890s, Germany had advocated free trade in China due to concerns that German exporters would otherwise become excluded from markets. Helfferich continued to adhere to this course in the 1900s. But from the late 1890s, there was also a debate about the risks of Chinese competition, notably in mining. The Social democrat leader August Bebel expressed his concerns in terms of the “awakening” of East Asia.76 Other observers defined the “yellow peril” as the risk of Asian markets closing down, stressing the need for developing African outlets as an alternative.77 In France, East Asian competition in European, colonial, and international markets was a growing worry for the advocates of national economic protection and bimetallism, like Edmonde Théry of the Figaro newspaper. Chinese industrialization would prove disastrous for Europe because of low cost competition. Ernest Renan, the theorist of the French nation-state, expressed similar concerns.78

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The indemnity for the Boxer rebellion imposed by Western countries was the lowest common denominator for a joint policy approach by the West. The indemnity continued the legacy of debt collection, rather than endorsing an international debt regime. It has been argued that the practice suggests continuities with nineteenth-century unequal treaties and plunder. The ruling merely secured income for individual European countries, even if the course of action ran counter to hopes for the broadening of profitable investment outlets.79

Invigorating the nation abroad The first section of this chapter has argued that overseas relationships entered the construction of modern states and economies in Europe and the second discussed examples of the nexus between overseas relations and national economic agency. In these processes, from the 1900s onwards, the major states in Western Europe consciously mediated external relations. However, national economic development, progress, and welfare also entwined states with society. A twofold question arises: how did social reproduction involve overseas relations, and how did this reproduction engage states. It will be argued that social change related to the twin role of the state as an economic manager and developer faced with opportunities and crises. The transformation of the landed aristocracy and emergence of the industrial bourgeoisie requires particular attention. The following analysis aims to fathom the role of overseas relationships in the social reproduction of nations as the society-state nexus shifted from region to nation. The argument focuses, in turn, on the old aristocracies in Prussia-Germany, Italy, and England, the industrial and commercial bourgeoisie in France and Germany, cast between cosmopolitanism and the nation, and national projects of imperial social relations. Aspects of class and labour relations in mass-producing states will be discussed in the last two sections of the chapter that deal with the characteristics of statehood. Regarding Britain, it has rightly been emphasized that overseas relations made the state rather than vice versa.80 In this process, social relations permeated political authority. In the eighteenth century, the increase of land holdings in India via the East India Company secured substantial revenues for the landed aristocracy in England. In the 1830s and 1840s, however, the English aristocracy came under pressure, given the growing need for industrial labour in the North of England. Grain from North America was cheaper but kept out with the help of protectionist tariffs, thus hampering affordable bread prices and the emergence of a well-fed labour force for industry in a peaceful capitalist world, according to Richard Cobden’s well-known reasoning. This view underpinned his advocacy of free trade and lobbying against the power of the English landed aristocracy.81

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In the late nineteenth century, however, the very conception of modern statehood owed much to a critique of free trade, including by liberals, as self-sustaining economic liberalism turned out to be an illusion. What is more, as substantial segments of the landed aristocracy reinvented themselves in the course of the nineteenth century in commercial and financial services in London, considerations of capital exports, sound finance, and debt servicing, were a significant influence in state doctrine. The predilections of this new socioeconomic formation contributed to an economy that necessitated economic governance in state institutions, representing a stable bureaucratic regime rather than particular interest groups or individual firms. A perspective on a differentiating state is thus relevant for Britain, too. Social relations in the state of the Prussian-German aristocracy were markedly different. The East-Elbean Junkers were affected by grain imports from North America, as had been the British aristocracy earlier. Some Junkers moved into banking and some became active in colonial associations. But the Junkers continued to exist as a social class and political force based on their land resources, though production shifted from grain to sugar beet.82 What then mattered were markets. With changing consumption habits in industrial societies, sugar became an internationally contested produce. In the German nation-state from 1871, the old landed aristocracy was still an influential political elite in the state. The Junkers were a factor in national integration, constituting one side of the protectionist alliance. But, unlike in England, overseas relations did not matter for the aristocracy. Yet the Prussian Junkers solicited the state to regulate land and labour in the Eastern border region with its substantial population of ethnic Poles. Tensions in the East came to a head when the Junkers lost out politically in the Reich’s industrial economy in the 1900s. In Italy, too, some aristocratic landowners shifted to sugar beet. The zucchieri became an important social and economic force, especially in Liguria, with links to regional banking.83 Under the governments of Francesco Crispi in the late 1880s and mid-1890s, the acquisition of colonial territory in Northeast Africa was part of a strategy of associating old landed interests with the post-Risorgimento nation. Crispi held the view that, as in the Risorgimento, overcoming social divisions could only occur in the long run as a result of the eventual convergence of conflicting social and political forces in the state.84 What ensued were temporary alliances in trasformismo, creating a volatile national bloc. Notions of liberal economic development were giving way to cultural conceptions of a national economy, inspired by Friedrich List.85 Imperial expansion was then a part of a Jacobine strategy where military might allied to industrial development would ultimately shape a viable Italian economy. In turn, militarism and the myth of land would help transform the old aristocracy and contribute to the coherence of the nation.86 Part of Crispi’s strategy

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was to foster an alliance between the landed aristocracy and heavy industry under protection, which importantly helped the zucchieri and indirectly supported foreign investment. Close relations by the government with the Bank of Rome and its involvement with firms, from bitumen mines in Albania to flour mills in Southern Italy, were arguably conducive to these policies.87 In some regions, grain production with cheap labour was still price competitive, though in the South, the excess labour problem worsened, unlike in industrial Germany. As in Germany, however, building the Italian nation-state required bridging the fork between old and new economic and social forces. Protectionism should help integrate these social and cultural forces, it was not primarily a doctrine geared towards integrating the economy. At a time when the influence of the landed aristocracy waned in other industrializing countries in Europe, the Italian state courted the latifundisti. What is more, policies amounted to social engineering in favour of the old elites rather than economic governance. This situation ties in with arguments about the continuous influence of atavistic social forces in Italy’s political culture, as argued notably by Antonio Gramsci and in a different way by Pareto. In some respect, the annexation of Libya, as the “fourth shore,” under the liberal Giolitti government in 1912 looks like a continuity with the Crispi period rather than its renunciation. The Bank of Rome shadowed the move, and benefitted from it. Bank and government were connected through the bank’s Vice-President Romolo Tittoni, the foreign minister’s brother.88 Yet in attributing to Libya a role in agriculture at a time of emigration pressure as well as a commercial potential for markets, the state seems to have crossed the fine line from the political and social engineering of trasformismo around the grandeur of the homeland, the patria, to the developmental management of the nation-state, no matter how uncertain Italy’s prospects in Libya were.89 By that time, and upon the initiative of the Bank of Italy, Italian banking together with banks from France and Britain had also begun to play a role in the management of national banks in North and Northeast Africa, namely Ethiopia and Morocco.90 At this point, however, earlier opponents of Crispi had become staunch supporters of Italy’s annexation of Libya. A colony in North Africa could be an extension of Italy as a modern industrial economy and nation. Libya potentially widened the domestic market and strengthened the domestic financial order. The colony was also expected to constitute an emigration outlet offering remittances and project Italy across the Mediterranean in a civilizing role.91 By the 1890s and 1900s, deep divisions had emerged in Germany between the rising industrial bourgeoisie involved in export industries and banking, on the one hand, and the old agrarian elite, on the other hand. The protectionist alliance of the 1880s was giving way to a social force in the polity that needed to operate in a world market. These forces gained

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influence in state policies. Helfferich, himself born into an industrial family with strong antipathies to Junker influence, was a typical representative of a global Germany, which ought not to be confused with a cosmopolitan one, though. Financial groups like Bleichröder were similar to London-based cosmopolitan banks and part of the same worldwide investment networks. By the 1900s, however, cosmopolitanism had in most cases become enmeshed with pragmatic national-liberalism in the competitive search for investment outlets. While for Helfferich fair commerce and investment in an open market place was the ideal, it was not readily available and anyway never had been conceived of as a dilution of national networks. The activities of Deutsche Bank from 1875 were testimony to the development of Germany in competition with British finance. The nexus of banking and industry was consciously anchored in the German nationstate. Helfferich’s and Dernburg’s professional careers are testimony to the link between academia, banking, industry, the civil service, and Cabinet appointments in government. In the 1900s, economic relations beyond the boundaries of the nation-state were essential for the reproduction of the elite at the core of the economy. The Hamburg commerce of the 1870s and 1880s, by contrast, had been a small part of an economy that was gradually industrializing and focusing on domestic infrastructural development, notably the railways. In economic activities outside Germany, a clear distinction existed between “German” and “foreign” realms. In the absence of a substantial formal empire, moreover, global operations needed to reflect a progressive, and thus superior, German entrepreneurial spirit. Connections are visible here between German emigration to Brazil and contemporary ideas of “German work” (deutsche Arbeit) in the markets in South America, especially Brazil.92 In Helfferich’s conceptions, moreover, the continuities with Wilhelm Roscher’s mid-nineteenth century arguments about German emigration are apparent. The entrepreneurial diligence (Gewerbefleiß) of Germans became the means by which Germany’s industrial bourgeoisie could reproduce itself in the world. This project was partly necessitated by the fact that Britain occupied large regions of the world. In 1901, Helfferich criticized the tendency of British trade policy towards domination, as exemplified by the war in South Africa and in China.93 At the end of the First World War, he located the nonterritorialized “Greater Germany” everywhere where “honest German work” had made an impact before the war.94 This was a particular brand of German labour-driven capitalism in opposition to Britain’s political dominance and financial prowess. In Italy, Luigi Einaudi’s ideas of the role of immigrant communities in Argentina for the Lombardian textile sector were geared towards community relations to create niches for Italian produce. In Helfferich’s conception for Germany, the overseas world was needed to rescue a commercially and scientifically advanced

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elite stifled by the British world order. Colonies were, therefore, essential to the construction of a modern Germany. In 1907, Dernburg stressed the national importance of the colonial question before representatives of commerce in what looks like an updated version of arguments in the tradition of Roscher and List. Charles Dilke’s assertion that the world was becoming English, Dernburg argued, was only true because German emigrants got anglicized in America. Colonies could prevent this from happening.95 Colonies required conscious construction, though. German civilizing policy (Kulturarbeit) would make colonial populations apt consumers (konsumfähig).96 Furthermore, colonies would bear out a scientific approach to production in industrial cartels for which overseas raw materials and foodstuffs played an important role. One example was research at Amani in East Africa on copra for the processing of vegetable oils.97 In this way, colonies in Africa would enable Germany to rival the economic rise of the United States, driven by its commercial expansion in South America, and could also help to compete with Japan in the textile sector.98 Colonies had a specific purpose in the relations of Germany’s economy with the world economy, namely in easing the burden on the balance of payments that ensued from the outflow of precious metals, which was particularly high for cotton purchases. Colonies were also expected to help reproduce industrial society by sustaining German domestic investment and industrial employment.99 In Dernburg’s view, the result would be greater economic stability at home.100 Considerations along similar lines would later characterize Hjalmar Schacht’s thinking in Weimar and Nazi Germany. However, Dernburg, who was Jewish, remained a political liberal throughout his life. In France, regional bourgeoisies used the existing empire to further the interests of the textile industry and consolidate their position in the state. The considerable number of initial shareholders in the Banque de l’Indochine reflected industries in Lyon, Marseille, and Strasbourg. These envisaged Indochina as a source for raw cotton and vegetable oils and as a market for cotton and silk cloth.101 Firms from Mulhouse in Alsace had expressed an interest in raw cotton production in Algeria from the late 1830s. As Alsace, and thus Strasbourg and Mulhouse, became part of Germany in 1871, the connection to the French state was lost, though the German colonial association founded a branch there in 1894.102 The cotton connection also linked French banking in Egypt and Indochina. The Banque Franco-Egyptienne was a shareholder in the Banque de l’Indochine.103 In the 1880s and 1890s, regional chambers of commerce, importantly in Lille and Rouen in the North, were watching over French Indochina policy. For instance, the Rouen chamber complained in the late 1880s to the newly-established Tonkin chamber of commerce about continuing competition for French cotton textile exports to Tonkin from British, German, Swiss and “even” Italian producers.104 In the 1890s,

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expansion in Africa was meant to promote new groups of middle class entrepreneurs. These groups did not reflect a popular pro-colonial sentiment in France. However, they were able to exert influence on policy due to their representation in the newly-established colonial ministry and in Parliament. To some extent, they took inspiration from assertive German entrepreneurship, seen as a way to undermine British commercial hegemony.105 The remainder of this section will turn to national projects of imperial social relations using examples from Britain and Germany. In both countries, the colonial empire was the subject of debates about its social relevance to the metropolitan state. The matter has given rise to a substantial historical literature, especially on the British empire.106 The case will be made for Germany with contemporary criticism of Dernburg’s new, “rational” colonial policy in 1907 and with the example of one German entrepreneur in German East Africa, and for Britain by discussing contemporary arguments about education for emigration to the empire. In the German polity, the lower middle classes with links to commerce in urban areas or land in rural areas and the regional civil service and liberal professions constituted a loose social force, in contrast to the alliances of the Prussian land-owners, the emerging industrial bourgeoisie, and the industrial working class. In the 1880s, these groups were relatively marginal in the polity, though they had been linked to the lobbying for overseas expansion epitomized by Friedrich Fabri and Carl Peters, and arguably played a role in Bismarck’s party alliances in the Reichstag.107 Subsequently, however, the state identified mainly with upper middle-class industry and “high finance,” as represented by Helfferich and Dernburg, while smaller and less homogeneous interest groups got marginalized. Nonetheless, in the Germany of the 1900s and 1910s, the more diffuse social forces became a political force to be reckoned with, presenting alternative models for the building of a more broadly based German nation-state. For some, the construction of empire was part of their national project at a time when even the traditionally anti-colonial Social democrats fathomed a potential role for colonies in easing industrial unemployment. Other social and political groups, though, were sceptical of the uses and practices of German colonial rule. Paul Rohrbach, politically at the liberal centre, advocated empire as an explicit counter-project to Dernburg’s colonial policy. Rohrbach, a writer on Germany’s world and colonial politics and civil servant, had been the settlement commissioner (Reichskommissar) for German Southwest Africa between 1903 and 1906. Together with Ernst Jäckh, he edited the weekly Das größere Deutschland (“The greater Germany”), which discussed issues ranging from world politics and German cultural and education policies in China and Turkey to questions of colonial farming.108

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In Rohrbach’s view, Dernburg had done much good in popularizing the colonial project and stressing its importance for the nation.109 His policy in Southwest Africa was nonetheless fundamentally flawed from an ethicalnational standpoint. Instead of seizing the opportunity to ensure a broad participation of German firms and banks in diamond policy, Dernburg had privileged high finance. The marketing of diamonds was geared towards large foreign buyers in Antwerp rather than consumers in Germany, thus shamelessly exploiting the colony in the interest of international capital.110 Dernburg, Rohrbach alleged, solely paid attention to the cosmopolitan dimension of money. In doing so, he neglected the national values of colonial rule related to German-ness (Deutschtum).111 The permanent value of a colony was land for settlers and their produce. Diamonds were a temporary asset that would one day be exhausted.112 A nation’s economic power and building of a colonial empire was evidence of strength of character, for which Rohrbach quoted Britain as evidence.113 A colonial empire would reinforce the national character. Creating a strong Deutschtum with German settlers from a range of social backgrounds would lead to the emergence of a German-African fatherland.114 This would eventually give rise to an overseas type of German, different from the stereotypical German clerical worker and more prone to risk taking. In this manner, the distinct features of the colonial character would enrich the conception of the Volk (Volksgedanken). The purpose of colonial policy was to enhance the material potential as well as the vitality (Lebensbestätigung) of the Volk.115 Rohrbach combined an argument about social progress with one about the economic benefits of colonies, for instance, with regard to the promotion of raw cotton by the economic policy committee in Germany.116 Rohrbach’s social thinking looks like a colonial version of Friedrich Naumann’s social and national project for a German Mitteleuropa.117 Both offered a national reform project that validated social ambition. Settling on new German land should be made attractive to allow social improvement, more so than in Germany. Rohrbach was critical of legal restrictions regarding the size of farms in Southwest Africa. To be sure, neither Rohrbach nor Naumann were pan-German (alldeutsch) in their political affiliation. Yet as suggested for Naumann, with regard to Rohrbach’s colonial lobbying, too, one could ask whether ethicalnational (and colonial) aspects were merely coincidental to his ideas of social reform or an intrinsic part of them.118 Helfferich, Dernburg, and Rohrbach’s conceptions allow to identify different strands of the role of imperial relations for the German nationstate in the 1900s. At times, their views converged, at others they diverged. Rohrbach advocated a settler empire, as Roscher had done before him, emphasizing the social and economic effects of German settlers for the home country. Helfferich, though a firm advocate of German colonial rule, put greater emphasis on the non-territorial aspect of the Volk’s entrepreneurial

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reproduction. As an industrial modernizer, he opposed agrarian pressure groups in Germany. Dernburg stressed the role of colonies for the national economy. Africa was relevant at a time when not only Britain but also the United States rivalled Germany’s economic relations with South America, and when Japan’s economy expanded. Colonial social relations and ideas of social reform in Germany were hardly an important concern for Dernburg. The Centre Party’s only specialist on colonial affairs, Matthias Erzberger, was Helfferich’s and Dernburg’s main antagonist on colonial policy in the German Reichstag. Like Rohrbach, Erzberger lobbied against the dominance of “high finance” in colonial policy, whether in German East Africa or Southwest Africa. In East Africa, he would have preferred state development in agriculture assisted by a farmers’ bank, instead of the involvement of the Deutsch-Ostafrikanische Bank.119 His revelations of financial extravagance and profiteering, which included the Woermann firm in Hamburg and of abusive policies against indigenous populations by the colonial administration, prompted the fall of the German government and elections in January 1907. Colonial policy should support small settler farmers, who would also engage in a humanitarian trusteeship for the indigenous population, as should German missionary activity. In this sense, Erzberger was not anti-colonialist as a matter of principle.120 Nonetheless, he had no penchant for any grand national thinking associated with Weltpolitik.121 There was, however, a level of social engagement related to colonial affairs at which Erzberger’s and Dernburg’s thinking converged. During a brief period in 1908, Erzberger praised Dernburg’s policy as realizing the demands of the Zentrum.122 The activities of some small colonial enterprises temporarily reconciled Dernburg’s quest for rational and national colonial policy, after the Herero and Maji Maji rebellion and its violent suppression, with Erzberger’s concerns of support for the lower middle class in Germany as opposed to the big firms. The story of the Perrot family in German East Africa, with personal contacts to both Erzberger and Dernburg, offers a pertinent example.123 The case shows the fluid boundaries between a reformed settler-oriented colonial policy, the construction of a colonial economy as part of a modern national economy, and pan-Germanism. Bernhard Perrot was a member of the pan-German colonial association. The Perrots had set up various trading firms with limited success in Wiesbaden, Düsseldorf, and Koblenz specializing in East Africa, first notably for coffee. In the early 1900s, Perrot expanded into cotton growing in East Africa, with about ten thousand African workers on his plantation.124 Affinities with Erzberger can be gleaned from Perrot’s opposition to both the Hamburg shipping firms and their association with the state in East Africa and the DOAG, and, in the first half of the 1900s, to Helfferich whom he saw as the representative of the interests of capital.125 He had also opposed the DOAG rupee as a currency in East Africa.126 Perrot, however, also had

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the reputation of an economic modernizer (Wirtschaftsreformer) in East Africa, which accounted for parallels with Dernburg’s thinking. Perrot had studied botany and biology, promoting new varieties of cotton in the colony.127 One can see links here to both the functional and developmental realms of modern German statehood. Perrot advocated a close association of the colony with the German nation-state. He aimed at promoting national economic performance through colonial production with scientific methods at a time of its growing relevance to the German textile sector. Social reform ideas operated on a much larger scale in the British empire and had greater practical implications, especially in the period between the 1890s and the First World War. English-class identity involved the state in initiatives on emigration and education for imperial citizens, or as a means to ease social problems in industrial society. Furthermore, social reproduction entwined the notion of empire with social evolution in the cultural and racial reproduction of Britishness, as in the debates about imperial union under Chamberlain as colonial secretary and leader of the Conservative Party. Here, too, empire became a school of character that would enhance the aptitude of Britons to fulfil their assumed vanguard role for universal progress.128 In the second half of the nineteenth century, empire had still been one of the means to address Britain’s social malaise by exiling destitute juveniles and young offenders, including with government aid, with the aim to provide labour for colonial agriculture.129 In the 1890s and 1900s, though, quantitatively far more important were initiatives that associated the English upper middle class with emigration to the settler colonies. Yet the aim was not to match a rural colonial empire with a concept of rurality at home, as in some German and Italian initiatives of emigration to colonies and in French emigration to Algeria. The days of complementarities between overseas possessions and British landed interests were long gone. In the 1890s, about a third of all public school boys ended up in the colonies as farmers, even if poorly prepared for the job and rarely successful.130 Such emigration, deemed to reinvigorate young males from the urban upper middle class, tied in with late Victorian notions of class and cultural superiority. Under Chamberlain as colonial secretary from 1895, the state took on a more explicit role in publicity and education for emigration to the colonies. From the 1900s, emigration to the British dominions became more important than emigration to the United States. The geography curriculum in the early 1900s portrayed colonies as lands of agricultural riches for settlement and as the frontier of Britishness. Official conceptions of migrants shifted from the role of enterprise to migration associated with land.131 Land and agriculture played a role in the building of an imperial social identity as well as in the construction of the imperial economy. The tropics were part of the settler frontier associated with the

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scientific pursuit of imperial development based on the more efficient use of tropical agricultural resources.132 The emphasis on agriculture thus ought not to be confused with the rejection of modernity, but was in fact the essence of an imperial modernity. In a prospective imperial union, imperial social relations also importantly extended to the reproduction of the “Anglo-Saxon race.” Technological superiority bestowed a duty on Britons, including a providential religious one, in acting as trustees for world civilization and as the world’s knowledge keepers. This required vigilance particularly at a time of growing international economic competition. At this juncture, therefore, conceptions of imperial reform in Conservative and positivist Fabian circles converged with liberal imperialist views, and incorporated Benjamin Kidd’s views on Social evolution.133 Education for emigration adopted this broadened middle class vision of a future imperial society. A school book by Halford Mackinder of 1906, after the latter’s conversion to the imperialunionist cause, urged the unemployed to migrate to the colonies. But he reassured them that, in doing so, they would continue to serve a national duty for an imperial society of Britons.134 In Australasia, meanwhile, nationalism manifested itself as imperial Britishness according to the view that “Anglo-Saxon” settlers were the elite Britons of a white empire. Similar conceptions were present in British cosmopolitanism, too.135 In a way, imperial Britain was the practical manifestation of the character improvement that Rohrbach hoped would one day flow from colonial German-ness, and which Erzberger strongly opposed due to his universal moral egalitarianism. There existed commonalities, therefore, between European social and economic conceptions of the “non-Western” world and the notion of empire emphasized in cultural and literary studies of nineteenth century Europe in the light of Edward Said’s Orientalism.136 Yet the relevance of these constructions requires attention to specific periods. Moreover, there was a distinct context that allowed discourses to become associated with state agency, as the following analysis of economic control relations will argue.

Colonial control in the crisis of economic liberalism The two final sections of this chapter will complement the foregoing analysis of state agency by focusing more specifically on the assumptions that underpinned it. As European national economies and nation-states constituted themselves, doctrines formed suggesting ways to make overseas relations conducive to the home country. Conceptions of modern statehood changed as a result. The crisis of one-world globalism heightened the role of overseas control. Racial categories influenced the norms of building economies and European nation-states according to the model of modern statehood. Delineations in terms of race in European imperial states were often an integral part of the formation of national economies and objectives

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of development. Moreover, the chosen examples demonstrate the transnational definition of national boundaries and logic of coercion and racialization in labour relations and in arguments about the welfare of core ethnicities in states in Europe. The analysis covers the entire period between the 1870s and 1910s. At one level, notions of control distinguished the nation from the outside world while colonies fulfilled a function in nation building. Since national economic development proved to be increasingly in conflict with that of a liberal world economy, controlling overseas relations was one of the means to implement economic globalization or usher in an alternative route to development. Experts from J.S. Mill to Beaulieu had stressed the need for colonies to support the nation’s path to global, liberal development since the 1870s. Beaulieu had always been adamant that control and coercion were the only way to make Africa a usable but not an equal component of advanced national economies in Europe. In Mill’s conception of economic liberalism, the overseas world could play a progressive role. For instance, unlike many of his contemporaries, he was neither opposed to, nor dismissive of technical education in India.137 Nonetheless, the particular conditions of local agricultural production might require coercion for the sake of the progressive process of liberalization, and here hierarchies of civilization mattered. States needed to be active where societies were not yet apt for capitalist relations.138 In organizing the British empire, the widely researched topics of racialization and ethnicization connect to the quest to make the world’s resources useful for Britain as the technically, economically, and socially superior country. Chamberlain’s constructivist project of the white empire was a further step towards an explicit ordering by the state. Britain was crucial for universal development, though the overseas world needed to be regulated in ways to allow Britain to play this role. This reasoning is reflected in the popular lobbying for imperial development. There are countless references to economic resources in Rudyard Kipling’s popular poems extolling the virtues of the British empire.139 In British policy in India, the shift from liberalism towards a racialized ordering of the colonial state occurred after the Indian rebellion in 1857. From this point, liberal modernization was a matter for upper class Indians that excluded the “ungrateful” lower classes. The ambivalence in relations between Britain and India was also reflected in the controversy about the Indian rupee’s link to sterling.140 The colonial extension of metropolitan France shows similarities as well as differences with the British case. From the 1890s onwards, Jules Ferry’s concern about market opportunities overseas, which the state needed to organize, turned into a defensive argument stressing the need for resources. Expansion in Africa increasingly built on an economic reasoning about the risk of France losing out in the struggle for resources, notably in Beaulieu’s thinking and in the lobbying by Etienne and the

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Parti colonial.141 Under the Third Republic, one can identify links between the loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany and Léon Gambetta’s imperial expansion in the late 1870s. Domination was projected overseas in a Republican revolutionary spirit. In the 1890s and 1900s, moreover, military action could become a heroic battle for the nation at home. The proactive combat in overseas theatres of war and colonial expansion at the turn of the twentieth century had the same urgency and function in drawing national boundaries as had the court room battle against Alfred Dreyfus in 1898, the officer who was construed as the Jewish traitor to the French nation associated with the legacy of Alsace-Lorraine. The perceived threats could be uncooperative African societies, or it could be European competitors, notably Britain, as epitomized by the Fashoda crisis in the middle of the Sahara desert in the same year. The core nation not only needed to be defended at home against those corrupting core Republican values, but also against those overseas forces deemed likely to undermine the welfare of the population of metropolitan France. In the 1890s, acquiring overseas territory for Italy ought to help consolidate the nation politically and emancipate Italy in the international order of nation-states. Overseas control did not reflect the need to access resources or markets. The gap between Italy’s existing and projected economy was too big to affect actual economic policy. For Crispi, overseas conquest was one of the pillars on which the national industrial society would subsequently be built. Overseas expansion was no simple reflection of the class interests of the latifundisti. However, investment in armament ought to enhance national cohesion and Italy’s very existence as a nation. From this perspective of nation building, it appears to be an ironic coincidence that orienting the economy towards military conquest overseas was also a factor in Italy’s economic growth.142 In political propaganda, the image of the Risorgimento continued to dominate after Italy’s defeat at Adowa in Ethiopia, as the heroic attempt to establish an imperial Italian nation. The building of the German nation-state in the 1900s exhibits the search for consolidating national territory in Europe, on the one hand, and the quest for overseas support realms in Africa, on the other. Economic space did become territorialized in the course of nation-state formation. Yet generically and historically, these two processes differed in Germany’s border regions in Europe and in German colonies overseas. German-Polish relations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have been compared in some historical studies with Germany’s relationships with its colonies.143 The following points qualify particular aspects of this comparison by building on the existing analysis. Contemporary German officials and writers, from Max Weber to Rohrbach, the specialist of Southwest Africa, evoked the “Polish problem” as constituting an obstacle to the construction of the German nation-state. Until the late nineteenth century, however, German-Prussian Poland/Poles

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policy (Polenpolitik) had its purpose in the building of a homogeneous German nation-state. Poles from across the border, who were not German nationals, were sought as labourers and prevented by citizenship laws from settling permanently in Germany and from assimilating. Poles who were German citizens were initially treated differently. Indigenous populations in German colonies, however, were not an obstacle to the nation-state and did not constitute a difference within. They were, per se, falling outside German-ness, as the adaptation of German citizenship laws shows, which reflected evolutionist assumptions of racial hierarchies.144 A colonial core polity constituted itself in parallel to the German national economy, according to the logic of the co-optive colonial governance of modern nationstates. Yet when the state began to legislate within its territorial confines against Poles who were German nationals, policy embedded an ethnic rather than merely economic difference in the modernizing state. The crucial junctures were the settlement law of 1904, and especially the expropriation legislation of 1908, destined to consolidate settlement by ethnic Germans in the East.145 Here one might argue that the nation-state logic ended and a quasi-colonial situation emerged. In the “Polish question,” where welfare was associated with ethnicity at the core of the nation, the German polity was unable to tolerate loose edges or ethnic ambivalence. Alternatively, though, the legislation based on ethnicity might also be interpreted as an attempt to placate the Junkers in the region to which the laws were confined. Labour relations are instructive to illustrate further the conceptual intersection between national delineation, state coercion, and violence. The racialization of labour was pervasive in globalizing European economies generally. British colonies show frequent examples of prioritizing certain ethnic groups in labour recruitment, whether indentured labourers from India and China, or ethnicized African “boys.” A common claim was their particular suitability for difficult working conditions.146 And on the trading routes to Asia and Africa, British shipping heavily relied on cheap South Asian crews, so-called “lascar” seamen, mainly from India, or Arabs and Africans. The official argument was, however, that such crews would be better suited to the climate or could be more easily disciplined than European sailors.147 Violence in the second half of the nineteenth century, in its racialized constructions, was deemed necessary in overseas regions whose connection with European countries was not fully established. For example, in the palm oil trade in West Africa in the mid-nineteenth century, traders called in military squadrons to clear access to resources when intermediaries would not provide labour. In the palm oil trade, the need to access resources influenced perceptions of labour. Certain ethnic groups were being vilified as non-cooperative and requiring to be subdued with punitive expeditions for the sake of “pacification.” Some populations were deemed expendable during conquest. French Republicanism and

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Beaulieu’s arguments go in the same direction: destroy and rebuild. Violence was also pervasive in the search for resources in specific localities, such as in Southern Africa in the mining frenzy and the related stock exchange boom in the 1890s and 1900s. In German Southwest Africa, the exterminationist violence against the Herero and Nama reflected a phase of colonial conquest in which resistance ought to be punished as the precondition for a prosperous future. As the German General Lothar von Trotha put it, it was necessary to build something new on the blood of the old.148 Or the assumed spread of civilization could mean that ethnicities categorized at the bottom of the evolutionary ladder were bound to vanish. Such views shaped white Australian nationalism in the 1890s and policies towards aborigines as well as opposition to non-European immigration in arguments about Britishness, which Chamberlain skipped over by condoning discriminatory legislation for migration that operated on the basis of income rather than race.149 But the evolutionist approach was also pervasive in the Cape Colony in policies targeting the San, who stood in the way of the expansion of mining and the global economy.150 Increasingly, though, the British and German states drew racial boundaries with reference to the ordering of national economies. Coercion and violence, however, continued in state policies, including in expressly liberal ones. In Africa, where labour was scarce, coercion was framed in terms of education that would help instil work ethics into local populations. In this case, economic progress could easily be presented as humanitarian, for instance, as a means to combat the practices of slave labour used on the Omani plantations in East Africa even in the 1890s. As settler production for European markets intensified in British East Africa in the 1900s, coercive labour regimes became the norm. This included systems of pass laws binding migrant labourers to individual settler farmers.151 Relevant connections also existed between coercive labour relations in raw cotton production in German East Africa and excess labour in German textile factories in the 1900s and 1910s. German trading firms had traditionally abstained from intervening in the plantation economy of the Omani rulers in Zanzibar. The DOAG, by contrast, was concerned precisely with the production side and adequate labour supplies. The Company’s policies had contributed to the Maji Maji rebellion in 1905–1907 by boosting extensive production methods at the expense of local food production. Such racialization continued in a liberal tradition in the 1900s. With Dernburg, the state stepped in explicitly as the advocate of a rational policy after Erzberger’s inquiry into the mass killings by German troops in Southwest Africa had brought down the government in 1906. Reform was presented as a correction of management gone wrong on the fringes of an emerging colonial empire. Now the official argument reflected on

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the counterproductive nature of policies that eliminated the workforce which a productive and progressive colony required. For Dernburg, the exterminationist military action was a lapse of mind rather than the moral failure to live by the principle of human equality before God stressed by Erzberger. Dernburg cast his views of liberal reform in terms of a racialized evolutionism. The Herero needed nurturing because they were a capable race fit for agricultural labour. This “human material” (Menschenmaterial) was comparable in “its” capacity for work on cotton estates to the black population of the Southern United States.152 The view ties in seamlessly with Dernburg’s objective to develop German Africa as a future alternative to North American cotton resources, and more generally as an alternative to Germany’s unduly competitive relations with Britain and the United States in South America and Asia. Categories of race and ethnicity acquired meaning in protecting the national core from being exposed to competition from “foreign” labour. Or “foreign” workers were actively sought as cheap and docile labour but at the same time systematically prevented by legal means from settling in and assimilating to the core nation. In Germany, in the late 1900s, for instance, Gustav Noske, the influential Social democrat politician and expert of maritime and navy issues, advocated a nationalistic approach to labour. In the Reichstag, Noske argued that “coloured” seamen were more inclined to lose their cool under adverse conditions of a rough sea than German seafarers.153 British state regulation in support of the trade unions with the so-called lascar agreements in the late 1890s also referred to the weather but came with a patronizing humanitarian twist instead of invoking racial difference of reason. Indian crewmen were deemed unfit for employment on routes between Britain and North America because of the cold climatic conditions in the North Atlantic.154 A case in point are also the agricultural labourers from Poland that worked on Junker farms in Prussia from the late 1880s, which involved a dichotomy and hierarchy between indigenous and alien populations. One could argue, however, that the categorization of these Poles as alien migrants was directly aligned with the needs of the German national economy. Labour relations in Germany’s colony of settlement in Southwest Africa were different. Here indigenous labour served a new class of German colonizers deemed to be racially inherently superior, fulfilling a vanguard role for the nation on the overseas frontier.

From overseas co-opting states to imperial nation-states: A synthesis The major European nation-states, including Britain, formed and got transformed incrementally between the 1870s and 1900s as part of the process of economic globalization. As European economies diversified, the overseas relations of some regional economies became associated with

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the building of national economies and states. Projects of national development, however, increasingly conflicted with assumptions of one-world economic liberalism. As a consequence, economic bureaucracies in the major European countries involved colonies in managing the supplies of natural resources for industry, employment, currency standards, as well as the reproduction of societies as nations. Viewed as the “backward” and “idle” regions of the world, the tropics were not only conceived of in terms of widening entrepreneurial opportunities in the completion of universal development as postulated by liberal economic doctrine; overseas governance beyond the nation-state also came to play a role in solving the crises of globalization. What is more, this transnational process in fact enhanced the dichotomy in nation-states between domestic and external policy. By the 1900s, colonial relationships were increasingly seen as potential tools in the running of economies. The meaning of territory, economic space, and sovereignty in state agency changed, and, in turn, the model of statehood became redefined. The argument presented in this and the previous chapter runs counter to the received historical narrative. The formation of nation-states was embedded in the wider world, though not according to the realist politicalscience paradigm of the dynamics of post-Westphalian war-making and state-making. Moreover, the relevant processes did not reflect in any simple way the grand concepts of industrial competition, surplus investment, surplus labour, under-consumption, or neo-mercantilist protection.155 The historical evidence also stands in opposition to narratives that interpret overseas agency in Europe as the quest for modernization. And race, emphasized in cultural histories, was not separate from the economic ordering by nation-states in Europe. Economic, financial, and monetary relationships all intersected with the formation of political cultures as national ones. Commonalities of structural change are easy to describe. Yet the historical contexts in which overseas regions entered policy concepts in European states were diverse and complex. In the mid-nineteenth century, the specificities of trade in individual regions influenced how firms and state officials argued about overseas relationships. Until the late 1880s, traders tried to enlist support from the state and its military forces in circumstances in which access to resources, such as palm oil, was hazardous. However, in the course of the late nineteenth century, territory became a concern for European trading firms in some regions. The case has been made, for instance, with regard to British and German shipping and trading firms in West Africa which bought land and asked for rights to territory in order to defend their privileged access to trade vis-à-vis other European and African traders.156 In Europe, meanwhile, states standardized national economic policies to a greater extent in a global context in administrating mass societies territorially. Taxation was enforced with a national reach, populations became ethnicized, and currency became territorial. Similar criteria applied

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to overseas relations. Overseas territory was aligned to the nation’s core economy, as notably shown in currency regulation and currency standards. Yet here the analogy ends. By definition, colonies were not integrated in the nation’s development project, but had the function to complement, extend, or support its designs. Colonial policy and institutions ought to ensure congenial relations with the home economy. Nation-states also sought to shield their development realms clearly from other states and economies. Such ordering happened on a much larger scale at the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century than in earlier periods. State sovereignty was a central notion among the paraphernalia of European statehood. The legal concept lent credence to the claims of a modern state and its extension overseas. However, in overseas regions, the concept of sovereignty was suitably ill-defined and malleable.157 Different categories of quasi-sovereignty allowed adaptation to a local environment and were effectively means to justify control. Links between late-nineteenth century globalization and European overseas statehood have been debated in studies of politics arguing about colonies as quasistates. One relevant issue concerns whether the search for territorial sovereignty in a colonial empire ensued from European conquest or from the fact that indigenous polities were unable to adjust to changing external demands for natural resources. In the West African case of Asante, for instance, the question has been discussed in terms of the diminishing availability of likeminded socioeconomic intermediaries that would allow British firms to conduct their trade. The difference between states in Africa and South America has been emphasized.158 This argument requires to be modified, however, conceptually and historically. As bureaucracies in Europe became more specialized, policy techniques ceased to be the mere reflection of interest groups. In the midnineteenth century, states and their armies were often called in to overcome resistance to trade. Likeminded entrepreneurship across continents arguably influenced and facilitated economic exchange. However, at the end of the nineteenth century, a selectiveness of purpose, defined by the function of the state for national society, underpinned the endorsement by states of the colonial project. As colonies became a tool in ordering national economic and social relations, liberal or Republican doctrines of economic development meshed with racial categories in the formulation of policy. The assumption of overseas backwardness was central to the process and to the doctrine: colonies, it was assumed, could be shaped to help manage the nation’s crises. What is more, the objective of universal development and the West’s civilizing project justified coercive means. Recapitulating this argument requires to draw on the historical specificities of countries as well as on the changing conceptions of statehood. In Germany, in the 1900s, state agency transcended entrepreneurial interest groups. Sustaining an industrial economy geared towards external markets went hand in hand with the territorial delineation of an

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increasingly integrated economic and national polity. As Helfferich put it during the First World War, achieving this aim was a matter of “life and death” for the German Volk rather than greedy imperialistic expansion for its own sake, as in Britain.159 The nation-state acquired a moral dimension in its external projection that enhanced its claim to care for the home nation. Germany in the 1900s, however, differed from Germany in the 1880s, when external relations mattered only for small, regionally confined segments of the economy. At that time, economic agency was largely synonymous with entrepreneurial agency. It is also noteworthy that the search for the consolidation of the German ethnic core belonged to an older process of the formation of the German nation-state. Constructing a clear ethnic line of division in the East initially responded to the class interest of the Prussian landed aristocracy rather than German nation building. But, between the midnineteenth and late nineteenth centuries, the issue shifted incrementally from the Prussian class to the German nation. The state and economic entity defined by the German cultural elite then became grafted onto social evolution and associated with the position of the Industriestaat in the world. With regard to overseas colonial space, a converse relationship between “alien” and “indigenous” from that in Germany’s borderlands mattered in the economic and social reproduction of the German nation-state. For Dernburg and Helfferich, the question was how colonial space could be made conducive to the nation as a support realm rather than how to consolidate the nation and eliminate threats to the integrity of Friedrich List’s “body” of the nation.160 And Rohrbach fathomed the means through which, in colonies, both the old class elite and aspiring social forces could invigorate German-ness at home. In France, in the 1880s, the state used the formal colonial empire to cater for segments of society that were at the time crucial for France’s path of economic development. These were notably the textile sector, as an important employer, its regional financiers, and small trading firms. Building on this role, empire became an adjunct to the mass-producing traditions of the Republic. Still, the French colonial empire was not part of French society, nor was the state conceived of as the regulator of a national economy. Rather, the state tended to represent groups as trustees of development associated with an entrepreneurial ethos that proposed a constructivist development programme. Nonetheless, an imperial polity existed in narrower geographical confines, comprising the Mediterranean and the Middle East. In this construct, not only the French, or Savoyard and Piemontese settlers in Algeria, held political significance for metropolitan France, but so did the assimilation to the Francophonie of the Lebanese Maronite and Greek orthodox minorities in West Africa. Therefore, French policy-makers ensured that Lebanese (“Syrian”) migrants and traders were not restricted in their economic and

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cultural activities in West Africa, even when French colonial officials deemed them to be socially disruptive. The French state saw these groups as an element in building an imperial entity with a distinct identity, separate from British or Italian influences in the region.161 In Italy, the Crispi state’s hegemonic ambitions in the Mediterranean and in Northeast Africa were first mainly tools in the ongoing task of fostering a national polity rather than a national economy. To some extent, though, the state’s overseas involvement was linked to investment interests representing the landed aristocracy of the South, as in the Bank of Rome. The latifundisti’s demands for overseas land also had some influence on policy designs, which, however, did not materialize. Only temporarily did overseas connections become part of the management of the national economy and development of the nation-state in the 1900s, notably in relation to textiles.162 Britain in the aftermath of the Baring crisis, by contrast, demonstrates how support for the metropolitan economy was conceived of within an existing colonial empire. The state consciously adjusted overseas administrations to support British traders, regulate labour for the exploitation of natural resources, and service debt. The imperial state and colonial states stepped in, assuming that Britain needed to order economic relations in developmentally different societies outside Europe. Policy-makers operated according to the unavoidable paradox of a nonegalitarian liberalism that assumed that indigenous societies, due to their very difference, had to be protected from unfettered capitalism but also needed to be guided into the modern capitalist world. As in the other cases under review, in Britain too, policy practice was contextual, pragmatic, and prone to political manipulation. The turn of the century was characterized by a British state that became more alert to the fact that a diversifying world economy required conscious policy techniques and mechanisms to shield Britain from global economic shocks and secure the empire’s role in settling Britain’s balance of payments, which was a hallmark of external economic policy between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The state supported adventurous undertakings in Southern Africa at a time of stock exchange frenzy in areas where risk alert finance would not go. But from the early twentieth century, the British state also regulated new imperial economies more consciously in association with the principle of imperial trustee investment. A British empire-state might even reconcile two opposing and controversially debated economic doctrines, namely that of a British version of a Zollverein, with its connotations of a national-cultural organization of the economy, and free trade with a distinctly British flavour. “Preferential traders,” as an analyst argued in 1896, were not “advocates of protection,” but rather free traders within the confines of empire.163 As national economies and nation-states in Europe reconstituted themselves incrementally in the processes of economic globalization, so did

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their normative model of modern statehood. All the major industrializing states in the late nineteenth century incorporated a perspective of the wider world in formulating policy and links to notions of global governance. States had long before engaged across regions and in some cases continents. But now modern states, as the embodiment of progress, projected their norms and standards onto an emerging world market of techniques of governance that became part of their global reproduction. As the major continental European countries industrialized and consolidated as nation-states, a shift occurred first not from liberalism to protectionism but from liberalism to the endorsement of colonial rule as national governance with a global dimension. In Britain, too, the state became more active in managing hegemony. Debt servicing and currency regimes aimed to build global governance that suited the nation. But in continental Europe more so than in Britain, states sought forms of governance that would help correct the failed assumption that open commerce in itself would be nationally welfare-enhancing. In such a world, empire became the advocated solution for nation-states, not because every, or even a majority of economic actors in a given polity benefitted from overseas expansion or expected to do so in the future, but because overseas regions and colonies were deemed to assist nation-states in economy building and in promoting social and cultural cohesion. This line of reasoning also means that economic relationships mattered for the ways in which a cultural binary between modernizing Europe and the rest of the world became entrenched in states early in the twentieth century. Historical contexts differed significantly in the manner in which the two related to norm-making in states. Until the 1880s, connections between cultural binaries and development were loose and tangential to polities in Europe. Economies were regionally based rather than national. Moreover, entrepreneurship was the prime influence in overseas relations. This held true for the Hamburg traders in Bismarck’s Germany as it did in the early phase of French overseas expansion in Indochina. Racial preconceptions constituted a continuum that mattered in specific contexts but not at the core of state building, even if such assumptions influenced ideas on national progress from Beaulieu to Fabri.164 Yet, as Britain’s liberal trajectory of development was increasingly questioned, an imperial world order of nation-states, building on racial hierarchies, was the expert solution to solve the conundrum of national development. Empire presented itself as a remedy for emerging mass states trapped by the volatilities of the world economy and its political structures. Between the 1880s and the 1900s, nation-states with claims to modernity coopted overseas economies in development doctrines, as epitomized by ideas and policies from Helfferich and Dernburg to Chamberlain. Eventually, norm-making for both national and global governance fused in a new model of modern statehood that was not simply conceived of as cosmopolitan or national but as requiring a world vision of progress to shape an economic

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and political architecture. By the 1900s, the overseas co-opting nation-state gradually shifted towards imperial statehood. In this model, colonies, by function of their developmental inferiority, mattered for the development of the core nation. Here lies the commonality of the otherwise diverse trajectories of the national economic and social integration of European mass polities between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. The period of the 1900s and the 1910s, including the First World War, foreshadowed the world of the 1920s and 1930s that witnessed the consolidation of ideas of imperial statehood in the major European states.

Notes 1 P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (Harlow: Longman, Second Edition 2002), ch.2; Philip Harling and Peter Mandler, “From ‘Fiscal Military State’ to Laissez-Faire State, 1760–1850,” Journal of British Studies 32, no. 1 (1993), 44–70; and Karl Appuhn, “Inventing Nature: Forests, Forestry, and State Power in Renaissance Venice,” Journal of Modern History 72, no. 4 (2000), 861–89. 2 Quinn Slobodian, “How to See the World Economy: Statistics, Maps, and Schumpeter’s Camera in the First Age of Globalization,” Journal of Global History 10, no. 2 (2015), 307–32. 3 Benjamin J. Cohen, The Geography of Money (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 32–4. 4 Olivier Accominotti, Marc Flandreau, Riad Rezzik, and Frédéric Zumer, “Black Man’s Burden, White Man’s Welfare: Control, Devolution and Development in the British Empire, 1880–1914,” European Review of Economic History 14 (2009), 47–70. 5 See A.G. Hopkins, “The Victorians and Africa: A Reconsideration of the Occupation of Egypt,” Journal of African History 27 (1986), 363–91. 6 See Alec Cairncross, “The Bank of England: Relationships with the Government, the Civil Service, and Parliament,” 39–40, and Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, “Relations between Monetary Authorities and Governmental Institutions: The Case of Germany from the 19th Century to the Present,” 107–8, in Gianni Toniolo, ed., Central Banks’ Independence in Historical Perspective (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1988). 7 John G. Williamson, Karl Helfferich, 1872–1924: Economist, Financier, Politician (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016, first edition 1971), 57. 8 Karl Helfferich. Das Geld (Leipzig: C.L. Hirschfeld, sixth edition 1923, first edition 1903), 188. 9 See chapter 4. 10 Willy Hintze, Das Geldwesen in den deutschen Schutzgebieten (Berlin: J. Guttentag, 1912), 57. 11 Williamson, Karl Helfferich, 63. 12 For further details, see Gerold Krozewski. “Colonial Money in Africa and National Economy-Building in Britain and Germany: Examining Relations of Agency, 1890s–1930s,” in Karin Pallaver, ed., Money Transitions in Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). 13 Williamson, Karl Helfferich, 66–67. 14 A.G. Hopkins, “The Creation of a Colonial Monetary System: The Origins of the West African Currency Board,” African Historical Studies 3, no. 1 (1970), esp. 104–7, and 128–31.

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15 Charles Schaefer, “The Politics of Banking: The Bank of Abyssinia, 1905–1931,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 25, no. 2 (1992), esp. 369–71. 16 Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, “La baisse des prix et la crise commerciale dans le monde,” Revue des Deux Mondes 75 (1886), 383–418. 17 Leone Carpi, Delle colonie e dell’emigrazione d’Italiani all’estero, vol IV (Milan: Editrice Lombarda, 1874), 358–9. 18 Hubert Bonin, Jean-François Klein, and Catherine Hodeir, eds., L’esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l’empire (Paris: SFHOM, 2008). The literature has moved away from the opposition established in Henri Brunschwig’s early study, French Colonialism, 1871–1914 (1960, 1964) between economic lobbying and the activities of the geographical associations. 19 Pierre Sirangavélou, “L’Empire des economistes. L’enseignement de ‘l’économie colonial’ sous la IIIe République,” in Hubert Bonin, JeanFrançois Klein and Catherine Hodeir, eds., L’esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l’empire (Paris: SFHOM, 2008), 135–47. 20 Raoul Girardet, L’idée coloniale en France (Paris: La Table Ronde, 1971), 75–7. 21 Bradford Spangenberg, “The Problem of Recruitment for the Indian Civil Service during the Late Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Asian Studies 30, no. 2 (1971), esp. 351. 22 Girardet, L’idée coloniale, 79. 23 Marika Vicziany, “Imperialism, Botany and Statistics in Early NineteenthCentury India: The Surveys of Francis Buchanan (1762–1829),” Modern Asian Studies 20, no. 4 (1986), 625–60. 24 Richard Drayton, Nature’s Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the “Improvement” of the World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 248. 25 Drayton, Nature’s Government, 254. 26 Drayton, Nature’s Government, 257. 27 Inez Sutton, “Colonial Agricultural Policy: The Non-Development of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 22, no. 4 (1989), 655. 28 Drayton, Nature’s Government, 249. 29 Robert L. Hess, “Italian Imperialism in its Ethiopian Context,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 6, no. 1 (1973), 99–100. 30 Lissa Roberts, “Situating Science in Global History: Local Exchanges and Networks of Circulation,” Itinerario 33, no. 1 (2009), 9–30; also Richard Drayton, “Science and the Eu[r]opean Empires,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 23, no. 3 (1995), 503–10. 31 Manfred Gothsch, Die deutsche Völkerkunde und ihr Verhältnis zum Kolonialismus: e. Beitr. zur kolonialideolog. u. kolonialprakt. Bedeutung d. dt. Völkerkunde in d. Zeit von 1870–1975 (Hamburg: Institut für Internationale Angelegenheiten der Universität Hamburg, 1983), 207–8. Surprisingly, neither Meinhof nor Westermann figure in the index of Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race and Scholarship (London: German Historical Institute and Cambridge University Press, 2009). 32 Carl Theodor Helfferich, Der Wirtschaftliche Hintergrund des Weltkriegs (Leipzig & Dresden: Teubner, 1920), 12. 33 Henri Hauser, Germany’s Commercial Grip on the World: Her Business Methods Explained (New York: Scribner, 1918), 16–8. 34 Williamson, Karl Helfferich, 57. 35 Hauser, Germany’s Commercial Grip, 20–7.

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36 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (Oxford: Random House, 1987). 37 Giuseppe Are, La scoperta dell’imperialismo. Il dibattito nella cultura italiana del primo Novecento (Rome: Ed. Lavoro, 1985), 82. 38 Helfferich, Der Wirtschaftliche Hintergrund, 11 15, 17, and 8, Carl Theodor Helfferich, England und wir. Rede über Wirtschaftskrieg und Wirtschaftsfrieden (Berlin: Stilke, 1918), 14–5. 39 Helfferich, Der wirtschaftliche Hintergrund, 8; and Helfferich, England und wir, 18 and 25–6. 40 See articles published by the German government on labour issues: for instance, Reichs-Arbeitsblatt, July 1914 [special issue] “Deutschlands Rohstoffversorgung und die Entwicklung der kolonialen Rohstofferzeugung 1909–1913,” 1–5. See also the material on the cotton conference (Baumwollkonferenz) organized by the German interior ministry since 1907, and on the international rubber exhibition in London in 1908, German Federal Archives, Berlin-Lichterfelde R/8024/58 and R/8024/48. 41 John Iliffe, Tanganyika under German Rule (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1969, 2008), 100–1. 42 Dr. Ferd. Fischer, Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung Deutschlands und seiner Kolonien (Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt, 1906), 79–80. 43 Henri Hauser, La guerre européenne et le problème colonial (Paris: Librairie Chapelot, 1915), 5–7. 44 Williamson, Karl Helfferich, 60, 102. 45 Williamson, Karl Helfferich, 84–5, 93, 110, and 101–3. 46 B. Barth, “The Financial History of the Anatolian and Baghdad Railways, 1889–1914,” Financial History Review 5, no. 2 (1998), 127–8, 130, and 136–7. 47 Here my argument differs from Barth, “The Financial History,” and also from Werner Schiefel, Bernhard Dernburg, 1865–1937. Kolonialpolitiker und Bankier im wilhelminischen Deutschland (Zurich: Atlantis Verlag, 1974), 90–1. 48 Jan-Bart Gewald, Herero Heroes: A Socio-Political History of the Herero in Namibia, 1890–1923 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1999). 49 Horst Drechsler, Südwestafrika unter deutscher Kolonialherrschaft (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1996), 305–6. 50 Boris Barth, Die deutsche Hochfinanz und die Imperialismen: Banken und Aussenpolitik vor 1914 (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1995), 328–34; Schiefel, Bernhard Dernburg, 89–90. 51 Anna Milanini Kemény, La Società di esplorazioni commerciali in Africa e la politica coloniale (1879–1914) (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1973), 14–8. 52 Milanini Kemény, La società, 201. 53 Milanini Kemény, La società, 202–3; and Romain H. Rainero, “Notes sur une entreprise italienne à charte en Somalie: la ‘società anonima commerciale italiana del Benadir’ (1898–1905),” in Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, ed., Actes du colloque entreprises et entrepreneurs en Afrique (XIXe et XXe siècles), vol. 2 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1983), 20–1. 54 Fabio Grassi, “L’industria tessile e l’imperialismo italiano in Somalia (1896–1911),” Storia Contemporanea 4, no. 4 (1973), 716–7; and Rainero, “Notes,” 19. For the Benadir company, see also Robert L. Hess, Italian Colonialism in Somalia (Chicago: 1966), 64–83. 55 Grassi, “L’industria tessile,” 713–4, 717, 729, and 733–4. 56 Richard A. Webster, Industrial Imperialism in Italy, 1908–1915 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 128. 57 Cesira Filesi, “Progetti italiani di penetrazione economica nel Congo Belga (1908–1922),” Storia contemporanea 13, no. 2 (1982), 254.

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58 Thaddeus Sunseri, “The Baumwollfrage: Cotton Colonialism in German East Africa,” Central European History 34, no. 1 (2001), 35–7, and 40; also Thaddeus Sunseri, “Statist Narratives and Maji Maji Ellipses,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 33, no. 3 (2000), 567–84. 59 Hauser, La guerre, 35–6; Sunseri, “The Baumwollfrage,” 40. 60 Sunseri, “The Baumwollfrage,” 46, and 51, and Schiefel, Bernhard Dernburg, 98. 61 An early survey is J. Forbes Munro, Britain in Tropical Africa 1880–1960: Economic Relationships and Impact (London: Macmillan, 1984). 62 J. Forbes Munro, “Shipping Subsidies and Railway Guarantees: William Mackinnon, Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean, 1860–1893,” Journal of African History 28, no. 2 (1987), 224, and Wambui Mwangi, “Of Coins and Conquest: The East African Currency Board, the Rupee Crisis, and the Problem of Colonialism in the East African Protectorate,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43, no. 4 (2001), 771. 63 Dike N. Nworah, “The West African Operations of the British Cotton Growing Association 1904–1914,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 4, no. 2 (1971), 315–6. 64 I.R. Phimister, “Rhodes, Rhodesia and the Rand,” Journal of Southern African Studies 1, no. 1 (1974), 74–90. 65 Pius S. Nyambara, “Colonial Policy and Peasant Cotton Agriculture in Southern Rhodesia, 1904–1953,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 33, no. 1 (2000), 82. 66 Julie d’Andurain, “Réseaux politiques et milieux d’affaires: le cas d’Eugène Etienne et d’Auguste d’Arenberg,” in Hubert Bonin, Jean-François Klein and Catherine Hodeir, eds., L’esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l’empire (Paris: SFHOM, 2008), 88, 94–5, and 101–2. 67 Thomas J. Bassett, “The Development of Cotton in Northern Ivory Coast, 1910–1965,” Journal of African History 29, no. 2 (1988), 272. 68 Ian Phimister, “Empire, Imperialism and the Partition of Africa,” in Shigeru Akita, ed., Gentlemanly Capitalism, Imperialism and Global History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 65–82; also Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, 318–327. 69 David Jessop, “The Colonial Stock Act of 1900: A Symptom of the New Imperialism,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 4, no. 2 (1976), 154, 157, and160. 70 Accominotti et al, “Black Man’s Burden,” 55. 71 R.M. Kindersley, “British Foreign Investments in 1928,” Economic Journal 40, no. 158 (1930), 181. 72 Aldwin Roes, “Towards a History of Mass Violence in the Etat Indépendant du Congo,” South African Historical Journal 62 (2010), 634–70. 73 Nworah, “The Politics of Lever’s West African Concessions,” 259. 74 Ian Phimister, “Foreign Devils, Finance and Informal Empire: Britain and China c. 1900–1912,” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (2006), 737, 758–9; also Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, 269–79. 75 For this argument, see chapter 2. 76 Heinz Gollwitzer, Die gelbe Gefahr: Geschichte eines Schlagwortes (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1962), 206, 187–9, and 170. For a wider discussion, see also George Steinmetz, The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Quindao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007), ch.6. 77 Fischer, Die wirtschaftliche Bedeutung Deutschlands, 80, and 16. 78 Gollwitzer, Die gelbe Gefahr, 137–9.

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79 Frank H.H. King, “The Boxer Indemnity―‘Nothing But Bad,’” Modern Asian Studies 40, no. 3 (2006), 664–6, 668, and 689. 80 For this argument, see Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, ch.3. 81 Peter Cain, “Economics and Empire: The Metropolitan Context,” in Oxford History of the British Empire, III (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 31–42; also Kenneth Fielden, “Richard Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League,” Modern History Review 3, no. 3 (1992), 12–5. 82 David Grigg, “The Nutritional Transition in Western Europe,” Journal of Historical Geography 22, no. 1 (1995), 247–61. 83 Massimo Warglien, “Investimento industriale e instabilità finanziaria in Italia, 1878–1913,” Rivista di Storia Economica 4, no. 3 (1987), 418; also Martin Clark, Modern Italy (London: 1984, Routledge, 2014), 157. 84 Michele Graziosetto, Francesco Crispi: la religione della patria nella stagione del trasformismo (Soveria Mannelli [Catanzaro]: Rubettino Editore, 2011), 196, 21, and 23. 85 Graziosetto, Francesco Crispi, 33, with reference to Valerio Castronovo, L’industria italiana dall’Ottocento ad oggi (Milan: Mondadori, 1988) 36. 86 Graziosetto, Francesco Crispi, 189–90. 87 Luigi De Rosa and Gabriele De Rosa, Storia del Banco di Roma vol. I, Dalle origini al 1911 [by Luigi De Rosa] (Rome: Banco di Roma, 1982–84), 25. 88 Enrico Serra, “Financial and Economic Factors in Foreign Policy: The Italian Example,” Journal of European Economic History 16, no. 3 (1987), 613. 89 De Rosa and De Rosa, Storia del Banco di Roma, 240–2. 90 De Rosa and De Rosa, Storia, 183. 91 Mark I. Choate, Emigrant Nation: The Making of Italy Abroad (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), ch.3. 92 See Sebastian Conrad, Globalisation and the Nation in Imperial Germany (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2010), ch.6. 93 See the lecture “Die Mittel der Handelspolitik” in Helfferich, Handelspolitik (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1901), 83. 94 Helfferich, England und wir, 18–9. He used the German term “ehrliche deutsche Arbeit.” 95 Bernhard Dernburg, Zielpunkte des deutschen Kolonialwesens (Berlin: Ernst Siegfried Mittler & Sohn, 1907), 24–5. For Dernburg’s ideas, see also Erik Grimmer-Solem, Learning Empire: Globalization and the German Quest for World Status, Cambridge, UK, CUP, 2019), 391–98. 96 Dernburg, Zielpunkte, 35. 97 Dernburg, Zielpunkte, 43. 98 Dernburg, Zielpunkte, 26–8. 99 Dernburg, Zielpunkte, 50. 100 Dernburg, Zielpunkte, 30, 32, 36, 49–50. 101 Yasuo Gonjo, Banque coloniale ou banque d’affaires. La Banque de l’Indochine sous la IIIe République (Paris: Editions du Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1993), 40. For the list of shareholders, see 31–3. 102 Nicolas Stoskopf, “La culture impériale du patronat textile mulhousien (1830–1962),” in Hubert Bonin, Jean-François Klein and Catherine Hodeir, eds., L’esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l’empire (Paris: SFHOM, 2008), 398–9. 103 Gonjo, Banque coloniale, 34, 42. 104 Jean-François Eck, “Le patronat du Nord et la question coloniale au XXe siècle,” and Claire Villemagne, “Les chambres de commerce du Tonkin,

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From regions to states in the globe 1884–1894 sociabilité culturelle ou mission économique,” in Hubert Bonin, Jean-François Klein and Catherine Hodeir, eds., L’esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l’empire (Paris: SFHOM, 2008), 709. Peter Grupp, Frankreich und die Kolonien: d. Franz. „parti colonial“ u. Deutschland von 1890–1914 (Tübingen: Mohr, 1980), 33, 67–8. For a programmatic introduction, see Frederick Cooper and Ann Laura Stoler, eds., Tensions of Empire: Colonial Cultures in a Bourgeois World (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997). Hans-Ulrich Wehler, “Bismarck’s Imperialism, 1862–1890,” Past & Present 48 (1970), 119–55. Paul Rohrbach, Der deutsche Gedanke in der Welt (Königstein im Taunus & Leipzig: Karl Robert Langewiesche Verlag, 1912 [The revised edition dates from the war.]), 225. Paul Rohrbach, Dernburg und die Südwestafrikaner: Diamantenfrage, Selbstverwaltung, Landeshilfe (Berlin: Deutscher Kolonialverlag, 1911), p.IV, and Rohrbach, Der deutsche Gedanke, 142. Rohrbach, Dernburg, 247, 217, and 195. Rohrbach, Dernburg, 246, p.IV, and 136. Rohrbach, Dernburg, 313. Rohrbach, Der deutsche Gedanke, 34. Rohrbach, Dernburg, 247. Rohrbach, Der deutsche Gedanke, 133, 135–6. For the latter, see, for instance, Paul Rohrbach, Die deutschen Kolonien (Dachau: Der gelbe Verlag Wundt und Blumtritt, 1914), 17 and 33. Incidentally, both authors published with the same publishing house: Karl Robert Langewiesche Verlag, Königstein im Taunus & Leipzig. Asaf Kedar, “Max Weber, Friedrich Naumann and the Nationalization of Socialism,” History of Political Thought 31, no. 1 (2010), 154, note 105. Williamson, Karl Helfferich, 64. Klaus Epstein, “Erzberger and the German Colonial Scandals, 1905–1910,” English Historical Review 74, no. 293 (1959), 638, 641–2, 647. Perhaps it is no coincidence that this article was published in an English journal in the aftermath of the Parliamentary debates about the Hola massacre in British colonial Kenya. Williamson, Karl Helfferich, 66, and Epstein, “Erzberger,” 660. Epstein, “Erzberger,” 662. Francesca Schinzinger, “Die Familie Perrot: „Wirtschaftsbürger“ in den deutschen Kolonien,” in Wirtschaftsbürgertum in den deutschen Staaten im 19. und beginnenden 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Karl Möckl (Munich: Boldt im Oldenbourg-Verl., 1996), 398–417. Schinzinger, “Die Familie Perrot,” 402–4. Schinzinger, “Die Familie Perrot,” 405–9 and 411–2. Schinzinger, “Die Familie Perrot,” 411. Schinzinger, “Die Familie Perrot,” 402–4. Peter J. Cain, “Empire and the Languages of Character and Virtue in Later Victorian and Edwardian Britain,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 2, (2007), 249–73. Avril M.C. Maddrell, “Empire, Emigration and School Geography: Changing Discourses of Imperial Citizenship, 1880–1925,” Journal of Historical Geography 22, no. 4 (1996), 376. Maddrell, “Empire,” 377. Maddrell, “Empire,” 379.

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132 Drayton, Nature’s Government, 255. 133 E.H.H. Green, The Crisis of Conservatism: The Politics, Economics and Ideology of the British Conservative Party, 1880–1914 (London: Routledge, 1995), 201–6. 134 Maddrell, “Empire,” 382. 135 Donald Denoon and Philippa Mein-Smith, A History of Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific (Oxford: OUP, 2000), ch.9; and R.A. Huttenback, “The British Empire as a ‘White Man’s Country’ – Racial Attitudes and Immigration Legislation in the Colonies of White Settlement,” Journal of British Studies 13, no. 1 (1973), 108–37. 136 Cooper and Stoler, Tensions of Empire, 13. 137 Michael Adas, Machines as the Measure of Man: Science, Technology, and Ideologies of Western Dominance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 333. 138 Eileen P. Sullivan, “Liberalism and Imperialism: J.S. Mill’s Defense of the British Empire,” Journal of the History of Ideas 44, no. 4 (1983), 599–617. 139 J.A. Mangan, “‘The Grit of Our Forefathers’: Invented Traditions, Propaganda and Imperialism,” in J.M. MacKenzie, ed., Imperialism and Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1986). 140 Robert Giffen, “The Indian Gold Standard Problem,” Economic Journal 8, no. 31 (1898), 301–13; also L., “The Gold Standard in India,” Journal of Political Economy 7, no. 4 (1899), 551–3. 141 Xavier Daumalin, “La doctrine coloniale africaine de Paul Leroy-Beaulieu (1870–1916): essai d’analyse thématique,” in Hubert Bonin, Jean-François Klein and Catherine Hodeir, eds., L’esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l’empire (Paris: SFHOM, 2008), 103–20. 142 Giovanni Busino, L’Italia di Vilfredo Pareto. Economia e società in un carteggio del 1873–1923 (Milan: Banca Commerciale Italiana, 1989), ch.3. 143 Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel, eds., Das Kaiserreich transnational. Deutschland in der Welt 1871–1914 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2006). See especially the chapters by Philipp Ther and Dieter Gosewinkel. 144 See for the evidence, Dieter Gosewinkel, “Rückwirkungen des kolonialen Rasserechts? Deutsche Staatsangehörigkeit zwischen Rassestaat und Rechtsstaat,” in Conrad and Osterhammel, eds., Das Kaiserreich, 238, 242–3, and 254. 145 Brigitte Balzer, Die preußische Polenpolitik 1894–1908 und die Haltung der deutschen konservativen und liberalen Parteien (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Provinz Posen) (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1990), 74–96. 146 Randall M. Packard, “The Invention of the ‘Tropical Worker’: Medical Research and the Quest for Central African Labour on the South African Gold Mines, 1903–1936,” Journal of African History 34, no. 2 (1993), 271–92; also Gary Kynoch, “Controlling the Coolies: Chinese Mineworkers and the Struggle for Labor in South Africa, 1904–1910,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 36, no. 2 (2003), 309–29. 147 See statements by Gustav Noske, the Social democrat politician in charge of maritime matters in the Reichstag: Protocols of the Reichstag, Session, 5 May 1908, 680/1145. 148 For analyses in the genocide paradigm, see numerous studies by Jan-Bart Gewald and by Jürgen Zimmerer. 149 Huttenback, “The British Empire as a ‘White Man’s Country,’” 150 Mohamed Adhikari, The Anatomy of a South African Genocide: The Extermination of the Cape San Peoples (Cape Town: UCT Press, 2010).

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151 John Lonsdale and Bruce Berman, “Coping with the Contradictions: The Development of the Colonial State in Kenya, 1895–1914,” Journal of African History 20, no. 4 (1979), 487–505. 152 Dernburg, Zielpunkte, 34. 153 Hans-Christoph Schröder, Gustav Noske und die Kolonialpolitik des Deutschen Kaiserreiches (Berlin: Dietz, 1979), 15. 154 G. Balachandran, Globalizing Labour: Indian Seafarers and World Shipping, c.1870–1945 (Oxford: OUP, 2012), 28 and 33–4. 155 See the classical theories of imperialism from Richard Hilferding to J.A. Hobson. 156 For the historical evidence, see chapter 2. 157 Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2010), 276–7. 158 For this debate, see Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: International Relations, Sovereignty and the Third World (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1990); Carolyn M. Warner, “The Political Economy of ‘Quasi-Statehood’ and the Demise of 19th Century African Politics,” Review of International Studies 25, no. 2 (1999), 233–55; and A.G. Hopkins, “Quasi-States, Weak States and the Partition of Africa,” Review of International Studies 26 (2000), 311–20. 159 Helfferich, England und wir, 18. 160 Friedrich List used the term Volkskörper in his programmatic writings on the German national economy. 161 Andrew Kerim Arsan, “Failing to Stem the Tide: Lebanese Migration to French West Africa and the Competing Prerogatives of the Imperial State,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 53, no. 3 (2011), 450–78. 162 See chapter 2. 163 J.G. Colmer, “An Imperial Customs Union,” Economic Journal 6, no. 24 (1896), 553 and 565. 164 See chapter 2.

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Part 3

Imperial statehood, modernity, and its discontents

4

National crises and rational development: Overseas raw materials and currency relations, 1919–1939

The preceding twin chapters on the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have argued that the quest by European states to co-opt overseas territory mainly as providers of raw material resources occurred as nationstates became more actively involved in national economies. States in Europe moved from acting as mediators between the private and public sector towards endorsing roles as managers of external economic relations. In this process, tropical regions were drawn into the purview of national economic policies in Europe as increasingly differentiated economies became more exposed to the world economy. By the 1920s and 1930s, imperial statehood had become the model of the trajectory of the development of advanced states. One-world liberalism had lost its appeal in debates about national progress. Rationalizing policy was the buzzword in continental European states in the 1920s. The grand designs of development advanced in the 1890s and 1900s gave way to more specific expert-led debates on how to acquire overseas raw materials and secure the means to purchase them. In the 1930s, Europe’s totalitarian states in particular propagated colonies as tools of crisis management in the depression, notwithstanding their view that the “non-West” was inferior to Europe. In a world of crises, the tropics figured prominently in expert opinion in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, but also received attention in Weimar Germany and France, including under the Popular Front. It is, therefore, important to explore the characteristics of the nexus between economic crisis, raw materials, and colonies in doctrine and policy practice. A substantial body of research has provided insight into the murky doctrines and ideological underpinnings of fascist and Nazi economic policies.1 Authors have emphasized the move away from nineteenthcentury economic liberalism in the light of writings by Friedrich Hayek.2 Or they have been influenced by Joseph Schumpeter’s arguments about the continuities of atavism opposed to modernity.3 Studies of the origins of the Great Depression in Europe abound, and have extended into its impact in Asia and Africa.4 However, there is only limited research, though abundant contemporary propaganda, relating raw materials with the structural payments problems of European developing economies during the DOI: 10.4324/9781003346425-7

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depression of the 1930s.5 The following narrative aims to shed light on how relations with Africa and Asia mattered for nation-state doctrines in Europe in dealing with the interwar economic crisis, and to account for the pervasive references to overseas economies in expert arguments about national development.6 This chapter falls into two parts. The first focuses on expert views. These stressed the need to reform economic liberalism and focused on the raw materials-currency nexus. Obtaining materials like rubber, vegetable oils and fats, and petroleum and coal, was a major concern for economic growth in national economies during the period. The second part of the chapter will relate expert views to contemporary conceptions and strategies of national development in states. The analysis of expert discourses and policy practices sheds light on the self-image of states as both rational and national actors. The tropical world was integral to the manner in which modern states formed in the world. Conceptions of rationality and epistemological underpinnings, however, bear out national peculiarities of development. The debates about raw materials and national development in the interwar crisis show how visions of state regulation, domination, and coercion were embedded within the very dichotomy that contrasted a developed Europe with the overseas world. The chapter will conclude with observations regarding linkages between the state, empire, and economic performance. This nexus was not only part of contemporary discussions on rational statehood among experts but also the subject of academic controversy later. It will be argued that state agency conceived of rationalities differently from an objectivized analysis of policy outcomes by economic theorists. The discussion covers Germany, France, and Italy, and offers some comparative comment on Portugal and Poland on the margins of the advanced economies of Europe. All cases engaged Britain as the economic hegemon.

Expert-practitioners on the nation’s predicament The discussion will begin with an analysis of liberal views on open economic relations leading on to an argument about how these visions got into conflict with national economic policies. Opinions of expert-practitioners will help to gauge economic techniques of nation-state development. Experts straddled different realms in their roles as representatives of the state, as politicians, international civil servants, economic advisers, or as writers on international economic affairs: Hjalmar Schacht, and until the early 1920s, Karl Helfferich and Bernhard Dernburg in Germany; Corrado Gini and Giorgio Mortara in Italy; Albert Sarraut and René Hoffherr in France; António Salazar in Portugal; and Frederick Leith-Ross in Britain.7 The views of Feliks Młynarski and Adam Rose in Poland complement the discussion. The ambition to build a national industrial economy for the

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newly independent Poland show parallels with the discourse on overseas raw materials in the main countries of Western Europe, especially in the 1930s.8 The experts listed earlier held broadly similar views regarding the ailments of the international economy in the 1920s and 1930s and shared some appreciation of liberal economic ideas. But their diverging thinking on national development is also evidence for the mounting difficulties in reconciling a liberal world economy with consolidating economies as national ones. Towards the end of the war, Dernburg, as Germany’s finance minister, advocated a return to open trade as a means to restore peace and pave the way to prosperity in a speech to the association for the promotion of German export trade.9 Helfferich, who had been the German finance minister earlier during the war, demanded in 1918 that Germany ought not to be victimized in terms of export markets and deserved most-favoured nations treatment as the prerequisite of global economic recovery.10 In Italy, Gini, economist, demographer and statistician, and one of the architects of the fascist corporate state, admired Britain’s classical liberal economists for their theoretical parsimony. But as the League of Nations’ official rapporteur on raw materials in 1920, he pleaded for international regulation to help address the concerns that industrializing economies in Europe faced in acquiring raw materials.11 Schacht’s reputation as an economic expert in the 1920s earned him the respect of British liberals, like Leith-Ross, and Montagu Norman, the governor of the Bank of England.12 After the onset of the depression, Schacht continued to emphasize the benefits of international economic exchange, though he also stressed the need for state regulation.13 Leith-Ross, the ubiquitous advisor to the British Treasury and international civil servant in economic and financial affairs, lobbied for the return to liberal economic policies in Europe and contemplated ways in which the potentially strong economies of Britain and Germany could work together to facilitate this objective.14 His views resembled the abortive recommendations of the international economic conference in London in 1931. Młynarski, the Polish financial expert and central banker, in principle, also adhered to a liberal economic world view. Expert-practitioners in France and Portugal stood somewhat apart, though Hoffherr and Sarraut, too, expressed their belief in the importance of international trade. Yet these general pronouncements only go so far. The structural differences of national economies in relations with the world economy became apparent at particular junctures that are easily identified. The years 1919–1921 were characterized by the shortage of industrial raw materials accompanied by soaring prices. The mid-1920s experienced problems of liquidity in the world economy but generally low raw material prices. The period from the onset of the global depression after 1929 aggravated impediments to capital flows and credits and disrupted existing trade flows at a time when states also legislated to curb international migration.

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The years from 1937 down to the onset of yet another world war foreshadowed war economies and austerity, especially in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy.15 Regarding Germany’s post-war role in the world economy, the hopes expressed by Dernburg, Helfferich, and Schacht, as well as by liberal economists in Britain, did not materialize. However, if the reparations clauses of the Treaty of Versailles could not be renegotiated and credits were not available or not expedient, Germany had no other option but to organize its external economic relations in ways that supported a convertible mark. Schacht, who had confronted Helfferich’s borrowing policy to finance the First World War, advocated export promotion in his capacity as president of the Reichsbank in the mid-1920s.16 Paying the reparations without fuelling inflation due to the discrepancy between domestic demand and limited economic capacity required securing a positive trade balance. The flip side of the export strategy, though, was the high level of imports needed to boost production. The depression put growing pressure on Germany’s foreign currency reserves in pound sterling, given the progressive closure of export markets. In his joint role as Reichsbank president and minister of economic affairs in Nazi Germany between 1933 and November 1937, Schacht embraced measures ranging from the control of domestic business credit, over exchange regulations and coercive legislation on privately-owned foreign currency and gold, to negotiating worldwide compensatory trade deals and clearings under the aegis of the state. These measures had in common that they were all geared towards improving Germany’s foreign reserve position on aggregate. Acquiring tropical raw materials without putting pressure on Germany’s currency reserves was the purpose of this strategy. To make the regulatory techniques work, Schacht needed to adopt a global vision of the German economy. There was a marked difference here to Nazi plans that advocated economic autarky as an aim in itself. Schacht presented his trade and payments arrangements as a policy borne out of necessity in an illiberal world economy supported by a hostile geopolitical order. He refrained from currency devaluation, the classical liberal means to make exports more competitive, because devaluing the Reichsmark would have inflated reparations payments.17 The continental European countries Italy and Poland, meanwhile, suffered from more serious export and reserve problems than Germany. These countries experienced low industrial productivity. In assessing the conditions of Italy’s economy in 1926, Gini applauded growth in Italy’s industrial export capacity. However, he identified structural impediments to further industrialization due to a dilemma in Italian export performance. Italian exports failed to earn sufficient foreign currency that would have allowed Italy to import the raw materials needed to increase the production of its manufactures.18 In the mid-1930s, Mortara, Gini’s liberally minded antagonist as an economic demographer, criticized autarky trends but also

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attributed Italy’s balance of payments difficulties to the fact that big political-economic blocs dominated global investment flows and trade circuits of natural resources to the detriment of smaller economies like that of Italy.19 Similar observations applied to Poland. Rose, the Polish delegate to the League of Nations’ economic and finance committee, and Młynarski both emphasized structural obstacles to Poland’s industrialization. Speaking in Paris in 1938, Rose harked back to his earlier research as an academic, stressing Poland’s difficult transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy under conditions of considerable population growth. Independent Poland diversified its trade away from the dependence on the German market and abstained from regulating currency exchange until 1936. But difficulties in accessing raw material credits and finding export markets eventually led to a deteriorating balance of payments prompting greater state intervention in the economy. Rose rejected autarky policies but argued that state regulation was needed, given the fact that limited international capital flows and labour mobility exacerbated Poland’s problems in exporting its agricultural produce.20 These three examples suggest that generally favourable views on open world trade coincided with scepticism regarding economic liberalization as a means to secure sustainable national economic growth. What is more, the cases of Italy and Germany after 1937 require to address the nature of the postulated link between economic crisis and problemsolving in the national economy. In Gini’s rhetoric and in the fascist discourse generally, as the economic crisis deepened during the depression, arguments turned to quasi-economic reasoning with loose links to concrete economic relationships. The case will be pursued further in the section on states and rationality at the end of this chapter, and in the argument about colonies and raw materials in chapter 5. The main imperial powers of the time, Britain and France, contrasted with the above-mentioned cases but also differed between each other in terms of structural economic problems, approaches in external economic management, and in how countries engaged with their colonial empires. In the mid-1920s, economic experts questioned French external economic policy. For instance, J.M. Keynes criticized the piling up of gold reserves by the French central bank. It seemed, he argued, as if French officials thought they could immunize the French economy in this manner from the vagaries of the world economy without realizing that the move distorted the workings of an open world economy ultimately to the detriment of France.21 Within France, experts criticized the lack of coherence in French external and imperial economic policy. In April 1921, the French Senate approved a plan for colonial development initiated by Sarraut, the minister of colonies and former governor of French Indochina. The plan to enhance the capacity (mise-en-valeur) of the colonial empire was geared

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toward increases in colonial production, its systematic monitoring, and large infrastructure projects (grands travaux). The scheme also contains references to the role of overseas territories in supporting France’s balance of payments under conditions of tight monetary policies by Britain and the United States, and, more generally, to the need to add the riches of colonial resources to world trade, the circulation mondiale.22 Sarraut not only called for the economic redeployment of metropolitan France but also for a cultural one. In the depression, the French economy was confronted with diminishing export outlets and pressures on currency reserves. In the late 1930s, demands for a French strategy to tackle trade and payments deficits became more pronounced. Hoffherr, a French academic and government adviser based in Morocco, stressed the need to organize economic complementarities. For him, organized trade was a means to boost global commercial interaction. He demanded that imperial economic relations be put on a new footing to support metropolitan France but also discussed colonial development in its own right within an imperial and global setting.23 The ultimately aborted enquiry under Henri Guernut, initiated by the Popular Front government in February 1937, in which Hoffherr participated as an expert on North Africa, pursued similar objectives.24 Portugal was less exposed to the world economy due to its predominantly agrarian economic structure. Nonetheless, under Salazar, as finance minister, colonial minister, and eventually as head of government from 1933 onwards, policy began to foster a more centralized empire geared towards its economy and the gradually developing cotton textile sector.25 Britain’s problems and approaches significantly differed, though it too was constrained by global economic influences outside its control. In the aftermath of the war, Britain experienced a liquidity crisis. It suffered from a debt overhang from wartime borrowing which resulted in tenuous financial relations with the United States. Britain could cover most of its raw materials requirements from sterling sources; yet it was affected by the raw materials debate on the production side due to its imperial economy and sterling’s global financial role. Comparatively low world prices for raw materials and foodstuffs during much of the period prompted a debt crisis in the Pacific dominions, Australia and New Zealand. The volatility in producer prices, therefore, prompted Britain’s involvement in international producer cartels.26 As the economic hegemon, the British model stood for a liberal world economy to which experts in continental Europe referred when they argued that the conditions in their national economies required them to depart from the ideal. However, with the Ottawa agreements between the British empire and the dominions in 1932, Britain contravened its own dictum of global free trade. British officials argued that a formal imperial sterling bloc, instead of world-wide free trade, was required as a respite that would help Britain and ultimately the world economy to recover.27

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External and overseas relations then influenced the steering of Britain’s economy during the Great Depression in two main areas: an imperial one that played a role in the economic steering and engineering of Britain’s global financial and commercial relations, and one of grand global designs related to the ordering of economic space and relations with Germany. In the first case, the Bank of England attempted to tap private gold holdings in India as a means to cushion Britain’s liquidity crisis and ease its debt towards the United States. In essence, the Bank of England favoured a high Indian rupee and used various techniques to manage India’s reserves to counter India’s tendency of releasing gold holdings in a boom and absorbing them in a bust. Being able to draw on India’s gold in a recession would stimulate growth in the world economy via its availability in the United States, thereby also earning Britain dollars.28 In this way, India became an alternative to South African gold, where the reign of the Bank of England loosened.29 More generally, Britain weighed over monetary orthodoxy in relation to sterling, which led Leith-Ross to become involved as a “money doctor” in China in the mid-1930s, and extended into arguments about Anglo-Japanese relations in Asia.30 But liberal hegemony was also about grand designs and projections. This second, though often hypothetical policy design, leads back to Schacht’s world vision of the global German economy. Norman, the Bank of England’s governor, and Leith-Ross entwined problem-solving for the British economy with the attempt to widen its hegemonic reach. They held that Britain and Germany jointly would be able to overcome illiberal economic policies, including Schachtian techniques of regulation and barter deals. Germany’s closer affiliation with the British economic bloc would not only allow to protect private British creditors in Germany but generally ease current account and reserve problems as well as those of international liquidity that stifled growth in the world economy. These ideas constituted an undercurrent of British expert-thinking on external economic policy between the 1920s and 1937, underscored by personal affinities between Leith-Ross and Schacht. After talks with Schacht leading up to the annual meeting of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) at Basle in March 1935, Norman was enthusiastic about the possibility of Germany (and by association possibly Poland) joining the sterling bloc, though only after the devaluation of the Reichsmark.31 Norman and Leith-Ross, it seems, held out hopes regarding Anglo-German economic cooperation with Schacht in Nazi Germany for another two years. These hopes faded in the course of 1937 and ultimately with Schacht’s resignation as economics minister in November that year.32 The change would have completely transformed Germany’s modus operandi in raw material purchases and the rationale of foreign currency saving. In all the continental European countries under discussion, the approaches by state officials to overseas and colonial raw materials hinged on the specific economic constellations of countries and on how they

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chose to control their economies. Chapter 5 will address this political conditioning of economic policies in the interwar raw materials debate. The following analysis of the juncture between raw materials and currency management in national economies constitutes the necessary groundwork for this argument.

Raw materials and currencies Tropical and subtropical natural resources, especially rubber, and vegetable oils and fats, followed by petroleum, occupied a central place in the actual and envisaged organization of the major European economies. Analysing these raw materials in relation to national economies indicates differences in the significance of overseas relations from a purely functional economic perspective in individual countries. By the late 1920s and 1930s, the supply side problem of raw materials, reflected in the search by states for materials at low cost, had turned into the more immediate concern to access and prioritize spending on raw materials that allowed to save or even earn foreign currency. Apart from essential and strategic supplies, the origin of materials mattered in terms of their relative propensity of incurring hard currency costs reflected in the balance of payments. The balance of payments position of France and Italy deteriorated as the result of currency devaluations in 1936, while Germany and Poland did not devalue their currencies. In the following, it will be established first how expert-practitioners argued about the raw materials problem and currency relations. Subsequently, the role of raw materials will be analysed for individual countries in terms of regions of supply in order to draw attention to the requirements in different national settings. A separate section discusses more specific considerations in currency management by focusing on fats in France and Germany. Gini in the 1920s, and Rose and Młynarski in the 1930s, highlighted problems of raw materials supplies in the industrialization of Italy and Poland, respectively. Sarraut and Hoffherr discussed both the supply side and relevant trade and payments aspects, while Schacht focused more narrowly on the question of foreign currency reserves. In 1919–1920, Italian officials were prominent in fuelling the debate about the supply side problem on the international stage.33 Italy’s foreign minister Tommaso Tittoni, the trade union activist Gino Baldesi, and Gini, all complained about the underuse and monopolization of tropical resources which had potential to support industrialization in Europe. Sarraut, the radical French Republican, quoted the Italian lobbyists in the introduction to his Mise en valeur, arguing the case for a systematic approach to tropical production.34 In his report for the League of Nations in 1921, Gini emphasized the need to overcome international restrictions on trade and prevent monopolies in raw material production rather than discussing linkages to the payments difficulties of individual industrializing

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countries in Europe. However, in the mid-1920s, as already pointed out, Gini thought that increases in Italian exports of manufactures were crowded out by the cost of raw materials purchases. As the League of Nations briefly reconstituted itself in 1946, officials, with hindsight, criticized the terms of reference imposed on Gini as the rapporteur on raw materials in 1921, stating that these terms prevented him from investigating the subject of trade and payments relations that later became so significant.35 Similarly, in Poland, in the 1930s, Rose stressed the need to limit expenditures on raw materials, which made up more than half of Poland’s imports in value terms.36 Sarraut and Gini, however, did not radically alter their positions as concerns among policy-makers about the scarcity of raw materials and industrial underproduction in the immediate post-war years turned into debates about a materials glut in imperial Britain and in the United States in the mid-1920s. The reasons for the abundance of supplies included changed consumption habits, the use of substitutes, and the decrease in demand for resources in high demand in wartime, such as rubber. Sarraut argued, moreover, that the sluggish industrialization process in continental European economies suggested that the arising problem of industrial overproduction was in fact hiding the fundamental problem of underconsumption.37 Already in 1923 he had emphasized the problem of the depletion of stocks, the drying up of credit flows, and continuing impediments to trade, while acknowledging that there was overproduction in some sectors in the United States. In essence, Sarraut embedded his idea of the colonial mise-en-valeur in a conception of global development, and indirectly connected to the question of industrialization at the nexus of population growth.38 Such views on world development reflected the fork posited at the outset of the chapter between a broad expert consensus across countries regarding the merits of commercial exchange, on the one hand, and the difficulty of reconciling open trade with national economic conditions, on the other. In spite of low raw material prices during most of the 1920s, which prompted international producer cartels, such as the well-known Stevenson scheme on rubber between 1922 and 1927 that involved imperial Britain, questions of access rather than price dominated debates regarding national economies in continental Europe. Between the World Economic Conference in Geneva in 1927 and the League of Nations’ enquiry on colonial raw materials in 1936–1937, polemics on the access to materials gravitated towards the question of whether economic liberalization could remedy the situation. Internationally, officials from Fascist Italy were again particularly active, epitomized by Gini’s lobbying at the World Population Conference in 1928 and by the Italian delegate’s Vittorio Scialoja’s speech before the League assembly in 1929. Both entwined conflict resolution and population pressures with the raw materials issue. In this argument, though, the payments dimension faded quickly into the background.39

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Yet the raw materials-currency dimension figured prominently in a range of proposals geared towards the reform of international economic governance in the mid-1930s. Hoffherr, for instance, invoked nineteenthcentury models, referring to Paul Leroy-Beaulieu and J.S. Mill as scholars who had reconciled economic liberalism with the advocacy of a colonial empire.40 Moreover, drawing on the experience of chartered companies, specifically the Katanga committee and the Suez Canal Company, Hoffherr proposed the creation of networks of interests bridging the private and public domain. In cases in which the exploitation and production of materials in tropical regions was prone to political conflict, states ought to subscribe to companies as shareholders according to their nation’s needs for specific materials.41 Młynarski proposed an alternative to raw material credits via a scheme aimed at boosting international liquidity via central bank cooperation under the umbrella of the Bank for International Settlements. In essence, the BIS was to act as a clearing house for mutual credits between central banks, which, he argued, would stimulate trade by shifting the payments to long-term multilateral settlement, thus reducing short-term pressures on national currency reserves.42 The idea has been compared to Keynes’ bancor proposal of 1943 as a means of enhancing and securing international liquidity in view of international economic governance after the Second World War.43 At this point, it is appropriate to look specifically into the currency connection of overseas materials that were relevant to the economies of the countries under review. This discussion leads on to an argument about the contrasts between French imperial management and considerations in Germany in the important area of oils and fats, and, more generally, to Schacht’s management of overseas resources. In France and Germany, debates about reorganizing supplies in fats and oils were particularly pronounced in the 1930s. As argued in chapter 2, natural rubber emerged as a crucial tropical resource for industrial economies in the late nineteenth century. Rubber had important uses in industry and was highly coveted in wartime. The material, therefore, also figured prominently in debates in Nazi Germany about the country’s need for tropical colonies.44 During the First World War, demand for rubber increased in relation to the war effort, not least due to uses in shipping and in the engine rooms of submarines. After the war, world demand fell, though it picked up again in the mid-1920s, notably for solid rubber and tyres, mainly for uses in the expanding US motor industry. Technological change also created new needs. Crepe soles were used in shoe manufacturing, though their share in rubber consumption remained under 10 percent during the interwar period.45 In the course of the war, a major transformation occurred towards plantation rubber and away from wild rubber, which had dominated

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1934 1928 1922 1916 1910 1904 1898 0

100

200

1898 0

1904 0

1910 1.7

Dutch Indies

0.4

1.6

2.8

French Indochina

0

0.2

0.2

British Malaya

0

0

5.8

Ceylon

Congo Brazil

2.1 21

Ceylon

Dutch Indies

4.6 32

3.4 39

French Indochina

300 1916 25 34 0.6 62 3 31

400 1922 47 89 4.6 179 1.1 20

British Malaya

500

600

1928 58

1934 81

232

379

9.8 299

20 487

1 19 Congo

0.3 11 Brazil

Figure 4.1 Rubber Output of Main World Producers, 1890–1934 (Thousands of Metric Tons). Source: Based on data in B.E. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics, Africa, Asian & Oceania (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), C10, and in B.R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics, The Americas and Australasia (London: Macmillan, 1983), D17.

markets since the late nineteenth century. While in 1918 still about a quarter of world production was wild rubber, by the late 1920s, the share was less than 5 percent. The shift entailed a complete reorientation in terms of the regional production sources of rubber: from the sources in the Amazon region of Brazil and the Belgian Congo to production zones in Southeast Asia, notably British Malaya, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), the Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia), and French Indochina (Vietnam).46 From the early 1920s onwards, rubber was almost exclusively produced in colonial empires: about two-thirds of all plantation rubber originated from the British empire.47 The world price for plantation rubber fluctuated during the interwar years: it plummeted in 1922, rose again considerably during the period of the Stevenson scheme, but fell again at the end of the 1920s and was especially low during the 1930s.48 In terms of volume, the comparative importance of continental European rubber importers was roughly as follows: Britain was the largest buyer, except in 1925 and 1938, though it was importantly involved in the marketing of rubber; British imports were not only destined for the domestic market, however. Germany’s imports of rubber amounted to about half of Britain’s level, in most years. In the mid-1930s, the import levels of France, Germany, and Japan, were about the same; Italy imported about half that amount.49

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Plantation rubber

100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1910

1911

1912

1914

1916

1918

1920

1922

1923

Figure 4.2 Wild Rubber and Plantation Rubber as Share of Total World Output, 1910–1923. Source: Based on data in Fernand Maurette, “Le caoutchouc,” Annales de Géographie 33, no. 185 (1924), 417.

Simply put, factors relevant to the management of raw materials supplies included the level of national demand, producer price, trade flows and re-exports, and foreign currency expenditure. In a wider setting, the availability of substitute materials and production costs in terms of foreign currency were also relevant. In the interwar period, Britain benefitted from rubber production within the sterling bloc. The problem for Germany was not only that rubber purchases involved foreign currency costs to which there were few alternatives. For imports from Malaya, Germany was also bound to the clearing arrangements in London, which tied imports to debt servicing and involved a charge of 20 percent.50 The especially high demand in Germany in 1925 was arguably due to the industrial export promotion at the time, while the peak in 1938 reflected the increased demand by arms manufacturers in Nazi Germany. However, it was the United States rather than Germany that ushered in a trend among purchasing countries to extricate themselves from Britain’s dominance in controlling rubber sources and marketing by securing production zones in Liberia.51 From the early 1920s, the import-dependence of the United States from the British empire had prompted the search for alternative sources. In the 1920s, the United States imported ten times more, and in the 1930s, five times more natural rubber than Britain.

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In the French colonial empire, rubber from Indochina was the main example of supply-side management influenced by the mise-en-valeur. From 1931 onwards, the French state promoted production and eventually extended the colonial land used for rubber cultivation. Technological campaigns at first included smallholder production but later policies privileged large plantation production.52 Between the early 1920s and the late 1930s, output increased six-fold, irrespective of price fluctuations.53 As silver appreciated in the period between 1918 and 1921, businesses in Indochina successfully reversed the attempt by French officials to peg the silver piastre to the French franc. Advocates of the mise-en-valeur had demanded the peg in order to create a more integrated imperial economy. In the mid-1920s, Indochina diversified its trade links. Rubber exports boomed, especially to the United States, in spite of the unfavourable exchange rate and secured French Indochina a positive trade balance with foreign countries. In 1930, the piastre was eventually pegged to the French franc. Otherwise, the colony’s economy would have risked becoming an adjunct to the Chinese economy since both were among only a handful of countries still operating with currencies based on a silver standard.54 Nonetheless, at the end of the 1930s, when supplies from French Indochina would just have matched demand for rubber in metropolitan France, only about one-third of its requirements were actually met by imports from Indochina.55 Moreover, France was not involved in rubber marketing, in contrast to Britain, which also sold rubber from French sources. In fact, in the mid-1930s, 17 percent of rubber from French Indochina was reexported via Singapore.56 It is important to point out that mineral raw materials, notably iron, phosphate, manganese, and bauxite for the production of aluminum, were marginal to the wider debates on currency and raw materials at the time. In France, these materials were not considered to merit a detailed assessment in view of a reorganization of imperial economic relations because of their low price on the world market in the mid-1930s.57 Nazi Germany listed ores and metals among its priorities of required materials.58 But, given the geographical location of these resources, there was little scope in management, though numerous attempts were made to obtain materials from imperial sources under favourable conditions. For instance, the Krupp firm used contacts with a French enterprise to obtain manganese for barter from Morocco.59 However, one also needs to consider to what extent the new energy source, petroleum, and the established one, coal, implicated regions outside Europe as energy suppliers for national economies in Europe. In terms of technology and the scope and scale of its uses, petroleum was still a novel energy source at the end of the First World War. The attention of policymakers, therefore, focused mainly on potential rather than actual demand and supply, and on state involvement in exploration and exploitation according to the political geography of production. During the war, states

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discovered the potential of petroleum for engines in ships and submarines, aviation, and motor cars for the military. The Middle East was seen as an area of future potential. However, estimates by US geologists in 1922 projected only a figure of about 8 percent of world resources for Mesopotamia/Persia (Iraq/Iran), while South American resources were estimated at more than 18 percent.60 The main producer of petroleum at the end of the war was the United States, followed by Mexico, Russia (Baku, Grosny), the Netherlands East Indies (together with British Borneo), Romania, India, Persia, and Polish Galicia.61 What is more, detailed geological surveys of exploitable resources outside the United States existed only for Romania, Galicia, and the Russian fields.62 By the mid1930s, supplies from the Middle East had reached only 6 percent of world production.63

Persia [1.4%] India [1.55%] Romania [1.7%]

Polish Galicia [1.09%]

Other [2.27%]

Dutch East Indies [2.58%]

Russian Caucasus [7.86%]

United States [69.15%]

Mexico [12.4%]

Figure 4.3 World Petroleum Production, 1918 (Percentages by Region). Source: Based on data in David White, “World Petroleum Resources,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 89 (May 1920), 126.

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1926

1923

1921

1918 0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

1918 2.1

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1.1

0.7

0.5

0.6

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1.7

1.1

1.1

2.2

India

1.6

1.3

0.6

0.7

Persia

1.4

2.2

2.8

2.8

Dutch East Indies

2.6

2.2

2

2.1

Russia

7.9

3.8

3.8

5.8

Mexico

12.4

23.8

14.7

8.4

United States

69.2

61.6

71.9

70.6

Other

80

Figure 4.4 The World’s Largest Petroleum Producers, 1918–1926 (as Percentages of Total). Source: Based on data in League of Nations, International Statistical Yearbook 1926, 126, and White, “World Petroleum Resources.”

Petroleum presents a contrast to rubber in terms of the debates in states about production areas, supplies, and exploitable resources, not least because of the lack of petroleum sources in Britain and its scarcity in the empire as opposed to the US domination of the industry. There was also a sharp contrast to the availability of coal within national and imperial territory in Europe generally. The British state, therefore, got involved in production and exploration as a means to compensate for the lack of petroleum resources within its political domain. Continental European states attempted to carve out realms of national influence either in association with Britain or with alternative producers. The geopolitical dimension of the future of petrol was still in flux, though. Britain saw possibilities to decrease its import-dependence on the United States in explorations of petroleum fields in Persia and Mesopotamia, and, in the 1930s, in the Persian Gulf. The experience of the war prompted a degree of cooperation between Britain and France in an agreement of mutual support in exploration and exploitation in 1920 regarding production areas from Mesopotamia (Iraq) to the French Maghreb but also in Eastern Europe and Russia.64 However, Britain and France were also competitors in the Mosul fields of

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Mesopotamia.65 In France, there were still doubts in the mid-1920s as to whether the country should build its own petroleum refinery.66 The question was, moreover, the extent to which the French state should boost its involvement in Middle Eastern petroleum at the expense of exploiting resources in the Maghreb. The outcome of the war had changed the organization of explorations in Mesopotamia. Germany’s involvement in petroleum enterprises had been curtailed by the war. At that time, France obtained the 25 percent share held by Deutsche Bank in the former Turkish Petroleum, 50 percent of which was held by Anglo-Persian and another 25 percent by Royal Dutch.67 The exploitation of the Mosul fields was again reorganized with the constitution of the British Oil Developments Ltd. in 1930. This time, British shareholders retained 51 percent while Italy held 25 percent and a Franco-Swiss company and now again Germany held 12 percent each.68 Germany’s situation in the mid-1920s is also reflected in the low number of German petroleum tankers, which amounted to only a third the number of Italian tankers and was lower in number than those of Argentina.69 The state searched for alternative sources of supply to the Arab world. In the mid-1930s, Schacht succeeded in concluding barter agreements for petroleum with Turkey, together with those for chromium for weapons production. However, negotiations with Persia failed.70 In Italy, the question of petrol supplies was integral to the lobbying on raw materials mentioned earlier. In 1920, for example, Luigi Luzzatti addressed the problem. As a pre-war prime minister, financial expert, and liberal economist, he had become critical of what he saw as Britain’s engineering of liberalism at the beginning of the century. As an advocate of international economic and financial cooperation in post-war Europe, Luzzatti stressed the risks of petroleum monopolies. In the mid-1930s, his statement was exploited in fascist propaganda by activists with links to the Italian motor industry.71 At that time, Fascist Italy secured contracts with the Soviet Union, thus undermining the West’s boycott of Soviet petroleum, until the Soviet Union rescinded these agreements in retaliation against Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia in 1935. Other sources included Albania and Mesopotamia. However, at that time, the Italian state also sold its share in the Mosul fields to a successor company of Anglo-Persian. At that point, Italy’s newly founded national petroleum company, AGIP (Azienda Generale Italiana Petroli) became involved in petroleum explorations in Romania and on the Dahlak islands in the Red Sea, and established the first petroleum refineries in Italy.72 The move coincided with the introduction of a state monopoly for petrol, coal, copper, tin, and nickel. The situation regarding the traditional solid fossil fuel, coal, was very different. Britain and its colonies and dominions were on aggregate the largest world producers of coal. However, supplies in continental Europe were also plentiful. Major coal mines existed in Germany, France, Poland, and Belgium, among others. Yet the demand structure changed during the

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period. The number of coal-fuelled ships had decreased to less than 50 percent of all ships by 1937, as the shipping sector shifted to petroleum. The demand for industrial and domestic solid fuel, however, continued to rise.73 The aim of coal policy in continental Europe was then mainly to avoid imports from Britain or to break into external markets, as attempted by Poland. As was the case with rubber, coal imports from Britain did involve the surcharge for Germany in clearing arrangements.74 As a result of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany lost some of its production areas in Upper Silesia to Poland and in the Saar (until 1935) to France. It also needed to provide reparation payments in coal to France, Italy, and Belgium. Germany, however, solved the problem largely by boosting its remaining production in Silesia.75 Italy was short of coal, relying on imports from the Balkans and the Soviet Union. But Italy also increasingly substituted coal with domestically generated hydroelectric power, and refused to make coal part of the Anglo-Italian clearing agreement in 1935, referring to the state’s coal monopoly.76 The situation was different in France. French coal imports from Indochina increased in the early 1930s. However, complaints expressed among others by the coal committee of the imperial conference, 1934, stressed the fact that France imported coal from foreign sources, notably from Britain and Donetsk in the Soviet Union (now in Ukraine) at the expense of imperial sources of supply. Coal supplies were linked to the colonial mise-en-valeur of Greater France, not least because geologists and engineers stressed that anthracite, namely coal with a high carbon content, from Indochina and Morocco was comparable in quality with coal from Britain or the Soviet Union.77 Schacht’s approach to foreign currency saving in Nazi Germany was the most obvious example for the conscious, though highly contingent management of overseas raw material supplies during the period. The case also shows how different world regions, from East Asia, to South Africa, and South America, were subsumed under this objective. Britain (and Belgium thanks to the Congo) differed, since most raw materials originated from their imperial currency zone. To be sure, in the case of Britain’s Pacific dominions, raw materials production and marketing also involved questions of debt servicing. This question has been explored elsewhere, and will be omitted from the present discussion.78 Portugal’s escudo zone effectively saved Portugal foreign exchange. However, it did so mostly by coincidence, as colonies became a source of raw cotton for Portugal’s cotton textile mills in a protected market, the main industry in the primarily agrarian Portuguese economy.79 Incidentally, this relationship was cause for rivalry between Nazi Germany and Salazar’s Portugal, undermining economic cooperation. In France and Italy, meanwhile, and in Germany under the Nazi autarky plans at the end of the 1930s, the economic steering of the trade-currency nexus was less in evidence. Here states and experts embraced an epistemologically different type of development, as will be argued further.

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Schacht’s trade management between 1933 and 1937, however, exhibited direct links between expert arguments about policy, even if an erratic one. For the sake of argument, a rather sanitized view of his ad hoc approach to policy will be summarized below to show how policy was formulated. What follows is not an assessment of the merits of these policies for the German economy. If one considers the manner in which Nazi Germany organized its overseas imports for the prioritized materials rubber, vegetable fats, cotton and wool, without burdening its foreign currency reserves, one notices important shifts in terms of the regional origins of supplies and the forms of deals and reciprocity they involved. In the early 1930s, Germany moved away from British empire supplies of vegetable oils, as well as those of rubber and cotton. In order to bridge its “fat gap” (Fettlücke), German officials tried to compensate for scarce sources of supply with imports of soya-bean oil, extracted from the seeds of bean. The principal source was Manchuria in Northeast China, after 1931, the Japanese puppet state Manchukuo. In 1933, Germany imported two-thirds of all of Manchukuo’s exports of the produce, though it needed to pay foreign currency for its purchases. From April 1936, however, under an agreement with the Japanese government, Germany could pay for one quarter of its purchases within a specified total with Reichsmark for which Manchukuo, namely Japan, purchased goods from Germany.80 What is more, in order to support Germany’s currency reserves, these imports were not only used for domestic consumption but partly re-exported to obtain foreign exchange.81 Besides, Germany’s East Asia trade involved direct deals for the same purpose. Weapons exports to China amounted to about half of the value of hard currency income from weapons exports, which in turn made up a total of about 5 percent of Germany’s foreign currency earnings.82 Compensation deals with South America, notably Brazil, allowed Germany to ease the burden on its foreign exchange reserves further. Here weapons exports also played a role in the late 1930s. The single most important material that Germany imported from South America in the second half of the 1930s, however, was raw cotton. Brazil alone provided about one-third of all of Germany’s raw cotton imports, partly in exchange for weapons.83 In 1938, 40 percent of Germany’s arms exports went to Brazil.84 In parallel to the cotton barter deals with Brazil, Germany established alternatives to traditional German wool imports from Britain’s Pacific dominions, Australia and New Zealand. With the compensation deal of December 1934, South Africa complemented this role.85 Besides, South Africa provided Germany with copper and various metal ores in deals that also had some compensation component. The fourth agreement concluded in late 1937 for 1938, included wool, manganese, skins, and whale oil.86 Leith-Ross, in late 1936, pondered Britain’s position with regard to these deals entered by South Africa with Nazi Germany which were not only anathema to liberal economic doctrine but also a risk factor

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in view of Germany’s rearmament. However, he concluded that Britain ought not to interfere in South African affairs. One can also speculate that Leith-Ross may have considered it ill-advised to object officially to these commercial agreements, given his hopes for Anglo-German economic cooperation. At the end of the 1930s, Germany also sought to replace rubber imports from Southeast Asia with supplies from Brazil. In the nineteenth century, rubber plants from Brazil had allowed to expand plantation rubber in the British empire. In the late 1930s, plantation schemes were introduced in Brazil, including by the Ford motor company; but these trees were only expected to be ready for tapping by the mid-1940s.88 Germany turned to Brazil purely out of currency considerations, disregarding concerns about the poor quality of Brazilian rubber. About half of South American rubber exports (which were not covered by the international rubber agreement) went to Germany, at a time when Brazil, as a producer of wild rubber, had ceased to be an important player on the world market.89 Brazil’s place in Nazi Germany’s external economic management was underlined by the fact that Karl Ritter, the official who had coordinated deliberations about raw materials supplies in the economic section of the German foreign ministry in the mid-1930s, became Germany’s ambassador in December 1937. His appointment was short-lived, however. In fact, the Brazilian authorities barred him from re-entering the country in 1938, and he continued to serve the Nazi regime in Germany. Ritter was another of those experts and officials who are evidence for the close connection between Germany’s Weltpolitik before the First World War and economic diplomacy in both Weimar and Nazi Germany. Before the war Ritter had been employed in the German colonial ministry. He had also participated in the reparations negotiations as a member of Germany’s delegation together with Schacht.90

Currency reserves and fats and oils As in the late nineteenth century, tropical resources of vegetable oils and fats were crucial for Europe. From the beginning of the twentieth century, they played an increasing role in industry and food processing. In the course of the globalization of agricultural resources, the tropical production of palm oil, palm kernel oil (palm seed oil), and oil from groundnuts, and cocoanut kernels (copra), from British, French, and Dutch colonies in Africa and Asia, gradually replaced local animal fats in Europe and domestic sources of vegetable fats, such as colza (rapeseed).91 As a consequence, by the twentieth century, Germany no longer cultivated any domestic supplies of vegetable oils and fats.92 In France and Italy, olive oil production had been decreasing at the expense of vineyards; and Britain had shifted away from cotton seed supplies from North America. In the

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1938 kernels

1938 palm oil

1933 kernels

1933 palm oil

1928 kernels

1928 palm oil 0%

10%

20%

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West Africa

40%

50%

Dutch Indies

60%

70%

80%

90%

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British Malaya

Figure 4.5 Output Share of Main Producers of Palm Oil and Kernels, 1928, 1933, 1938. Source: Based on data in Leo Waibel, “The Political Significance of Tropical Vegetable Fats for the Industrial Countries of Europe,” Annals of the American Association of American Geographers 33, no. 2 (1943), 127.

1920s, German industry tapped the Manchurian supplies of soya-bean as an additional, subtropical source of supply. In the 1930s, Germany was also involved in developing an alternative source for soya in Romania.93 Uses and requirements of supplies in terms of the type of fat and its geographical origin and purpose show a distinct pattern. In the 1930s, Germany, France, Italy, and Belgium suffered from shortages.94 Britain and Germany mainly imported coconut oil from Asia and palm oil from British West Africa, and increasingly from the Dutch East Indies and to a lesser extent from British Malaya.95 Germany was the main European importer of palm kernels, notably for its dairy industries. In 1933, half of the groundnut oil exported from French West Africa was shipped to metropolitan France for direct use in food processing, since it did not need to be refined, and one fifth was exported to Germany.96 With technological change, oils and fats had wider purposes, in addition to their original uses in the nineteenth century in the production of soap, candles, and margarine. In the 1930s, soya in particular was beginning to have a range of applications, and in October 1936 was even listed for trading in futures at the Chicago Stock Exchange. These uses included food processing of condensed milk, flour, salad oils, and the manufacturing of plastics, paint, linoleum, celluloid, printing ink, rubber, and explosives. Bean cake, left over after pressing, served as animal fodder and fertilizer.97

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As was the case with other raw materials, debates about fats and oils not only focused on sources of supplies but also on price and cost in terms of foreign currency. During the First World War, prices were generally high but then fell. However, foreign currency costs hampered Germany’s soya imports from Manchuria after 1928, and especially between 1933 and 1935. Economic organization involved the search to expand domestic supplies. In Italy, Mussolini decreed that cultivated land for olive trees be expanded.98 Other measures concerned the substitution of different types of fats in food. Planning again turned to actual or potential complementarities in colonial empires. The following analysis aims to illustrate how expert arguments about international trade policy and its currency dimension differed in contexts. France, an example of an existing empire, will be contrasted with Nazi Germany, where officials argued that colonial space could remedy the country’s “fat gap.” The discussion on France suggests continuities between Sarraut’s ideas in the 1920s and Hoffherr’s proposal for the reorganization of economic management in the French colonial empire in the late 1930s. The comparison reveals the emerging contradictions in the very rationale of the mise-en-valeur. Analysing relations between metropolitan France and, respectively, the colonial Maghreb and Indochina, Hoffherr argued the case for trade reorganization.99 He proposed to explore the complementarities between colonial production and the requirements of the French economy but also to build on those between an imperial economic bloc and the wider global economy. According to Hoffherr, reorganizing trade could help reduce France’s expenditure in foreign currency, especially if the production side was organized with this aim in mind.100 With the exception of Indochina and Madagascar, French colonies imported more from foreign countries than they exported to them. The situation was particularly striking in commercial relations between the Maghreb and both the United States and Japan. In 1936, French West Africa only exported 14 percent to countries outside the empire, whereas imports from foreign countries amounted to 60 percent of the value of trade.101 Hoffherr argued that mutual benefits could be achieved, for instance, by ensuring that colonial exports would not compete with French ones; or by securing niches in terms of seasonal differences or quality grades of produce. This could be done, for example, in Moroccan and French wheat production.102 Sarraut had complained that France imported about half of its needs in oils and fats, while, in principle, the colonies would have been able to supply at least two-thirds of France’s requirements and could be developed to meet the country’s entire needs by boosting colonial production.103 But Hoffherr also pointed out the numerous, and potentially increasing, contradictions that existed in intra-imperial and external

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imperial trade. There were conflicts between French producers of olive oil, wine, coal, and phosphates, among others, with colonial producers in the Maghreb. The depression was characterized by competition between metropolitan olive oil producers and vegetable oil producers in the colonies, given their privileged access to the French market and worsened by the fact that the pressing and refining of West African produce was increasingly done on the spot due to lower labour costs.104 Hoffherr realized that under these conditions, the original proposals for colonial redeployment by Sarraut required modifications. Besides, Hoffherr cautioned that a disruption of traditional vegetable oil purchases from South America would result in an imbalance in the bilateral relations of France with these countries.105 The case of the mutual substitution of different types of fats and oils due to concerns about foreign currency expenditure can be substantiated with the ideas of planning in Nazi Germany. In the mid-1930s, the relevant points have been elaborated in a pamphlet for the association of German business economists.106 The argument, framed in an expert context, about ways to close Germany’s “fat gap” shows the purpose of the pertinent technical considerations.107 The analysis involved the quantification of fat requirements, their types, possible substitutes in terms of domestic and foreign sources, and their comparative foreign currency cost. Nazi propaganda on food sovereignty incorporated elements of this reasoning. In the aftermath of the government’s “fat plan” in 1933, whale oil from the Norwegian whaling fleet became a priority because Germany was able to obtain it on a barter basis. In the mid1930s, German margarine used 50 percent whale oil in its processing. The brochure also claimed that about half of all of Germany’s requirements in vegetable fats could eventually be substituted with whale oil without incurring any foreign currency cost and by involving German whalers.108 But there was another, speculative side to the argument because the remaining half of requirements still needed to be covered by imports of tropical vegetable fats, since stocks of domestic alternatives from pig fats had been depleted, at a time when there was talk of food rationing in 1935.109 Therefore, the discussion turned to palm kernels, groundnuts, and copra, for which Germany had to pay foreign currency for imports from French and British Africa and from Southeast Asia. In 1936, the Nazi state’s committee in charge of raw materials planning assessed the share of Germany’s foreign currency expenditure for fats as falling between one fifth and a quarter of the foreign currency shortage it needed to bridge.110 Schacht’s arguments about German production zones in the tropics since the mid-1920s and their potential for foreign currency saving was related to the question of tropical supplies in vegetable fats, particularly with regard to Cameroun as a supplier of palm kernels, the traditional preference of German importers.111

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Overseas raw materials and rational statehood Debates among experts covered in the previous section pointed to widely differing conceptions of national development and arguments about how to control economic relations with the overseas world. This section will historicize the ways in which states incorporated overseas relations in conceptualizing national economic management. The classical historical literature of the state entwined arguments about state rationality in connection with an enquiry of modernity. The following analysis will use the debates about raw materials first to problematize the binaries of rational/irrational and modern/pre-modern relations in states. The second central question is how economic conditions influenced arguments about state rationality and modernity. The discussion will begin by focusing on Germany, where the bureaucracy in the Weimar Republic was actively involved in economic reform. Subsequently, the peculiarities of the state in France and in Fascist Italy, where transnational relations mattered less for the national economy, will be addressed. Controversies about rational, modern statehood were pervasive on the European continent in the 1920s, and also informed the historical literature on modernity. It has been argued, for instance, that the state in Weimar Germany endorsed the scientized control of social relations foreshadowing forms of repression and group victimization by the Nazi state.112 Regarding the economy, the following factors reflected the functional dimension of statehood: Schacht’s systematic promotion of export trade in the mid-1920s, the focus on scientific innovation and substitute materials, and the search for more efficient methods of production and business management. The Weimar state, however, abstained from economic intervention in an approach reminiscent of midnineteenth century Britain.113 In France in the 1920s, there was talk about the need to “industrialize” the state bureaucracy, drawing parallels to the organization of industrial firms.114 The Popular Front government in the mid-1930s, moreover, intensified the state’s role in the organization of social and labour relations.115 In Italy, in Gini’s view, fascism ushered in a scientific model of social relations, with implications for the international order.116 Epistemological shifts in economic reasoning underpinned the very conception of modern development and state agency, as in Vilfredo Pareto’s thinking situated at the juncture between quantitative economics and sociology, and conceived of in response to the classics of liberal economic theory.117 In some respect, rationalizing signified the use of more efficient techniques of organization, as the term implies. Technocratic practice involved two aspects: one was short-term and medium-term accounting, the other scientific innovation. Schacht’s worldwide trade deals under the auspices of the state were meticulous and consistent endeavours to balance the account books at any given time, but no more. Schacht was

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essentially a problem-solver with only a fleeting interest in theories of national economy and exhibited an aversion to the speculative side of modern capitalism as embodied in the workings of the stock exchange.118 Unlike Helfferich before 1914, Schacht had no grand conception of the modern state as a service sector state. Technicalities were clearly circumscribed in Schachtianism, the overseas world only entered circumstantially, and opportunistically, whenever it might help in tackling supply shortages and wherever deals could be agreed on terms that shielded Germany’s currency reserves. When these premises no longer applied, Schacht’s objectives and those of Nazi officialdom drifted apart, as was the case after the formulation of the Nazi autarky plan in April 1936, when Hermann Göring gained more influence over raw material planning.119 For instance, weapons exports to Afghanistan responded to alliance building against the Soviet Union. However, unlike in Brazil, they did not meet the reciprocity criteria required from the perspective of currency management, since Afghanistan was not in a position to offer produce that could match the value of Germany’s exports to Afghanistan even in the medium term.120 The second aspect of economic problem-solving in Germany related to scientific innovation and expertise. The German state conceived of these factors as developmental tools closely entwined with the debate about overseas raw materials in two ways: in terms of economic organization and in terms of the very conception of statehood. Reliance on substitutes or ersatz (a term often used pejoratively in contemporary British sources) was among the techniques advocated to reduce the spending of foreign currency reserves. Substitutes could be just that, namely involve switching to unusual or low-quality alternatives, when better supplies were not available, as was generally done with foodstuffs and fats during wartime. Or substitutes could involve technical innovation. In interwar Germany, the pursuit of such innovation shows parallels with initiatives to renew France via the colonial mise-en-valeur. Here diverse links existed between science, technical expertise, and the norms of statehood in relation to the wider world. Germany as a nation-state, at least potentially, reproduced itself in a global process that went beyond the technical management of its export sector. Rubber, which incurred high foreign currency costs, figured most prominently among materials targeted for synthetic production to replace overseas supplies. The research effort oscillated in invert correlation with the world price of natural rubber and access to natural rubber supplies. However, during the Nazi period, a popular German scientific review heralded so-called Buna (butadiene natrium) as a symbol of the unswerving perseverance of the German mind, irrespective of the low price of natural rubber.121 The aim to reduce Germany’s dependence on imports from British and Dutch supplies from the tropics was mirrored by similar quests in the United States, the Soviet Union, Italy, and Japan. By the mid-1930s,

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the technology was available in Germany for the large-scale production of Buna, a term that later became infamous during the Second World War due to slave labour in IG Farben factories, including at Auschwitz.122 Synthetic rubber production covered an estimated half of Germany’s requirements at the time.123 From the narrow perspective of foreign currency saving, the policy had its logic. In the late 1930s, reducing import dependence also tied in with the objective of developing a domestic strategic resource for arms production. The materials needed for the production process, notably chalk and coal, were readily available within Germany. Buna production, however, was by no means price competitive, notably because it required considerable hydroelectric power. A tangent to the story connects to the formation of an international development doctrine but also leads back to producers in the British empire. The League of Nations generally took a positive stance on substitutes, and science generally, in promoting modern development. LeithRoss first endorsed this view; later, however, he criticized substitutes as mere ersatz.124 Observers of the rubber trade and British officials first stressed that Buna was uneconomical; yet at the end of the 1930s, they pointed to potential competition between natural and synthetic rubber.125 But the technological trajectory of modernity also shows long-standing continuities in the way in which the German nation-state engaged with the world. An older notion of authenticity was embedded in Schacht’s vision of Germany’s role in an open world economy. Schacht was arguably less prone to the use of magisterial terminology than Helfferich, who had asserted, in 1918, that the self-consciousness anchored in the Volk (Volksdasein) underpinned the German Industriestaat with a global reach, even if it was not a territorialized one.126 Nonetheless, in 1932, Schacht predicated the solution of the world economic crisis on solving the German crisis by relying on the innately German ability to develop neglected overseas economic spaces. This was a global projection of German knowledge based on the view that a distinct cultural genius drove German business acumen, organizational skills, and technological expertise. As discussed in the literature on technical experts and German nationalism in the 1920s and 1930s, modern technology acquired a spiritual property related to the Volk in shaping a German path of development.127 The claim was that, unlike Britain, Germany was consciously rational. This conception was not merely about export markets or national prestige, nor was it about autarkic development.128 Rather, the concept was a facet of Weltpolitik drawing on classical liberalism as well as on the arguments advanced by Friedrich List and Max Weber on the rational state and on Naumann’s refashioning of social reform as productive national development in the context of central Europe, Mitteleuropa.129 French global modernity also had a scientific dimension, initially with roots in Saint-Simonian thinking, but this scientism differed epistemologically from ideas in Germany, as did the way in which overseas regions

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were associated with it. Concepts and practices of technical rationality were subservient to a tradition of developmental constructivism. The interwar state in France has been criticized for lacking a notion of macroeconomic management. The technical side of trade organization was deficient, though in the 1920s, experts and the wider public tended to criticize these shortcomings.130 Hoffherr’s criticism pinpointed the lack of economic rationality. For instance, Morocco incurred a balance of payments deficit with foreign countries which were eventually settled through payments from the Bank of France. This realization resembled a classical liberal analysis. However, Hoffherr’s view that trade regulation would allow to kick-start international commerce rather than inhibit trade flows was anathema to liberal economic thinking as well as contradicting British liberal practice. When Sarraut advocated the mise-en-valeur and Hoffherr attacked the mismanagement of France’s imperial economy, they both invoked JeanBaptiste Colbert’s development designs of the ancien regime. This was more than a gesture to France’s past grandeur, though. Sarraut added a global dimension to Colbert’s grands travaux. And Colbert was an influence in Hoffherr’s chartered company proposal because the state was the agent that reconciled the private with the public sphere.131 The quest to harmonize conflicting economic interests through organization rather than macroeconomic management was also evident in the empire, especially under the Popular Front. For Léon Blum, the state ought to act like a “good industrialist.”132 For Hoffherr, the imperial state played a role as an “organ of propulsion and support” in France’s renewal.133 This was not merely about ironing out economic inequalities at a near-global scale. Planning also ought to address the political contradictions of French pressure groups in the empire and, for Hoffherr, those that intensified in the empire as overseas economies industrialized. The latter view differed from the prevalent expert opinion of the time. There are parallels here with minority views in Britain at the time, such as those expressed by liberals like Lord Lothian, regarding the role of colonial empires in promoting world industrialization.134 In practice, though, the French state struggled to achieve either aim, using overseas economic space to support the metropolitan economy and making overseas economies part of an imperial-national entity of development. The imperial conference of 1934 provides evidence for this failure.135 Yet the debate about raw materials, the economic order, and statehood also posed more fundamental questions of rationality and modernity in terms of how the real world ought to inform policy. The undercurrent of this search was the aim to find alternatives to classical, British liberal notions of economic theory, in this case notably in relation to trade and the international economic order. Relevant arguments set out from the observation that a society’s welfare in the international economy was unlikely to flow from policies of either free trade or tariff protection.

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Pareto stressed the need to identify not only economic but also social and historical variables to determine the conditions for growth and identify equilibriums in an “economic mechanism” or “economic organism.” Such thinking had its origins in late nineteenth-century Europe but influenced universal doctrines of modernization in the United States after 1945. While these theories were modern in operating with notions of system behaviour, they sometimes also linked these arguments to biological cycles of life and death and notions of authentic development. In Italy, Gini’s lobbying on the raw materials question since the First World War was part of his wider theoretical reasoning on rational economic action. Gini was internationally renowned as an economic statistician but also published profusely in sociology, engaging with modernization theory in the United States. There are few explicit references to Pareto in Gini’s work, and the differences regarding their views on war and colonialism are striking.136 Nonetheless, affinities existed in terms of the central notions of economies as systems and sub-systems in different states of equilibrium, affected also by historical and political factors. The important difference was that Gini’s positivism consciously incorporated biological notions, viewing populations as organisms from microbes to humans. Regarding the domestic realm of the state, Gini chose a topic similar to Pareto’s “circulation of elites,” to argue that classes in societies reproduced themselves according to organic cycles. Social groups (“organisms”) in equilibrium were predestined to lead the polity but loosing energy as their life cycle came to an end. The fascist state ought to serve as the framework that aligned agency with this scientific insight. Gini’s emphasis on rural populations as healthy ones, reflected these findings, though his thinking was conceived of as scientific and normative and in this sense different from historically backwardlooking right-wing communitarianism.137 Likewise, at the global scale, science ought to anticipate the organic development of societies (“nations”) in world civilization. Privileged access to overseas raw materials and territory were the prerogative of the identified organic, and therefore cultural, economic, and political hegemon. The core entities of organic nations were however fluid rather than static, and did not follow an easily predictable trajectory. Gini did not endorse a theory of a master race. The modernity lay in the fact that the equilibrium was determined by science, notably derived from data on sustainable growth rates in births. In principle, any population could, and was likely over time to enter a stage in which it would serve as the world’s organic hegemon. This had been the case of the “Anglo-Saxon races” in the past and would be the case of East Asia and South Asia in the future. Gini argued that there was evidence in fascism that Italy was the organic hegemon of the 1920s and 1930s, though the outdated international system dominated by Britain inhibited this role.138 Given this very conception, Gini’s sociological ideas were not conducive to concrete economic management of trade and the balance of payments.

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The theory was far removed from an analysis of the practicalities of economic relations. In fact, his views became a political programme with implications for lobbying on the so-called population question, the international order, and Italian colonies. In Gini’s argument, the ethnos-centred state formation of late nineteenth-century Europe turned into a variant of modern systems theory.139 However, unlike his contemporaries, Pareto and Schumpeter, Gini projected his theory of a social order onto political norms rather than integrating political variables in the analysis of economic systems. The analogy between “organic” and “political” relations harked back to kinship ties in “nations.” For Schumpeter, Pareto’s research on specific economic equilibriums was a way to make trade policy more rational. However, Schumpeter underestimated the fluidity between the atavistic and the modern, for which Gini’s thinking on Italian development provides ample evidence. It is ironic, given the boom in biological reasoning in sociology in the first decades of the twentieth century, that Schumpeter brushed aside debates in the early 1920s on whether researchers should refer to an economic system as an “organism” or “mechanism” as inconsequential squabble.140 A discussion of raw materials as a critique of capitalism more broadly underpinned another strand of Italian fascism, with practical implication for policies, notably the fascist wheat campaigns from 1925. Advocates of a fascist social order, like Odon Por [Ödön Pór] (incidentally a cousin of the economist Karl Polanyi), emphasized raw materials as a public good rather than their monetary value. The produce of the soil had value for the community. A universal model of self-contained communitarianism ought to overcome the money economy ruled by plutocrats and symbolized by the monetary system based on gold.141 The state, neglected by socialists, would be the facilitator in a process in which the people would ultimately “become [the] state.”142 In the quest to integrate social relations with constructive economic agency, Por explicitly referred to Pareto in his 1923 argument about the need for a fascist course of action.143 Production wherever it occurred in a fascist developmental entity was deemed to be an integral part of the state’s social relations and technological innovation. Colonies could be of use as laboratories of agricultural development and widen the economic base; and empire would be a step towards a more socially relevant international economic organization.144 From this perspective, the economy could not be steered by the state as an external, autonomous agent. Rather, the state fused in a social development that made material, social, and spiritual aspects indistinguishable in a fascist empire. Conceptually and epistemologically, this reasoning differed from both liberal economic management and Schachtianism. In the shadow of Saint-Simonian ideas, modern French development was, in principle, a universal scientific project. Yet France’s imperial trade and payments relations defied a functional-economic logic. By the 1930s, a fork had become apparent between old economic sectors, notably textiles,

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increasingly dependent on the empire as a market, and internationally competitive sectors of the French economy.145 In corporatist Portugal, meanwhile, as a lawyer, Salazar combined a sense for economic reality and belief in the virtues of rural Portugal, with the conviction that authoritarianism and bureaucratic planning would secure stability and welfare for an economy on the margins of Europe. After the onset of the depression, he consciously built on the potential of colonial cotton for Portugal’s development in a protectionist imperial economy.146 Gini’s positivistic organicism and Por’s socializing fascism were far removed from raw materials management related to trade and payments. However, the search for alternative paths to liberal economic agency and the sociological dimension in this search mirrored the conflicting legacies of Italian economic development and tensions in the state between the industrial bourgeoisie in Northern Italy and the impoverished rural South. There was a hiatus between the nation-state’s developmental ambitions and its economic performance. Parallels are visible here with wider arguments about the convergence in the Italian state between “bourgeois” capitalism, nationalism, and fascist imperialism. The case has been argued by Antonio Gramsci.147 Overseas regions were part of a fascist world, albeit according to a quasi-transcendental notion of development. The argument critiquing liberal globalism in continental Europe and especially Italy comes full circle, when considering economic policies and developmental lobbying in the British empire in the 1930s. The creation of the sterling bloc had a functional rationale: controlling external capital flows while guaranteeing free flows within the group to secure external payments settlements. The introduction of imperial tariff preferences, however, was not based on an assessment of their workings or outcomes.148 Moreover, the move from open commerce to imperial protectionism heightened the appeal of colonial territory, which Leith-Ross likened to the irrational quest by continental European states for colonial empires as a means to overcome their difficulties to purchase raw materials.149 Not least, the crisis faced by raw material producers in the British dominions gave rise to alternative development ideas, too. In Italy, lobbying for communitarian ideas of development, such as Por’s, emerged as the question of raw material supplies became grafted onto the country’s difficulties in achieving sustainable growth in the world economy. The thinking that underpinned some of Por’s arguments, namely Hugh Douglas’ ideas on social credit, also influenced rural politics on community development in Australia and Canada in the 1930s.150 It would thus appear that expert-practitioners in states got caught up with the realities of the inchoate and unequal trajectories of universal development. Once economies had diversified and the world economy had become more complex by the turn of the twentieth century, the need for policy regulation and economic steering increased. However, classical economic liberalism was too abstract to offer solutions to the predicament

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of individual national economies. Therefore, the expertise in nation-states became entangled with the particular trajectories in which national economies had taken shape. Ideas deemed expedient for national development by reputable national experts were then regarded to be rational. Yet to say that, in this sense, the tropical and subtropical world was part of rational modernity in expert reasoning in the European raw materials debate is not the same as arguing that tropical regions were an integral part of the respective European nation-state’s developmental core; quite the opposite was the case.

National development and its imperial tangents The dichotomy established between European and non-European development becomes apparent when analysing policy assumptions in contemporary expert opinion. Managing economies and national development involved states in different areas and forms of organizing production and consumption: domestic, external, and imperial-colonial, and public or private. Policy doctrines engaged with the ordering of political authority over economies and territory, legal regulation, and extraeconomic coercion, for instance in labour control. In the debates about raw materials in the interwar period, the nexus of loci and articulations of control defined the nation-states under review as imperial states, showing commonalities between otherwise markedly different states. Faced with structural or self-inflicted difficulties to procure raw materials, states regulated domestic consumption by decree. This was most apparent during the First World War and in the draconian and abusive measures of domestic control in Nazi Germany between the mid-1930s and the end of the Second World War. Supply shortages and austerity measures at home experienced during the First World War left a legacy. Wartime memories were put to use in the lobbying on the socalled raw materials problem in Germany, Italy, and France, in the 1920s and 1930s, not least in Schacht’s persistent demands for German production zones in Africa.151 During the First World War, shortages in vegetable oils, the most important concern regarding tropical supplies for Germany later in the 1930s, found expression in the state’s poster campaigns to tap resources at home in order to replace disrupted and expensive imports. The population was asked to collect locally available fruit kernels and hand them over to a state agency against payment, which differed according to the particular kernels’ degree of efficiency in oil production: plums, mirabelles, chestnuts, and acorns, and for higher prices kernels of pumpkins, apples, and lemons.152 Ladies’ hair was collected as a substitute for fibres.153 Wartime austerity generally has been exemplified by the anecdotal reference to the fact that even Schacht, the bourgeois, kept two milk-goats in his villa in Berlin-Zehlendorf.154

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Falling back on domestic control required scope for manipulation on the part of state authorities. The official reasoning was that, in a participatory nation-state, austerity and the provision of materials via the public were the citizens’ contribution to their nation under an external threat. In the 1930s, as the Nazi state was confronted with choices regarding spending hard currency on raw materials, officials turned to laws that punished the holding of foreign currency and confiscated private holdings of precious metals, for instance jewellery. In these policies, the distinction between the German Volk and its alleged exploiters, the Jewry, was first propagandistic stigmatization and became from the late 1930s onwards a legally-sanctioned plunder of an essentialized group.155 Schacht’s external economic policy, by contrast, was volatile crisis management with a global reach that in its nature hinged on factors outside his control. Compensation deals in trade were unpredictable. While Romania could be relatively easily subjected to pressure, given its need for investment and technology, other relationships were more difficult. Persia refused barter deals until 1939, when it changed its position, given its new armament programme.156 Brazil proved a useful trading partner; yet the government refused to enter a political alliance with Nazi Germany.157 And in South Africa, Nazi Germany’s barter deals met at least with symbolic opposition in boycotts against German goods and protests by Jewish consumers.158 Within the existing colonial empires of Britain, France, and Portugal, the management of raw materials and currency posed itself differently. In imperial blocs, the national currency could be used for payments; thus the foreign currency problem did not arise. Moreover, in principle, trade flows could be influenced in ways that supported the balance of payments of the imperial state, though such policies remained largely hypothetical at the time. What is more, supply planning for contingencies could include raw material producing areas. Britain in the late 1930s, for instance, assessed the availability and accessibility of supplies, notably strategic minerals and foodstuffs, by an imperial committee and prepared communications channels to brace the country for a possible war.159 It would also have been possible to restrict access to materials of colonial empires for external purchases. State monopolies in wartime were common, and existed in Italy and Portugal in the late 1930s, as did other forms of regulation. Under the law of January 1934 in France, all imports of palm kernels and oil from outside the colonial empire required authorization.160 Nonetheless, peacetime measures mostly took the form of export duties to secure revenue for colonial administrations. Such duties were particularly widespread in the French and Portuguese empires. In some cases, though, these duties were indeed designed to channel supplies to the respective national economies. This included the British empire, which levied export duties for this purpose on Malayan and Nigerian tin, and between 1919 and 1922 on palm kernels.161

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In the British case, political influence arguably mattered in sustaining financial hegemony. A policy that, simply put, teased out private Indian gold holdings and put them to use in stemming the British deficit vis-à-vis the dollar area required both structural power and political influence. This was not legal coercion by the state, as in Nazi Germany. Rather, the central bank made it attractive for private gold holders in India to invest their assets; and the bank’s gold reserves then fulfilled a role in supporting sterling. The political control dimension lay in the fact that the measure was only effective under a gold exchange standard; a full gold standard in India would have strengthened the rupee but not sterling. It has been argued that this was one of the reasons why British officials refused to put India on a gold standard.162 Imperial states also played a role in regulating the production side of raw materials. This involved the state in guaranteeing producer prices through international regulation, and in dealing with producer lobbying, debts, labour costs and labour unrest. States had a stake in international producer cartels because they secured their imperial producers a share in global markets. Britain’s participation in international cartels for rubber, tin, and tea was also a means to deal with demands on the government from producers in the empire.163 Moreover, cartels served to tackle the debt crisis in the dominions. In a similar vein, states sometimes fostered alliances with their national firms in regions where expatriate enterprises were involved in production. In interwar Malaya, the state supported British entrepreneurs with the international regulation schemes as well as by shielding them from local smallholder production.164 In the specific case of whaling, where the exploitation of a resource involved a global public good, cartel arrangements were also a means for states to secure and delineate access to produce rather than protecting producers under their sovereignty. This was the reason why Germany joined the international whaling cartel in June 1937, though it also cooperated with Japan outside this framework.165 Yet the examples of French trade organization and British imperial preference also indicate how trade regulation in empires prompted conflicts of interests. In the British empire, the problem was ultimately overseas industrialization. In the French empire, tensions were more acute because of direct competition between agricultural producers in metropolitan and overseas France. In the mid-1930s, the free access of colonial produce to metropolitan markets led to recurring disputes between representatives of French overseas and metropolitan commerce.166 Especially imports of fruits, vegetables, and vegetable oils from North and West Africa prompted repercussions in France, ranging from formal protests by business representatives to attempts to mobilize consumers against the purchase of overseas produce. Hoffherr reported incidents in which overseas fruits in French village markets were destroyed following rumours that they had been poisoned and were unfit

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for consumption. Thus, policy was laden with inherent contradictions that manifested themselves politically. In the competitive climate of the 1930s, attempts by the Popular Front government to reconcile metropolitan with colonial production triggered reactions at home aimed at demarcating a French national economy from an imperial entity of development.168 Attempts to optimize the national economy inevitably required political choices to be made in an imperial entity of economic development on which a consensus was difficult to achieve. The Guernut enquiry in 1937–38 illustrates the problem. The investigation addressed the uses of the empire for France, among others, by examining commerce and production, and in this sense shows continuities with Sarraut’s initiative. Léon Blum stressed the investigation’s official role for the mutual cooperation between France and its overseas empire.169 Nonetheless, in line with its terms of reference, the commission assessed the conditions of overseas development in their own right rather than solely in relation to metropolitan France. The agenda included the political aspirations of local populations, social and medical issues, including nutrition, human rights, and labour conditions. The commission’s members comprised advocates of the mise-en-valeur, like André Touzet, a former governor of French Indochina, but also the writer André Gide, the sociologist Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, and officials from the International Labour Office (ILO).170 Sitting on the sub-committee for North and West Africa, Hoffherr addressed social issues and demanded that the investigation should pay particular attention to housing and family incomes in colonies.171 The manner in which the enquiry cast its web, however, proved its undoing even before planned visits to the colonies. Allegations of a likely wasteful use of travel funds covered up for concerns, including by the minister of colonies, about the enquiry’s expected effects: heightening expectations and causing unrest overseas.172 Imperial development without an explicit reference to the distinction between metropolitan France and the colonies was perceived as threatening in France and provoked a political crisis in the French state. In all European colonial empires of the time, and in the debates about Germany’s hypothetical colonies too, views on labour relations are instructive to fathom the duality in European conceptions of development between the European and the overseas world. Approaches to labour involved a variety of objectives, such as boosting the overseas production for core economies and shielding their national labour markets. Or policies reflected suppositions regarding economic behaviour, notably in Africa. Labour coercion in colonies was widespread and not confined to wartime, as the following discussion of links between coercion, production, and the imperial state’s search for raw materials will show. Labour migration to colonies, however, were insignificant during the period, even at a time when problems with surplus labour worsened in some states in Europe, such as Italy, and migrants’ remittances dried up.

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During the First World War, both Britain and France used overseas labour to channel supplies to the war effort. In interwar France, the wartime legacy of colonial soldiers and workers later turned into a debate about immigration and ethnicity. A relevant aspect of Britain’s deployment of overseas labour for the British war effort can be gleaned from the use of the workforce during military operations in France. Overseas labourers, called “kaffirs” (Muslims from the Middle East or Africa), Indians, and Chinese, worked under a coercive labour regime in which ethnicity was correlated with trust in war but arguably also with ethnic hierarchies in accordance with the labourer’s stake in the nation. In proximity to the frontline only British labour was used. Chinese workers had to keep a distance of 16 kilometres, and the battalion of prisoners of war ought not to come closer than 30 kilometres to the frontline.173 In colonies, the corollary of the distinction between the national core and an overseas realm of development was also a factor of labour coercion. Coercive labour regimes in colonial Africa were widespread, and forced labour did occur. Britain signed the convention against forced labour drawn up by the ILO in 1930, but France, Portugal, and Belgium did not. In any case, “communal labour” for infrastructural projects, such as roads, and recruitment in wartime did not fall under the convention.174 A link persisted between arguments about labour coercion and progress posited as the “right” to modernity, including under the French Popular Front.175 Nonetheless, a comparative perspective suggests that, in the interwar period, France did not use direct, deliberate labour coercion geared towards its requirements in raw materials in the production of West African fats or Indochinese rubber. Rather, the various forms of coercion that existed were either due to entrenched ideas that held that disciplining colonial subjects for the market was necessary; or they were a means to reduce labour costs. In fact, in the depression, forced labour became less widespread as the notorious problem of colonial labour shortage turned into one of surplus labour. In the mid-1930s, advocates of the reorganization of France’s imperial relationship used this context to stress that colonial labour was a normal part of rational economic modernity. Henri Labouret, the director of the International Institute of African Languages and Civilizations, and also a member of the Guernut commission, argued that assumptions that coercion was needed for planters to obtain, “motivate,” and retain labour were outdated, if they had ever been true. Rather, in Africa, too, he argued, the quest for livelihood and prospect of disposable income was in itself a sufficient incentive to work.176 In Angola and Mozambique under Salazar’s corporatism in Portugal, by contrast, the state pursued an official policy that resorted to forced labour to channel raw materials to the metropolitan economy. In Angola, in the early 1920s, workers were literally “sold” to companies, for instance a petroleum firm, without any pecuniary remuneration.177 Forced labour was also systematically used on cotton schemes in Northern Mozambique in the 1930s to supply textile manufacturers in Portugal with raw cotton as

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an alternative to imports from outside the escudo zone. And in the late 1920s, colonial labour migration from Mozambique to South African mines, organized by the Witwatersrand Native Labour Association, was a means for the Portuguese state to obtain gold for its currency reserves. The association delayed wage payments to workers, investing them instead on the stock exchange and returning the proceeds to the Portuguese state in compensation for its role in supplying cheap labour.179 The record of Italian labour relation in its East African empire generally and occupied Ethiopia particularly is under-researched. The available evidence suggests that labour was not a purpose-oriented device to support the management of the Italian national economy. Yet fascist settlers were given a free hand by the state to use forced labour on their farms.180 In different ways, hypothetical policy considerations on raw materials also entailed assumptions about extra-economic control and coercion with regard to labour. In 1936, the British ambassador in Berlin referred to German press reports that the Camerouns, if returned to German colonial rule, could cover almost all of Germany’s requirements in rubber. In a conversation, Schacht allegedly stressed his intention to use “undesirable hotheads” from Germany as workers, which the ambassador interpreted to mean forced labour.181 Sarraut, by contrast, saw his advocacy of colonial development, among others, in the light of overseas modernization and the pre-emption of communist influence.182 Hoffherr’s proposals for French imperial reforms emphasized the political purpose of labour control. Boosting colonial production, notably in the Maghreb, ought to address the question of surplus labour in the colonies and, in doing so, decrease the potential for political unrest.183

Studying state agency in interwar Europe This chapter began by arguing that influential experts in states held broadly similar views regarding the ideal path of development of the world economy influenced by British liberalism. Subsequently, the analysis explored how arguments about the trajectories of development diverged as expert-practitioners engaged with economy building in the contexts of their nation-states. The predicament of national economies in the world economy differed. The discussion focused on structural problems relating to national economies and the purchase of raw materials. Expert debates showed how arguments about national economic management in Europe related to methods to organize and control overseas supply regions. The wider logic of these strategies of development varied, however, even epistemologically, as in the case of Italian fascism. Yet studying the economic agency of states requires a wider analysis. Policy was formulated in political contexts. The 1920s and more so the 1930s were periods of intense lobbying for colonies or the extension of colonial territory to support national economy building in Europe. Even

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the young advocates of a world state among the proponents of neoclassical economics, Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises, argued that colonies were part of a rational order of the world economy.184 In many cases, economic experts in states objectivized the link between colonial economic space and national progress and welfare. In doing so, their discourse amplified and legitimized political propaganda by embedding social discontent in a “colonial question” associated with a raw materials problem. In this sense, imperial statehood was borne out of specific readings of crises of globalization and their manipulation in memory politics. The next chapter will focus on politics, economic policy, and the debate about colonies in the depression of the 1930s. To conclude, this chapter widens the perspective towards conceptual observations on research on European economies in the interwar period. The aim is to clarify how an investigative focus on state agency engages with, or differs from, the various approaches to economic history on the 1930s. This chapter has discussed structural relationships through the lens of expert opinion. Other broadly relevant research on the interwar period, however, set out from different conceptualizations. Sketching out investigative differences should help to pre-empt a faux débat. With regard to the economic policies of totalitarian states in interwar Europe, and more generally with regard to European colonial empires, quantitative studies in economic history have assessed aggregate economic performance.185 Studies have also evaluated economic policy in terms of its mistaken assumptions and theoretical flaws, notably contrasting fascist policies with the norms and techniques of liberal economic governance. Mismanagement is not in doubt, when it comes to fascist and Nazi autarky policies.186 But objectivizing and testing policy outcomes is one thing; accounting for policy practices and rationales, let alone their impact, is quite another.187 Views of Italian fascism as a developmental dictatorship have rightly been rejected as endorsing dubious economic doctrine and confusing propaganda with actual policy and policy outcomes.188 Nonetheless, investigating economic policy requires investigating the manner in which policies became political constructs associated with extraeconomic control. Here the objective is to historicize how economic practice formed in a material setting with which policy discourses, doctrines, and assumptions engaged. In such a research of state agency, performance-oriented studies are still relevant, though. Balance of payments analysis, for instance, can serve as a comparative tool showing up the fork between designs and outcomes.189 There are strands of economic history that consider agency and state formation in their analysis. Some economic studies on Italian fascism have established connections between state organization and performance in specific sectors by showing how the autarky regime under fascism negatively affected Italy’s trade balance, especially in the midand late 1930s.190 Certain sectors with privileged relations to the fascist

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state then benefitted from Italy’s occupation of Ethiopia due to the enlarged domestic market.191 The occupation of Ethiopia led to the “colonization” of Italy’s autarkic economy in the second half of the 1930s.192 The state’s approach to economic policy was in fact the starting point of one influential study of France’s imperial connection. This study set out from the sector-specific disparities between France’s global and imperial economic relationships. The argument is that modern economic sectors after the First World War became disconnected from the imperial economic space, whereas the old sectors, namely textiles, retained a privileged link with French colonies as markets. The implication is then that this dissociation (divorce) points to a specific ordering of external economic relationships via the state, conscious or otherwise.193 The imperial state had a continuing legacy and inertia. At this point, the argument takes a normative turn, criticizing French policy as misconceived because, objectively, the colonial empire marred the economic performance of metropolitan France. Yet precisely at this juncture policy formation and statehood needs to be examined further. Performance-oriented research cannot account for the reasons why policy formed as it did. Besides, the relationship between economic policy and actual outcomes is tenuous, even when policy is based on consistent economic reasoning. Anyway, benefits and benefactors are defined politically and historically highly contextual. For instance, plunder, too, had its logic. Historicizing state agency requires exploring not only pressure group influences in politics but also the characteristics, techniques, and assumptions of states regarding their transnational relations. In France in the depression, the route to an imperial economic entity was hampered by rivaling economic interest groups both in France and in the empire that prompted a cultural backlash against closer connections with colonies in the core polity. In Italy, any coherent management of the national economy there was, occurred in a parallel state. The fascist state operated according to its own ideological reflexes. Between the 1900s and the Second World War, empire was integral to the concept of modern statehood defined in Europe, as a reaction to, and national reconfiguration of economic liberalism. In the 1930s, approaches to economy building and nation building in Europe exhibited particular political connections between national development, overseas raw materials, and colonies, which will be explored in chapter 5.

Notes 1 Specifically relevant studies will be introduced throughout the chapter. The literature on the economies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy is obviously vast. An early overarching study is Alan S. Milward, “Fascism and the Economy,” in Walter Laqueur, ed., Fascism. A Reader’s Guide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 379–412. For cogent studies addressing the nexus of economic policy and politics, see Jon S. Cohen, “Was Italian

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8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

Empire, modernity, and its discontents Fascism a Developmental Dictatorship? Some Evidence to the Contrary,” Economic History Review 41, no. 1 (1988), 95–113; and Peter Gourevitch, “Fascism and Economic Policy Controversies: National Responses to the Global Division of Labor,” in Edmund Burke III, ed., Global Crises and Social Movements: Artisans, Peasants, Populists, and the World Economy (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1988), 183–231. For an explicit reference to Hayek, see Ralf Banken, “Die deutschen Goldreserven und Devisenpolitik, 1933–1939,” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 1 (2003), 49. See chapter 1. Patricia Clavin, The Great Depression in Europe (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); and Dietmar Rothermund, The Global Impact of the Great Depression, 1929–1939 (London: Routledge, 1996). A scholarly exception is Douglas Rimmer, “Have and Have-Not Nations: The Prototype,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 27, no. 2 (1979), 307–25. For a relevant essay, see Gerold Krozewski, “Capitalism,” in Andrew Denning and Heidi Tworek, eds., The Routledge Companion to the Interwar World (New York: Routledge, 2023 forthcoming). For short biographies, see respectively: “Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970),” Neue deutsche Biographie, 22 (2005), 489–92; also Robert Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (London: Routledge, 1995), 219–21; “Karl Helfferich (1872–1924),” Neue deutsche Biographie 8 (1969), 470–2; “Bernhard Dernburg (1865–1937),” Neue deutsche Biographie, 3 (1957), 607–8; “Corrado Gini (1884–1965),” The American Statistician 19, no. 5 (1965), 40, and Marcello Boldrini, “Corrado Gini,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (General), 129, no. 1 (1966), 148–50; J. Kingsley, “Giorgio Mortara (1885–1967),” Revue de l’institut international de statistique 36, no. 2 (1968), 242–3; “René Hoffherr,” Dictionnaire de biographie française (1986), 1255; “Albert Sarraut (1872–1962),” Encyclopaedia universalis; also Encyclopedia Britannica; and “Sir Frederick Leith-Ross (1887–1968),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004). “Feliks Młynarski (1884–1972),” Polski Słownik Biograficzny, vol. XXI, 444–5; and “Adam Rose (1895–1951),” Polski Słownik Biograficzny, vol. XXXII, 41–3. Bernhard Dernburg, Die weltwirtschaftlichen Interessen und die internationale Organisation der Völker (Berlin: Handelsvertragsverein, 1917). Karl Helfferich, England und wir (Berlin: Stilke, 1918), 13. Corrado Gini, Report on the Question of Raw Materials and Foodstuffs (Geneva: League of Nations, 1921), introduction. Christopher Kopper, Hjalmar Schacht. Aufstieg und Fall von Hitlers mächtigstem Bankier (Munich: dtv, 2010), 81. Hjalmar Schacht, Grundsätze deutscher Wirtschaftspolitik (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1932), esp. 66. Frederick Leith-Ross, Money Talks: Fifty Years of International Finance: The Autobiography of Sir Frederick-Leith Ross (London: Hutchinson, 1968). A.K. Kenwood and A.L. Lougheed, The Growth of the International Economy, 1820–1980 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1983), chs.12 and 13. Kopper, Hjalmar Schacht, 99–103 and 67. Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006), 76. For a specific account of Schacht’s planning and an assessment of ensuing contradictions in autarky management, see Michael Ebi, Export um jeden Preis. Die deutsche Exportförderung von 1932–1938 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2004), section

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29

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4.3, and esp. 218–22; for the export drive, see also Christian Leitz, “Export or Die,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 48, 1 (2002), 52–64. Corrado Gini, “The Economic Condition of Italy,” Economica 18 (1926), 327. Giorgio Mortara, Memorandum on the Changes in Economic Structure and Their Repercussions on the Movements of Capital and Balances of Payments (Paris: International Chamber of Commerce, June 1936), 373–4. Adam Rose, “Le problème de la population et des matières premières en Pologne,” Politique étrangère 3, no. 2 (1938), esp. 113; see also Adam Rose, Le problème agraire en Pologne (Warsaw: Pomorska Drukamia Rolnicza, 1926). Douglas A. Irwin, “The French Gold Sink and the Great Deflation of 1929–1932,” Cato Papers on Public Policy 2 (2012), esp. 15. Albert Sarraut, La mise en valeur des colonies française (Paris: Payot, 1923), 30 and 32–3. René Hoffherr, “Comment organiser une économie française d’empire,” Politique étrangère 3, no. 2 (1938), 183–96. ANOM [Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence] “Commission Guernut.” For specific references, see below. Fernando Rosas and J.M. Brandão de Brito, eds., Dicionário de história do Estado Novo (Lisbon: Bertrand Editora, 1996), 754–5 and 865. J.W.F. Rowe, Markets and Men: A Study of Artificial Control Schemes in Some Primary Industries (London: CUP, 1936), esp. ch.X. P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (Harlow: Longman, Second edition 2002), ch.20. G. Balachandran, “Britain’s Liquidity Crisis and India, 1919–1920,” Economic History Review 46, no. 3 (1993), 584 and esp. 587, and G. Balachandran, “Towards a ‘Hindoo Marriage’: Anglo-Indian Monetary Relations in Interwar India, 1917–1935,” Modern Asian Studies 28, no. 3 (1994), 627. G. Balachandran, “Britain, USA and Indian Gold Standard,” Economic and Political Weekly, September 2–9 (1989), 2015–23; also Russell Ally, “War and Gold – the Bank of England, the London Gold Market and South Africa’s Gold, 1914–19,” Journal of Southern African Studies 17, no. 2 (1991), 221–38. For the former, see, for instance, Stephen L. Endicott, “British Financial Diplomacy in China: The Leith-Ross Mission, 1935–1937,” Pacific Affairs 46, no. 4 (1973–74), 481–501. For Japan’s objectives in building the yen bloc, see as a contemporary source Elizabeth B. Schumpeter, “The Yen Bloc”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 215 (1941), 29–35. For pertinent comparative perspectives on Japan’s currency management and empire in East Asia, see Michael Schiltz, The Money Doctors from Japan: Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the Yen Bloc, 1895–1937 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012); Mark Metzler, Lever of Empire: The International Gold Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); and Kaoru Sugihara, “The Economic Motivations behind Japanese Aggression in the late 1930s: Perspectives on Freda Utley and Nawa Toichi,” Journal of Contemporary History 32, no. 2 (1997), 259–80. Montagu Norman, “Note on the sterling bloc,” 20 November 1935, TNA [The National Archives, Kew] T 160/633. Montagu Norman, Diaries, Bank of England Archives ADM 34/26, for instance, entry 8 April 1937. Foreign Office, “Summary of Italian action in connexion with raw materials,” 29 February 1936, TNA CO 852/59/1. Sarraut, La mise en valeur, 32–3.

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52 53 54

55

Empire, modernity, and its discontents Raw-Materials Problems and Policies (Geneva: League of Nations, 1946), 34. Rose, “Le problème,” 113. Sarraut, La mise en valeur, 150. Sarraut, La mise en valeur, 150–3. Alison Bashford, “Nation, Empire, Globe: The Spaces of Population Debate in the Interwar Years,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 1 (2007), 179, 189; also “Colonial aspirations of certain foreign countries: question of freedom of access to Colonial raw materials, 1937,” League of Nations E./M.P./1, TNA CO 852/113/10. René Hoffherr, “Les compagnies à charte comme instruments de mise en valeur en Afrique,” Politique étrangère 2, no. 2 (1937), 166. Hoffherr, “Les compagnies à charte,” 168–9. Feliks Mlynarski, Memorandum on the Cooperation of Central Banks (Paris: International Chamber of Commerce, 1936), 338–44; also Mlynarski, Credit & Peace (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1933), 81–3. Filippo Cesarano, Monetary Theory and Bretton Woods. The Construction of an International Monetary Order (Cambridge: CUP, 2006), 114–5; also Feliks Mlynarski, “The International Equalization Fund,” Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie 19, no. 1–2 (1959), 43–65, esp. 44. An example of this debate is Wolfgang Jünger, Kampf um Kautschuk (Leipzig: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1940). See also chapter 6. William Woodruff, “Growth of the Rubber Industry of Great Britain and the United States,” Journal of Economic History 15, no. 4 (1955), 380 and 384. Colin Barlow, The Natural Rubber Industry: Its Development, Technology and Economy in Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur: OUP, 1978). Royal Institute of International Affairs [RIIA], Colonies and Raw Materials (London: Information Department Papers No. 18, 1936), 23. Marianne Boucheret, “La liaison monétaire caoutchouc-franc-piastre en Indochine,” in La France et l’outre-mer. Un siècle de relations monétaires et financières (Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 1996), 59. Jünger, Kampf um Kautschuk, 202; Preparatory committee for the French colonial conference, 1934: “Le caoutchouc,” 17, ANOM Agefom 994/3467; and “Memorandum on Rubber,” Memorandum [Institute of Pacific Relations, American Council] 3, no. 1 (1934), 1. Marie-Thérèse Touzet, Les revendications coloniales allemandes et la répartition des matières premières (Paris, Librairie sociale et économique, 1939), 151 and 213. Harry T. Collings, “The Relation of the Automobile Industry to International Problems of Oil and Rubber,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 116 (1924), 254–8; also Arthur J. Knoll, “Harvey S. Firestone’s Liberian Investment (1922–1932), Liberian Studies Journal 14, no. 1 (1989), 13–33. “Le caoutchouc,” esp. 33, ANOM Agefom 994/3467; for the last point: Michitake Aso, “Profits or People? Rubber Plantations and Everyday Technology in Rural Indochina,” Modern Asian Studies 46, no. 1 (2012), 38–42. Robinson Newcomb, “Indo-China Increasingly Important as Source of Rubber,” Far Eastern Survey 8, no. 11 (1939), 129–30. Jean-Dominique Giacometti, “La bataille de la piastre: réalités économiques et perceptions politiques dans l’empire colonial français,” Südostasien Working Paper No.9 (1998), Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften, Humboldt University, Berlin, 73–4. For the rubber connection, see Boucheret, “La liaison monétaire.” Boucheret, “La liaison monétaire,” 51–52, 46, and 53.

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56 Boucheret, “La liaison monétaire,” 53. 57 Preparations for the French imperial conference 1934, “Manganèse, Phosphate, Fer, Aluminium,” ANOM, Agefom 994/3468. 58 German Foreign Ministry, Memorandum by Karl Ritter, 17 August 1936, Commercial Policy Department IVa: Southern Europe: Study Tours Schacht trip to Balkans and Middle East, Serial 9112, TNA GFM 33/3314. 59 German Foreign Ministry, Commercial Policy Department IIa: “France: Iron and Iron Ores - Colonies,” November 1937 – January 1942, Serial 1477, TNA GFM 33/602. 60 Stanley K. Hornbeck, “The Struggle for Petroleum,” Annals of the American Academy for Political and Social Science 112 (1924), 168. 61 David White, “World Petroleum Resources,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 89 (May 1920), 126. 62 White, “World Petroleum Resources,” 121. 63 Albert De Boucheman, “La politique de pétrole dans le Proche-Orient,” Politique étrangère 2, no. 4 (1937), 358. 64 Hornbeck, “The Struggle for Petroleum,” 165. 65 Fernand Maurette, “Le pétrole. Étude de géographie économique,” Annales de Géographie 35, no. 193 (1926), 16. 66 Maurette, “Le pétrole,” 25. 67 Maurette, “Le pétrole,” 16. 68 Cesare Alimenti, La questione petrolifera italiana (Turin: Giulio Einaudi, 1937), 85. 69 Maurette, “Le pétrole,” 20. 70 German Foreign Ministry, Commercial Policy Department IVa: “Southern Europe: study tours - Schacht trip to Balkans and Middle East,” Serial 9112, TNA GFM 33/3314; and Willi A. Boelcke, Deutschland als Welthandelsmacht (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1994), 90. 71 See the reference in Alimenti, La questione, 27–8, to an article by Luzzatti in the Corriere della Sera in 1920. For Luzzatti, see Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 66 (2007): www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/luigi-luzzatti_ (Dizionario-Biografico)/. 72 De Boucheman, “La politique de pétrole,” 361–2. 73 Walter H. Voskuil, “Coal and Political Power in Europe,” Economic Geography 18, no. 3 (1942), 252. 74 Scott Newton, Profits of Peace: The Political Economy of Anglo-German Appeasement (Oxford: OUP, 1997), 91. 75 Voskuil, “Coal and Political Power,” 251–2. 76 Fortunato Minniti, “Le materie prime nella preparazione bellica dell’Italia (1935–1943) (parte prima),” Storia contemporanea 17, no. 1 (1986), 258, and René Hoffherr and Paul Mauchaussé, Charbon et pétrole en Afrique du Nord (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1935), 271. 77 Hoffherr and Mauchaussé, Charbon et pétrole, 268–9 and 271–2. 78 Cain and Hopkins, British Imperialism, ch.21. 79 Fernando Rosas, O Estado Novo nos anos trinta: elementos para o estudo da natureza económica e social do Salazarismo (1928–1938) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1986), 75–7. 80 Alfred Smoular, “Les relations économiques entre l’Allemagne et le Mandchoukouo,” Politique étrangère 1, no. 4 (1936), 47–50. 81 Smoular, “Les relations économiques,” 50. 82 Boelcke, Deutschland als Welthandelsmacht, 67 and 80, and Christian Leitz, “Nazi Germany and the Luso-Hispanic World,” Contemporary European History 12, no. 2 (2003), 193.

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83 Boelcke, Deutschland als Welthandelsmacht, 95. 84 Boelcke, Deutschland als Welthandelsmacht, 94. 85 William Kienzle, “German-South African Trade Relations in the Nazi Era,” African Affairs 78, no. 310 (1979), 81–90; also JTA [Jewish Telegraphic Agency], 7 December 1934, “South Africa to Barter Wool for £2,500,000 in Nazi Goods.” 86 The Times, 13 September 1937. 87 Leith-Ross’ views on the Compensation Brokers initiative are instructive: Interdepartmental Meeting, “Compensation Brokers Ltd.,” 17 November 1936, TNA T 177/30. 88 Jünger, Kampf um Kautschuk, 178–9. 89 Kurt Bloch, “Germany’s Buna Hits Asiatic Rubber Countries,” Far Eastern Survey 8, no. 6 (1939), 71. 90 “Karl Ritter,” Internationales Biographisches Archiv 45/1973. His rank in the ministry in the mid-1930s was that of Ministerialdirektor. 91 Leo Waibel, “The Political Significance of Tropical Vegetable Fats for the Industrial Countries of Europe,” Annals of the American Association of American Geographers 33, no. 2 (1943), 118–28. 92 RIIA, Raw Materials and Colonies (1936), 31. 93 John R. Stewart, “The Soya Bean and Manchuria,” Far Eastern Survey 5, no. 21 (2 October 1936), 221–6. 94 Marie-Thérèse François, “La répartition mondiale des matières premières, le cas particulier des oléagineux,” Supplément à l’Afrique Française, No.10, Renseignements coloniaux et documents, publié par le Comité de l’Afrique française et le Comité du Maroc (November 1936). 95 RIIA, Raw Materials and Colonies, 32–3. 96 Waibel, “The Political Significance,” 121–2. 97 Stewart, “The Soya Bean,” 221–6; “Soya beans,” Memorandum [Institute of Pacific Relations, American Council] 1, no. 7 (28 April 1932), 1–3. 98 François, “La répartition mondiale.” 99 Hoffherr, “Comment organiser,” and Hoffherr and Mauchaussé, Charbon et pétrole. 100 Hoffherr, “Comment organiser,” 189: respectively, 650 million francs and 2 billion (milliards) francs. 101 Hoffherr, “Comment organiser,” 193–4. 102 Hoffherr, “Comment organiser,” 189. 103 Sarraut, La mise en valeur, 190–1. 104 S.M. Martin, “West African Export Producers and the Long Depression, 1914–45,” in Ian Brown, ed., The Economies of Africa and Asia in the InterWar Depression (Padstow: T.J. Press, 1989), esp.79–83. 105 Hoffherr, “Comment organiser,” 187. 106 Margarete Muths, Die deutsche Fettlücke und die Möglichkeit ihrer Schließung durch die Rückgewinnung der ehem. deutschen Kolonien (Berlin: Deutscher Betriebswirte-Verlag, 1938). 107 Gerold Krozewski, “Problematizing an ‘Imperialism of Intent’: Colonial Raw Materials, Globalism, and European Nation States, from the Pre-1914 Period to the 1930s,” in Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell, eds., Africa, Empire and Globalization (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 367–8. 108 Muths, Die deutsche Fettlücke, 55. 109 Phillips to Hopkins, 29 November 1935, TNA T 160/63. 110 Matthias Riedel, “Die Rohstofflage des deutschen Reiches im Frühjahr 1936,” Tradition 14, no. 16 (1969), 310–34.

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111 Gilbert Maroger, La question des matières premières (Paris: Centre d’études de politique étrangère, 1937), 204–5. 112 David Crew, “The Ambiguities of Modernity: Welfare and the German State from Wilhelm to Hitler,” in Geoff Eley, ed., Society, Culture, and the State in Germany, 1970–1930 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), 319. 113 Kopper, Hjalmar Schacht, 102. 114 Pierre Rosanvallon, l’État en France, de 1789 à nos jours (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1990), 232. 115 M. Kalecki, “The Lessons of the Blum Experiment,” Economic Journal 48, no. 189 (1938), 26–41. 116 Corrado Gini, “The Theoretical Basis of Economic Policy,” Journal of Political Economy 37, no. 6 (1929), 633–60 117 For relevant texts, see Lorella Cedroni, ed., Italian Critics of Capitalism (Lanham Maryland: Lexington Books, 2010). 118 Schacht, Grundsätze deutscher Wirtschaftspolitik, chs.8 and 11; also Kopper, Hjalmar Schacht, 119. 119 Andrew J. Crozier, Appeasement and Germany’s Last Bid for Colonies (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988), 174. 120 Boelcke, Deutschland als Welthandelsmacht, 89. 121 Dr. Herbert Harms, “Buna – der neue künstliche Kautschuk,” Kosmos no. 5 (May 1936), 177–9. 122 Stephen L. Harp, A World History of Rubber: Empire, Industry, and the Everyday (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 105–7. 123 Bloch, “Germany’s Buna,” 70–1. 124 For the positive comment, see Interdepartmental meeting, “League of Nations inquiry into the question of commercial access to raw materials,” 26 February 1937, TNA CO 852/113/9. For critical statements on substitutes, see Report of the Committee for the Study of the Problem of Raw Materials (League of Nations, Geneva, September 1937), prepared under Leith-Ross. 125 Bloch, “Germany’s Buna.” 126 Helfferich, England und wir, 18. 127 See Jeffrey Herf, “The Engineer as Ideologue: Reactionary Modernists in Weimar and Nazi Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 19, no. 4 (1984), 631–48. 128 Schacht, Die Grundsätze, 68. 129 On Weber and Naumann, see Asaf Kedar, “Max Weber, Friedrich Naumann and the Nationalization of Socialism,” History of Political Thought 31, no. 1 (2010), 129–54. 130 Rosanvallon, l’État en France, 234–5. 131 Hoffherr, “Les compagnies à charte,” 166, and Sarraut, La mise en valeur, 16. 132 Rosanvallon, l’État en France, 234. 133 Hoffherr and Mauchaussé, Charbon et pétrole, 292. 134 Speech by the Marquis of Lothian, Peace and the Colonial Problem (London: National Peace Council, 1935), 12. 135 Samir Saul, “Les pouvoirs publics métropolitains face à la Dépression: La Conférence économique de la France métropolitaine et d’Outre-Mer (1934–1935),” French Colonial History 12 (2011), 167–91. 136 Giovanni Busino, L’Italia di Vilfredo Pareto. Economia e società in un carteggio del 1873–1923 (Milan: Banca commerciale italiana, 1989), 69–102. 137 Corrado Gini, “The Cyclical Rise and Fall of Population,” in Corrado Gini, Shiroshi Nasu, Oliver E. Baker and Robert R. Kuczynski, Population (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1930).

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138 Gerold Krozewski, “Ineguaglianza e ordine internazionale: Corrado Gini e le norme dello sviluppo moderno,” Afriche e Orienti 3 (2011), 140–60. 139 For relevant arguments about the role of ethnicity in state formation in Europe, see Michael Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2005). 140 Joseph Schumpeter, “Edgeworth und die neuere Wirtschaftstheorie,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 22 (1923), 186 and 198; and Michael Mclure, Pareto, Economics and Society: The Mechanical Analogy (London: Routledge, 2001), 22. 141 Odon Por, Finanza nuova. Problemi e soluzioni (Florence: Le Monnier, 1940), esp. 35. 142 Odon Por, Materia prime ed autarchia (Rome: Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista, 1937), 47. 143 Odon Por, Fascism (New York: A.A. Knopf, 1923), 23 and 25. 144 Por, Fascism, 19 and 44–5. 145 Jacques Marseille, Empire colonial et capitalisme français: histoire d’un divorce (Paris: Albin Michel, 1984); and Marseille, “The Phases of French Colonial Imperialism: Towards a New Periodization,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 13, no. 3 (1985), 127–41; also Martin Thomas, The French Empire between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), 98. 146 Malyn Newitt, Portugal in Africa, the Last Hundred Years (London: Longman, 1981), 183–4, and David Birmingham, A Concise History of Portugal (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1993), 164. 147 Enzi Santarelli, ed., Antonio Gramsci. Sul fascismo (Rome: Editori riuniti, 1973): Gramsci, “Il fascismo e la sua politica,” (1926), 149. 148 David Meredith, “British Trade Diversion Policy and the ‘Colonial Issue’ in the 1930s, Journal of European Economic History 25, no. 1 (1996), 33–66. 149 Leith-Ross (T) to Ashton-Gwatkin (FO), 24 February 1937, TNA T 160/859. 150 C.H. Douglas, “The Use of Money,” The Social Credit Pamphleteer no. 1 (1934), 7–30; also Ezra Pound, “Social Credit: An Impact,” The Social Credit Pamphleteer no. 8 (1935), 5–30; and Por, Finanza nuova, 17–26 [originally published in Rivista del Lavoro 15 (1937)]. 151 See chapter 5. 152 Dr. R. Prasch, Obstkernöle. Die Verarbeitung der Obstkerne und ihre Bedeutung für unser Wirtschaftsleben nach den Erfahrungen des Reichsausschusses während des Weltkrieges (Berlin: Liebheit und Thiesen, 1919), esp. 7–9 and 59–74; also: Kriegsausschuß für Öle und Fette; Objektdatenbank, Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin, www.dhm.de. 153 School children in Germany collected hair for the Red Cross, for instance. For posters, see www.iwm.org.uk. 154 Kopper, Hjalmar Schacht, 52. 155 Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War and the Nazi Welfare State (London: Verso, 2007), 42–60; and Kopper, Hjalmar Schacht, 305. 156 Boelcke, Deutschland als Welthandelsmacht, 90. 157 Boelcke, Deutschland als Welthandelsmacht, 98. 158 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, “Boycott Hurts Nazi Pact with South Africa,” 29 January 1935. 159 “Imperial Conference, 1937, Committee on munitions and food supplies,” 9 June 1937 (T.W.N. Inskip, chairman), TNA SUPP 3/56. 160 Preparations for the French imperial conference, 1934, “Palmiste et huile de palme,” ANOM Agefom 994/3467. 161 RIIA, Raw Materials and Colonies, 46–7. 162 Balachandran, “Britain, USA, Indian Gold Standard.”

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163 See, for example, B.T. Bauer, “The Working of Rubber Regulation,” Economic Journal 56, no. 223 (1946), 391–414; and John Hillman, “Malaya and the International Tin Cartel,” Modern Asian Studies 22, no. 2 (1988), 237–61. 164 Bauer, “The Working of Rubber Regulation,” 391–414; and Martin Rudner, “Development Policies and Patterns of Agrarian Dominance in the Malaysian Rubber Export Economy,” Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 1 (1981), 81. 165 Muths, Die deutsche Fettlücke, 55; and Kurt Bloch, “German-Japanese Partnership,” Far Eastern Survey 7, no. 21 (1938), 243. 166 Samir Saul, “Milieux d’affaires de l’Outre-mer français et Grande Dépression dans les années 1930,” French Colonial History 10 (2009), esp. 235. 167 Hoffherr, “Comment organiser,” 186. 168 Saul, “Milieux d’affaires,” 238–9. 169 Léon Blum, Journal Officiel de la République Française, 9 February 1937, 1731–2. 170 Minutes, “Séance inaugurale,” 8 July 1937, ANOM Commission Guernut 12. 171 Minutes, “Section d’Afrique du Nord,” “Séance inaugurale,” 15 November 1937, 4, ANOM Commission Guernut 12. 172 Minutes, “Deuxième séance,” 24 February 1938, 2–6, ANOM Commission Guernut 12. 173 A.D. Lindsay, “The Organisation of Labour in the Army in France during the War and Its Lessons,” Economic Journal 34, no. 133 (1924), 71–2. 174 Catherine B. Ash, “Forced Labor in Colonial West Africa,” History Compass 4, no. 3 (2006), 404. 175 Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labour Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1996), 88. 176 Henri Labouret, “Le problème de la main-d’œuvre dans l’ouest africain français,” Politique étrangère 3, no. 1 (1936), 37–47. 177 Jeremy Ball, “Colonial Labor in Twentieth Century Angola,” History Compass 3 (2005), 5. 178 Allen Isaacman and Arlindo Chilundo, “Peasants at Work: Forced Cotton Cultivation in Northern Mozambique,” in Allen Isaacman and Richard Roberts, eds., Cotton, Colonialism, and Social History in Sub-Saharan Africa (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1995); also Rosas, O Estado Novo, 78. 179 Bridget O’Loughlin, “Proletarianisation, Agency, and Changing Rural Livelihoods: Forced Labour and Resistance in Colonial Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies 28, no. 3 (2002), 511, and Simon E. Katzenellenbogen, South Africa and Southern Mozambique: Labour, Railways and Trade in the Making of a Relationship (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982), 153. 180 Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa orientale (Rome: Laterza, 1976), 211. 181 Erich Phipps, British Embassy, Berlin, to Anthony Eden, Foreign Office, 25 February 1936, TNA CO 852/56/1. 182 Martin Thomas, “Albert Sarraut, French Colonial Development, and the Communist Threat, 1919–1930,” Journal of Modern History 77, no. 4 (2005), 919. 183 Hoffherr and Mauchaussé, Charbon et pétrole, 289. 184 Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), 108. 185 Arguably the best-known study focusing on economic performance before 1914 is Lance Davis and Robert A. Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire: The Economics of British Imperialism (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1988). 186 Milward, “Fascism.”

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187 Krozewski, “Problematizing an ‘Imperialism of Intent,’” 357–76. 188 Cohen, “Was Italian Fascism a Developmental Dictatorship.” 189 One relevant example is Albrecht Ritschl, “Die deutsche Zahlungsbilanz 1936–1941 und das Problem des Devisenmangels vor Kriegsbeginn,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 39, no. 1 (1991), 103–25. 190 Gianni Toniolo, L’Economia dell’Italia fascista (Rome: Laterza, 1980), 277–80 and 272. 191 Toniolo, L’economia dell’Italia fascista, 336. 192 Nicola Labanca, Oltremare: storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna: il Mulino, 2002), 300–2. 193 Marseille Empire colonial et capitalisme français.

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Douglas, C.H., “The Use of Money,” The Social Credit Pamphleteer no. 1 (1934), 7–30. Ebi, Michael, Export um jeden Preis. Die deutsche Exportförderung von 1932–1938 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2004). Endicott, Stephen L., “British Financial Diplomacy in China: The Leith-Ross Mission, 1935–1937,” Pacific Affairs 46, no. 4 (1973-74), 481–501. 10.2307/2755324 François, Marie-Thérèse [see also Touzet, Marie-Thérèse], “La répartition mondiale des matières premières, le cas particulier des oléagineux,” Supplément à l’Afrique Française, No.10, Renseignements coloniaux et documents, publié par le Comité de l’Afrique française et le Comité du Maroc (November 1936). Giacometti, Jean-Dominique, “La bataille de la piastre: réalités économiques et perceptions politiques dans l’empire colonial français,” Südostasien Working Paper No.9 (Berlin: Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften, Humboldt University, 1998). Gini, Corrado, Report on the Question of Raw Materials and Foodstuffs (Geneva: League of Nations, 1921). Gini, Corrado, “The Economic Condition of Italy,” Economica 18 (1926), 322–337. 10.2307/2547819 Gini, Corrado, “The Theoretical Basis of Economic Policy,” Journal of Political Economy 37, no. 6 (1929), 633–660. Gini, Corrado, “The Cyclical Rise and Fall of Population,” in Corrado Gini, Shiroshi Nasu, Oliver E. Baker and Robert R. Kuczynski, Population (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1930). Gourevitch, Peter, “Fascism and Economic Policy Controversies: National Responses to the Global Division of Labor,” in Edmund Burke III, ed., Global Crises and Social Movements: Artisans, Peasants, Populists, and the World Economy (Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1988), 183–231. Harms, Dr. Herbert, “Buna – der neue künstliche Kautschuk,” Kosmos no. 5 (May 1936), 177–179. Harp, Stephen L., A World History of Rubber: Empire, Industry, and the Everyday (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2016). Helfferich, Karl, England und wir (Berlin: Stilke, 1918). Herf, Jeffrey, “The Engineer as Ideologue: Reactionary Modernists in Weimar and Nazi Germany,” Journal of Contemporary History 19, no. 4 (1984), 631–648. https://www.jstor.org/stable/260329 Hillman, John, “Malaya and the International Tin Cartel,” Modern Asian Studies 22, no. 2 (1988), 237–261. 10.1017/S0026749X00000962 Hoffherr, René, “Les compagnies à charte comme instruments de mise en valeur en Afrique,” Politique étrangère 2, no. 2 (1937), 167–176. 10.3406/polit.1937.5589 Hoffherr, René, “Comment organiser une économie française d’empire,” Politique étrangère 3, no. 2 (1938), 183–196. 10.3406/polit.1938.5622 Hoffherr, René and Paul Mauchaussé, Charbon et pétrole en Afrique du Nord (Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan, 1935). Hornbeck, Stanley K., “The Struggle for Petroleum,” Annals of the American Academy for Political and Social Science 112 (1924), 162–171. 10.1177/000271 622411200105 Irwin, Douglas A., “The French Gold Sink and the Great Deflation of 1929–1932,” Cato Papers on Public Policy 2 (2012), 1–56.

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Isaacman, Allen and Arlindo Chilundo, “Peasants at Work: Forced Cotton Cultivation in Northern Mozambique,” in Allen Isaacman and Richard Roberts, eds., Cotton, Colonialism, and Social History in Sub-Saharan Africa (Portsmouth NH: Heinemann, 1995). Jünger, Wolfgang, Kampf um Kautschuk (Leipzig: Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag, 1940). Kalecki, M., “The Lessons of the Blum Experiment,” Economic Journal 48, no. 189 (1938), 26–41. 10.2307/2225475 Katzenellenbogen, Simon E., South Africa and Southern Mozambique: Labour, Railways and Trade in the Making of a Relationship (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1982). Kedar, Asaf, “Max Weber, Friedrich Naumann and the Nationalization of Socialism,” History of Political Thought 31, no. 1 (2010), 129–154. https://www. jstor.org/stable/26224091 Kenwood, A.K. and A.L. Lougheed, The Growth of the International Economy, 1820–1980 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1983). Kienzle, William, “German-South African Trade Relations in the Nazi Era,” African Affairs 78, no. 310 (1979), 81–90. 10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a097082 Knoll, Arthur J., “Harvey S. Firestone’s Liberian Investment (1922–1932),” Liberian Studies Journal 14, no. 1 (1989), 13–33. Kopper, Christopher, Hjalmar Schacht. Aufstieg und Fall von Hitlers mächtigstem Bankier (Munich: dtv, 2010). Krozewski, Gerold, “Problematizing an ‘Imperialism of Intent’: Colonial Raw Materials, Globalism, and European Nation States, from the Pre-1914 Period to the 1930s,” in Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell, eds., Africa, Empire and Globalization (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 357–376. Krozewski, Gerold, “Ineguaglianza e ordine internazionale: Corrado Gini e le norme dello sviluppo moderno,” Afriche e Orienti 3 (2011), 140–160. Krozewski, Gerold, “Capitalism,” in Andrew Denning and Heidi J.S. Tworek, eds., The Routledge Companion to the Interwar World (New York: Routledge, 2023 forthcoming). Labanca, Nicola, Oltremare: storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna: il Mulino, 2002). Labouret, Henri, “Le problème de la main-d’œuvre dans l’ouest africain français,” Politique étrangère 3, no. 1 (1936), 37–47. 10.3406/polit.1936.6313 Leith-Ross, Frederick, Money Talks: Fifty Years of International Finance: The Autobiography of Sir Frederick-Leith Ross (London: Hutchinson, 1968). Leitz, Christian, “Export or Die,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 48, no. 1 (2002), 52–64. 10.1111/1467-8497.00251 Leitz, Christian, “Nazi Germany and the Luso-Hispanic World,” Contemporary European History 12, no. 2 (2003), 183–196. 10.1017/S0960777303001127 Lindsay, A.D., “The Organisation of Labour in the Army in France during the War and Its Lessons,” Economic Journal 34, no. 133 (1924), 69–82. 10.2307/2222620 Mann, Michael, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2005). Maroger, Gilbert, La question des matières premières (Paris: Centre d’études de politique étrangère, 1937). Marseille, Jacques, Empire colonial et capitalisme français: histoire d’un divorce (Paris: Albin Michel, 1984).

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Marseille, Jacques, “The Phases of French Colonial Imperialism: Towards a New Periodization,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 13, no. 3 (1985), 127–141. 10.1080/03086538508582696 Martin, S.M., “West African Export Producers and the Long Depression, 1914–45,” in Ian Brown, ed., The Economies of Africa and Asia in the Inter-War Depression (Padstow: T.J. Press, 1989). Maurette, Fernand, “Le caoutchouc,” Annales de Géographie 33, no. 185 (1924), 409–429. Maurette, Fernand, “Le pétrole. Étude de géographie économique,” Annales de Géographie 35, no. 193 (1926), 1–26. 10.3406/geo.1926.8400 Mclure, Michael, Pareto, Economics and Society: The Mechanical Analogy (London: Routledge, 2001). Meredith, David, “British Trade Diversion Policy and the ‘Colonial Issue’ in the 1930s, Journal of European Economic History 25, no. 1 (1996), 33–66. Metzler, Mark, Lever of Empire: The International Gold Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006). Milward, Alan S., “Fascism and the Economy,” in Walter Laqueur, ed., Fascism. A Reader’s Guide (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 379–412. Minniti, Fortunato, “Le materie prime nella preparazione bellica dell’Italia (1935–1943) (parte prima),” Storia contemporanea 17, no. 1 (1986), 245–276. Mlynarski, Feliks, Credit & Peace (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1933). Mlynarski, Feliks, Memorandum on the Cooperation of Central Banks (Paris: International Chamber of Commerce, 1936). Mlynarski, Feliks, “The International Equalization Fund,” Zeitschrift für Nationalökonomie 19, no. 1–2 (1959), 43–65. Mortara, Giorgio, Memorandum on the Changes in Economic Structure and Their Repercussions on the Movements of Capital and Balances of Payments (Paris: International Chamber of Commerce, June 1936). Muths, Margarete, Die deutsche Fettlücke und die Möglichkeit ihrer Schließung durch die Rückgewinnung der ehem. deutschen Kolonien (Berlin: Deutscher Betriebswirte-Verlag, 1938). Newcomb, Robinson, “Indo-China Increasingly Important as Source of Rubber,” Far Eastern Survey 8, no. 11 (1939), 129–130. 10.2307/3022385 Newitt, Malyn, Portugal in Africa, the Last Hundred Years (London: Longman, 1981). Newton, Scott, Profits of Peace: The Political Economy of Anglo-German Appeasement (Oxford: OUP, 1997). O’Loughlin, Bridget, “Proletarianisation, Agency, and Changing Rural Livelihoods: Forced Labour and Resistance in Colonial Mozambique,” Journal of Southern African Studies 28, no. 3 (2002), 511–530. 10.1080/0305707022000006495 Por, Odon, Materia prime ed autarchia (Rome: Istituto Nazionale di Cultura Fascista, 1937). Por, Odon, Finanza nuova. Problemi e soluzioni (Florence: Le Monnier, 1940). Pound, Ezra, “Social Credit: An Impact,” The Social Credit Pamphleteer 5, no. 8 (1935), 5–30. Prasch, Dr. R., Obstkernöle. Die Verarbeitung der Obstkerne und ihre Bedeutung für unser Wirtschaftsleben nach den Erfahrungen des Reichsausschusses während des Weltkrieges (Berlin: Liebheit und Thiesen, 1919).

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Riedel, Matthias, “Die Rohstofflage des deutschen Reiches im Frühjahr 1936,” Tradition 14, no. 16 (1969), 310–334. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40697204 Rimmer, Douglas, “Have and Have-Not Nations: The Prototype,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 27, no. 2 (1979), 307–325. 10.1086/451095 Ritschl, Albrecht, “Die deutsche Zahlungsbilanz 1936–1941 und das Problem des Devisenmangels vor Kriegsbeginn,” Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 39, no. 1 (1991), 103–125. 10.2307/30195427 Rosanvallon, Pierre, l’État en France, de 1789 à nos jours (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1990). Rosas, Fernando, O Estado Novo nos anos trinta: elementos para o estudo da natureza económica e social do Salazarismo (1928–1938) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1986). Rosas, Fernando, and J.M. Brandão de Brito, eds., Dicionário de história do Estado Novo (Lisbon: Bertrand Editora, 1996). Rose, Adam, Le problème agraire en Pologne (Warsaw: Pomorska Drukamia Rolnicza, 1926). Rose, Adam, “Le problème de la population et des matières premières en Pologne,” Politique étrangère 3, no. 2 (1938), 103–114. 10.3406/polit.1938.5617 Rothermund, Dietmar, The Global Impact of the Great Depression, 1929–1939 (London: Routledge, 1996). Rowe, J.W.F., Markets and Men: A Study of Artificial Control Schemes in Some Primary Industries (London: CUP, 1936). Royal Institute of International Affairs [RIIA], Colonies and Raw Materials (London: Information Department Papers No. 18, 1936). Rudner, Martin, “Development Policies and Patterns of Agrarian Dominance in the Malaysian Rubber Export Economy,” Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 1 (1981), 83–105. 10.1017/S0026749X0000679X Santarelli, Enzi, ed., Antonio Gramsci. Sul fascismo (Rome: Editori riuniti, 1973). Sarraut, Albert, La mise en valeur des colonies française (Paris: Payot, 1923). Saul, Samir, “Milieux d’affaires de l’Outre-mer français et Grande Dépression dans les années 1930,” French Colonial History 10 (2009), 209–243. https:// www.jstor.org/stable/41935200 Saul, Samir, “Les pouvoirs publics métropolitains face à la Dépression: La Conférence économique de la France métropolitaine et d’Outre-Mer (1934–1935),” French Colonial History 12 (2011), 167–191. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41938215 Schacht, Hjalmar, Grundsätze deutscher Wirtschaftspolitik (Oldenburg: Stalling, 1932). Schiltz, Michael, The Money Doctors from Japan: Finance, Imperialism, and the Building of the Yen Bloc, 1895–1937 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012). Schumpeter, Elizabeth B., “The Yen Bloc”, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 215 (1941), 29–35. Schumpeter, Joseph, “Edgeworth und die neuere Wirtschaftstheorie,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 22 (1923), 183–202. https://www.jstor.org/stable/ 40415490 Slobodian, Quinn, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberalism (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2015). Smoular, Alfred, “Les relations économiques entre l’Allemagne et le Mandchoukouo,” Politique étrangère 1, no. 4 (1936), 47–54. 10.3406/polit.1936.5654

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Stewart, John R., “The Soya Bean and Manchuria,” Far Eastern Survey 5, no. 21 (2 October 1936), 221–226. 10.2307/3021359 Sugihara, Kaoru, “The Economic Motivations behind Japanese Aggression in the late 1930s: Perspectives on Freda Utley and Nawa Toichi,” Journal of Contemporary History 32, no. 2 (1997), 259–280. 10.1177/002200949703200208 Thomas, Martin, The French Empire between the Wars: Imperialism, Politics and Society (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005). Thomas, Martin, “Albert Sarraut, French Colonial Development, and the Communist Threat, 1919–1930,” Journal of Modern History 77, no. 4 (2005), 917–954. 10.1086/499829 Toniolo, Gianni, L’Economia dell’Italia fascista (Rome: Laterza, 1980). Tooze, Adam, The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006). Touzet, Marie-Thérèse [see also François, Marie-Thérèse], Les revendications coloniales allemandes et la répartition des matières premières (Paris, Librairie sociale et économique, 1939). Voskuil, Walter H., “Coal and Political Power in Europe,” Economic Geography 18, no. 3 (1942), 247–258. 10.2307/141125 Waibel, Leo, “The Political Significance of Tropical Vegetable Fats for the Industrial Countries of Europe,” Annals of the American Association of American Geographers 33, no. 2 (1943), 118–128. 10.2307/2561004 White, David, “World Petroleum Resources,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 89 (May 1920), 111–134. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/1014212 Woodruff, William, “Growth of the Rubber Industry of Great Britain and the United States,” Journal of Economic History 15, no. 4 (1955), 376–391. 10.1017/ S0022050700056540

5

Imperial statehood as national necessity: The colonial project in the 1930s

Arguments about complementarities between European and overseas economies influenced expert approaches to economic policy and nationstate development during the interwar period. Overseas relationships meshed with arguments about rational statehood in this process. At the same time, though, the concept of modern statehood operated with notions of development in a dichotomy between Europe and the “non-West” in designing imperial economies. This delineation served the core economies in Europe, and reflected the essential historical meaning of empire. Yet in order to capture the logic of policy designs and practices at the nexus between colonies and European polities, one needs to go a step further. Expert opinion was not synonymous with actual policy. Moreover, officials and experts designed policy in the political environment of nationstates. In the 1930s, Germany, Italy, and Poland experienced frenetic political lobbying that stressed that colonies were essential for modern statehood, as did somewhat differently policy-makers in the old empires of Britain, France, and Portugal. These campaigns emphasized national welfare but were fairly unspecific regarding the economic role of overseas economies for the national economies in question. From the 1920s, national economies in continental Europe struggled to compete not only with Britain but increasingly with the United States. The assertion that modern states required colonial space in order to prosper referred to these challenges. Historical studies investigating the link between colonial economies and economic development in Europe during the interwar period are rare. The topic has been addressed in terms of the “colonial appeasement” of Nazi Germany by Britain, and has also been touched upon in an essay comparing developing countries defined by poverty with the historical reasoning about Europe’s “have-nots,” a term used for countries without or only few overseas colonies.1 By contrast, contemporary writings on the subject abound. A plethora of publications in continental Europe emphasized the necessity of colonial territory for the respective countries. In Britain, research conveyed the opposite view, as in writings by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Norman Angell.2 The argument prefigured later DOI: 10.4324/9781003346425-8

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studies deploring the move away from economic liberalism in interwar Europe and the adoption of flawed economic doctrine.3 This chapter will explore how nation building in Europe and the overseas raw materials nexus connected to contemporary discussions about colonies, at a time when economic and social reasoning influenced policies during the Great Depression. It will not be assumed, however, that these linkages are evidence of a logical consistency of doctrine or economic purpose. The topic also invites to reconsider arguments about empire and the role of atavistic forces in states discussed in Joseph Schumpeter’s influential essay on the sociology of imperialisms.4 In Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, the dominant experts stressed the uses of colonial territory for the nation. Political propaganda moulded this reasoning, privileging economic expertise and historical memory with affinities to the regime. Claims that colonies were essential for national welfare engaged mainly with issues relating to raw materials, food sovereignty, and demography. Discussion about colonies informed policy designs with regard to nutrition, and also show continuities with pre-1914 ideas of colonies as settlement space and their purpose for character building. Nation-states used essentialized notions of the people to demand changes to the international political order. Colonial relationships served the social-political reproduction of the respective polities in the Great Depression while functional aspects of economic management were becoming tenuous. These considerations influenced national economic policy more widely. The analysis of the League of Nations enquiry dedicated to raw materials and colonies in 1936–1937 serves to discuss how policy-makers in individual states conceived of colonies as a tool to support national economic management and how they viewed the world order. At this point, the chapter broadens its purview by arguing that the model of imperial statehood deepened in the interwar economic crisis but also reflected how national economic and ideological identities had formed at the beginning of the twentieth century. Such continuities in the visions of modern statehood will be discussed for Germany, Italy, and more briefly regarding Britain and France.

Expert-practitioners on the purpose of colonies Among the experts introduced in the previous chapter, Hjalmar Schacht and Corrado Gini advanced explicit arguments about the role of colonies in the economic development of their nation-states. Others, like Feliks Młynarski, drew only loose or implicit connections between colonies and the technicalities of external economic management at the nexus between raw materials and currency. Nonetheless, in both cases, the boundaries between the state’s functional economic steering and its politics got blurred. The main underlying questions are why colonial economies should matter for national economies in Europe and what purpose the control of

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dependent territory was expected to fulfil. In general terms, experts linked national development to colonial economies in three ways: in terms of economic complementarities, as alternatives to reforms of international financial governance, and as alternatives to taking out loan finance for the purchase of raw materials. Italian fascism, moreover, emphasized the intrinsic value of colonial land. In all cases, arguments about the form of colonial space rested on national predicaments in the global economic crisis, whether viewed in terms of specific resource requirements, or more generally interpreted as constrained by the international political order and received norms of international economic governance. In that respect, policies engaged with Britain as the world’s hegemon. Gini presented his argument about Italy’s need for colonies in a twofold manner. For him, colonies were important, firstly, because the international political order at any given point in time needed to reflect biological equilibriums that would ensure the peaceful coexistence between nations as organic populations. Secondly, Gini claimed that there was statistical proof that sovereignty stimulated commercial exchanges between countries. At the expense of his penchant for statistical methods, though, Gini’s discussion eschewed concrete economic relationships. Likewise, his sociological reasoning linked the drive for empire to an auspicious warning that a lack of adjustment in the international political order of states would inevitably lead to war as population-organisms self-adjusted to reach equilibrium. The reasoning should not be confused with a Malthusian view, though it lent itself to a troubling justification of war, as Hugh Dalton, the British economist and Labour politician pointed out.5 Nonetheless, Gini was not preoccupied with the concrete case of Italy’s acquisition of Ethiopia as a colony. What mattered for him were scientific principles. Italy’s conquest of Ethiopia was justifiable on the basis of Gini’s broader argument about the need for an “integrative solution” for Italian development, for which he deemed the expansion of the colonial empire to be necessary. Gini placed Italy’s war in Ethiopia on the trajectory of the history of organic population behaviour from the Roman empire down to the First and Second World Wars.6 From the economic angle, Gini engaged with the subject in a lecture before the German think tank on global economics, the Institut für Weltwirtschaft at Kiel, in April 1937.7 A sequel on “trade and the flag” (a slogan of nineteenth century protectionists) was published in the Institute’s journal, Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv, in 1938. Another article on colonies and raw materials followed early during the Second World War.8 These articles were based on quantitative long-term research conducted under Gini’s supervision between 1913 and 1934. Gini compared two sets of coefficients: those on trade between states and their colonies and those between states and the colonies of other countries. Based on these comparisons, he argued that free trade was not sufficient to secure a country’s access to tropical resources. Other factors such as

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business networks also mattered. These conclusions reinforced Gini’s conviction that Italy needed colonies. Schacht’s insistent campaigning for German colonies, meanwhile, puzzled many of his contemporary interlocutors outside Germany, namely Frederick Leith-Ross in Britain and Léon Blum and other politicians and officials in France.9 These observers found it difficult to reconcile their perception of Schacht as a rationally minded technocrat with an apparently irrational demand for the return of German colonies whose exports to Germany before 1914 had been of negligible quantity. They concluded that Schacht was essentially an advocate of an open world economy but also a German patriot, which explained his concern with German national prestige and, therefore, German colonial rule. This was, however, only one part of the story. An economic rationale in Schacht’s thinking ought not to be dismissed, and a domestic political strategy probably also mattered in his reasoning.10 Arguments about colonies as part of organizing an open German economy in Weltpolitik go back to national liberals in the German Industriestaat of the 1900s, including Karl Helfferich, Bernhard Dernburg, and the young Schacht himself. In the mid-1920s, moreover, Schacht had stressed Germany’s need for tropical production zones as part of a German currency area as a means to enable German importers to purchase raw materials with Reichsmark, saving the German treasury foreign exchange.11 In the mid-1930s, Schacht’s lobbying for colonies received wide international attention.12 From an abstract technocratic economic perspective, the argument had obvious flaws. Notably, production needed to be developed first. In the short term at least, this development was likely to put pressure on the German currency rather than easing it.13 Moreover, Schacht’s claim that Germany did not even need full sovereignty over colonies but only over their currency was misleading because of the desire to influence production. Yet as a quick fix as part of the jigsaw aimed at shielding Germany’s currency reserves the case is hardly beyond Schacht’s usual wheeling and dealing on foreign currency savings and barter agreements around the world in the 1930s. The reasoning about the potential role of fats and oils from Cameroun are a case in point.14 Tropical fats and oils were among the areas in which Germany incurred considerable foreign exchange costs and faced pressing shortages, especially in the mid-1930s. The extent of the problem struck Leith-Ross when he visited Germany in mid-1937, even if these difficulties largely flowed from Nazi Germany’s ambitious rearmament programme, as Schacht admitted when raising the issue of colonies with Leith-Ross.15 It is not clear whether the bureaucratic assessment in Germany extended to the detailed figures of the existing production of oils, fats, and rubber, in Cameroun. However, in 1933, Cameroun produced about 40 percent of all West African palm kernels. Palm kernels, rather than fruit or oil, had, by the late nineteenth century, become the preferred

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source of oil and fats of Germany’s food processing industries. On the basis of French official figures for the early 1930s, a hypothetical assessment shows that the existing palm kernel production of French Cameroun would have secured about 12 percent of Germany’s palm kernel imports in terms of volume.16 Claims that Cameroun could secure all of Germany’s demand for rubber were mere pipedreams, though. Existing exports from French Cameroun never amounted to more than about 5 percent of Germany’s rubber imports, and in most years to less than that.17 The existing output would then have covered about 10 percent of Germany’s requirements in natural rubber. If one uses as a comparison German contemporary figures, British Cameroun might have met about 6 percent of Germany’s rubber demands. British Cameroun, was, however, irrelevant as a producer of palm kernels.18 Reportedly, however, there was also a political linkage between Schacht’s lobbying for German colonial space and politics in the Nazi state.19 In conversations with Blum, and also with the British liberal Lord Lothian, Schacht established a link between Germany’s acquisition of colonies, on the one hand, and Hitler’s and Göring’s intent to conquer “living-space” for Germans in Eastern Europe, notably in Poland.20 Schacht was against Germany’s eastward expansion, emphasizing instead economic hegemony over South-Eastern Europe, in the tradition of Friedrich Naumann’s vision of a Danubian Mitteleuropa.21 From this perspective, acquiring colonies also aimed to reduce the risk of German military expansion in Eastern Europe and an attempt to re-establish some political stability in the European international order at the time. In Poland, meanwhile, an explicit demand for colonies was missing from Młynarski’s arguments about the need for reforms in international governance in order to secure the country’s financing of raw material imports for its fledgling industries.22 Nonetheless, Polish diplomacy at the League of Nations set his proposal to increase the liquidity of industrializing economies against two alternative scenarios. One was access to credit facilities to purchase raw materials for Polish industry. Poland had trouble receiving such credits and difficulty in servicing the accruing interest. The other suggestion resembled Schacht’s ideas for Germany, namely that the state should obtain an overseas production zone for certain raw materials in the tropics as part of a national currency zone.23 The Polish case shows how forms of control became exchangeable, hinging on transnational relations of governance. These examples, moreover, are indicative of the ways in which expert debates on economic technicalities became embedded in national political cultures of development. Before broaching this topic, it is worth recapitulating the aforementioned expert views in the light of the pattern of raw materials relations in the pertinent European economies. In some respects, arguments in countries without major colonial empires harked back to debates in the early twentieth century and the 1920s. Re-industrializing and industrializing

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countries to different degrees faced the problem that their industrial growth was thwarted or limited by an import dependence on certain raw materials that weighed on their industries and hampered the transformation from agrarian to industrial production. Experts searched for ways to overcome this problem to boost national development via the control of colonies. What mattered, therefore, was not the price of raw materials alone but access to them in ways that put no immediate strain on foreign currency reserves. In the 1930s, the problem of foreign currency reserves was particularly pressing and it was common to link suggestions for its solution to the control of dependent territory in the tropics. Another effect of the crisis of industrialization was the questioning of industry as the sole motor of national progress and welfare. Nazi and fascist autarky policies advocated an agrarian reversal. To some extent, moreover, geo-economic, and in some cases macroeconomic considerations linked particular raw materials to the political control of overseas territory. As in the late nineteenth century, vegetable oils and rubber were the most important tropical commodities from the perspective of national economies in Europe because these resources mattered most at the raw materialscurrency nexus and in settling national balances of payments. However, as the example of rubber showed, from the functional perspective, the political debate obfuscated obvious discrepancies between colonial production areas and required materials. In Italy, moreover, support for Italian businesses became important in the 1930s, overshadowing the macroeconomic reasoning immediately after the First World War and in liberal Italy before the war. Policy-makers in France and Portugal, meanwhile, also reconsidered the link between colonial resources and the national economy, especially with regard to Indochinese rubber for France and raw cotton from Mozambique for Portugal. British officials, however, downplayed the role of colonial resources for national economies in Europe generally and questioned the very existence of a raw materials problem in continental European economies. There was no easy way to reconcile the requirements of individual national economies with a universal conception of governance. This problem had marred the advocacy of economic liberalism from the midnineteenth century onwards. In the interwar period, many experts were aware of the fact that projects of international governance affected national economies differently. Some experts proposed international schemes in order to accommodate national cases. Most experts were constrained by the need to meet the expectations of nation-states, though. Either way, characteristics of the national economy and a state’s power to influence international economic organization mattered.24 Reforming the international economic architecture at the League of Nations was ultimately a question of political choices and not only one of innovative knowledge and techniques of economic governance. In the 1930s,

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the expert-practitioners who could claim to offer solutions for nation-states primed over those who transcended national governance. The Great Depression deepened reflexes of the nation-state that excluded the domain beyond the nation unless it served the national core. According to the conception of imperial states at the time, colonies, by definition, ought to fulfil this purpose. The mirror image was the premise that colonial economies automatically benefitted from their association with metropolitan economies. Arguments about colonies, however, involved developmental reasoning well beyond economic uses in the narrow sense. The next three section will look more specifically into this dimension by focusing in turn on nutrition, populations as nations, and the role attributed to colonies in the social reproduction of nations, before connecting these threats again to the discussion of the policy nexus between raw materials and colonies.

Colonies, the people’s welfare, and nutrition Arguments about national welfare figured prominently in state discourses in the 1930s in relation to questions of demography, ethnicized constructions of the people, eugenics, and “living-space.”25 The formulation of policy in states contrasted rather sharply with the search for new transnational norms in the areas of nutrition, health, and labour by experts in emerging international organizations, notably the League of Nations, at the time.26 International debates and those in states occupied the same ground, competing in the aim to innovate norms and reform the world order. The following discussion will first explore with the example of nutrition how, conceptually, transnational relations were deemed to support national welfare. Arguments about colonies as a cultural tool in revitalizing the nation will be addressed in a separate section. What contemporaries called the colonial raw materials problem and the population question intersected with the politics of national welfare, as shown by references to food, industrialization, and employment. These issues involved economy building generally but also had specific characteristics in autarky policies with tangents to arguments about population pressures, “living-space,” and immigration. Right-wing conceptions of welfare associated the prosperity and growth of the people with the need for colonial territory and raw material resources; the emphasis on colonies as an outlet for European settlers belonged to the mid-nineteenth century. Food was a necessity and its provision posed logistical challenges. But food security also lent itself to propagandistic exploitation as it suggested the urgency to protect the sovereign nation in an international struggle for nutrition and survival. A fork existed between ambitions of national development and their realization. In the depression, the political discourse about food became grafted onto supply side problems, even if the latter were not objectively due to scarcity but attributable to misconceived economic policies as well as to the impediments to international trade. As states

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struggled with the practicalities of economic management in a fragmenting world economy, the politics of nutrition emphasized its protection in autarky. The malleable concept of colonial space became moulded into a political debate that intertwined alimentary sovereignty for the people with consumption habits and dietary requirements, as was the case in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. In Germany, Nazi lobbyists presented the link between colonies and food as an economic fact. Germany needed colonies to sustain food production, given the size of the country’s population. Moreover, as Heinrich Schnee, a former governor of German East Africa, put it, as an advanced civilized nation (Kulturnation or Kulturvolk), Germany required its own basis to obtain produce that could only be grown in the tropics. Schnee became a Nazi Party (NSDAP) member of the Reichstag in 1933 and head of the party’s colonial association (Reichskolonialbund). He underscored his views by referring to Winston Churchill’s opinion that Britain, a country with a “first class population,” would be “starving” if it lost its empire.27 The alleged grievances not only concerned luxury foods, such as cocoa, tea, and coffee, of which Schacht, the minister of the economy, had curtailed imports, but produce essential for food processing and animal feeding, namely fats and oils.28 Ideologically, such views were able to tap into the Listian national-liberal tradition as well as into the ideals of Nazi autarky formulated in the “new plan” in late 1934.29 The development and expansion of production in the tropics, with German skills and innovation was deemed to be as important as the extension of Germany’s national agricultural production.30 The Nazi autarky policies promoted by Walther Darré, the minister of food and agriculture and the head of the Nazi peasant association, moreover, emphasized the link between colonial agriculture and German rurality and its expansion at home in opposition to the bourgeois industrial sector.31 Darré made the old German colonial agricultural school at Witzenhausen an integral part of the Reichsnährstand, the body in charge of regulating national food production.32 The move appears symbolic at a time of the propagandistic promotion of autarkic agriculture which coincided with shortages of meat and fats in Germany in 1934 and the return to rationing.33 Colonies as a part of food autonomy, however, became gradually dissociated from established national-liberal arguments. In the latter, colonial support had been linked to the project of a global German economy in terms of resources as well as knowledge creation. The autarky debate also accentuated the divide between a modern industrial Germany and an agrarian one. Schacht was Darré’s main antagonist in arguing that autarky would be self-defeating to the extent that it worsened rather than eased Germany’s problem of diminishing foreign currency reserves.34 Andreas Predöhl, the editor of the Weltwirtschaftliche[s] Archiv after its forced assimilation to Nazism (Gleichschaltung), seems to

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have attempted to bridge the growing political rift between autarky as an aim in itself and economic policies that had the potential to support Germany’s export economy. He argued that, conceptually, the space of the state and the space of the economy needed to be in equilibrium to ensure the welfare of any nation. The Nazi objectives of the Nazi state would be undermined if autarky became an aim that compromised Germany’s welfare goals.35 The role attributed to food production in colonies was stronger in Schacht’s national-liberal thinking, which, unlike advocates of autarky, stressed the significance of systematic production methods imbued with the qualities of German expertise and entrepreneurship.36 However, imperial liberalism sometimes converged with national-liberal and Nazi views in propaganda. One example was a colonial exhibition organized by the Hamburg branch of the Reich’s colonial association and the Hamburg National Socialist teachers association early in 1936.37 The displays at the exhibition were digging deep into Germany’s colonial past to emphasize the unjust “robbing” of German colonies by the victorious powers at Versailles. However, some exhibits also pictured colonies as sources for food linked to Germany’s and Hamburg’s global commerce, as in the late nineteenth century, epitomized by the Woermann firm and its entrepreneurial spirit rather than connected to rural autarky.38 National-liberal and autarkic tendencies were also evident in approaches to nutrition and the diet. The relevant discussions oscillated between practical advice on securing food and the advocacy of the virtue of a “German diet.” On the one hand, officials assessed hypothetical colonial spaces as potential suppliers of fats. On the other hand, the need to reduce fat consumption with the aim to reduce foreign currency spending led to the state’s promotion of alternative recipes for bakeries, where the use of sugar served to save fat. In addition, the state promoted the reorientation of the diet towards traditional, home-grown food, such as “German” potatoes.39 The tendency to propagate a return to an allegedly traditional diet was particularly strong in Italian fascism, where, even more so than in Nazi Germany, autarky was a virtue rather than a means to an end. Fascist mass mobilization refashioned a poor diet, judged by emerging international standards, as a healthy traditional habit.40 The Italian state lacked the financial means to develop relevant food resources in Ethiopia, though it took some initiatives to do so. With the occupation of Ethiopia, the political argument about colonies shifted to fascist initiatives on the improvement (valorizzazione) of the empire. This aim involved the establishment of a series of state-sponsored companies. Italian companies established subsidiaries in Ethiopia. These firms specialized, among others, in scientific research and resource exploitation regarding cotton and other textile fibres, milk and meat processing, animal breeding, the tanning of hides and skins, forest resources, mining, and hydroelectric power.41 Yet fascist propaganda

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disguised what the real economy could not deliver in sufficient quantity. The conquest of Ethiopia was a means to forge national, racial identity and at the same time discipline consumers rather than a means to improve the diet of Italians. What is more, as the situation regarding imports deteriorated as a consequence of the imposition of international sanctions against Italy in 1935/36, consuming national rather than foreign food became a question of Italian pride and of the new empire’s autarkic survival in a hostile world order.42 In Germany, Nazi strategies of political mobilization used national-liberal arguments about colonies and raw materials, more generally, claiming that the international political order was a threat to the German Volk. Schacht had popularized the opinion that colonies would help shield German currency reserves since the days of the Weimar Republic. At the Leipzig trade fare in March 1934, he stressed that he had argued the case already in 1926.43 The context at that time was the negotiation of the Dawes Plan on German reparations.44 Nazi propaganda in the 1930s cited Schacht’s position time and time again, normally with little elaboration, except general references to fats and oils and to Germany’s ability to improve colonial production levels.45 The Nazi strive to defend an independent Germany, too, used the old slogan “trade follows the flag.” The state could not allow the population, whose livelihood depended on raw materials, to suffer because of the obstructive policies of foreign powers. Germany’s demand for colonies, Nazi officials claimed, was not imperialistic but a question of national survival.46 Some liberals and national-liberals had advanced similar views before 1914 and during the First World War. In the 1930s, however, state propaganda twisted the welfare argument to serve political mobilization for the Nazi movement. Colonies were a patriotic duty; here a link was drawn with employment in Germany. But this linkages was spun further to undermine the credentials of the political enemy with regard to national welfare. Nazi campaigns presented the opposition to colonies of the Social democrats as evidence for their deceitful unwillingness to liberate German workers from the exploitation by international capital.47 At this point, the Nazi stance on colonies also linked up with the rejection of national-liberal Weltpolitik. In the politics of national welfare in continental Europe in the 1930s, the raw materials debate replaced or reconfigured population arguments, and in some instances fuelled them. Overseas raw materials, not least fats and oils, were essential to cater for growing, vigorous nations. In this manner, colonies, as resource domains, were important for population growth and the position of nations in the international order. Nazi and fascist mobilization insisted on this connection. Research in historical sociology has emphasized the confusion between population policies based on the individual via birth control, on the one hand, and the emphasis, notably in interwar Germany and Fascist Italy, to protect, strengthen, and nurture the people, on the other hand. Pronatalism, combined with eugenics as a means to improve the validity of

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the national core and its welfare, chimed with Malthusian arguments about population density, development, and conflict.48 The result, it has been argued, was the quest for “living-space” and hierarchies of essentialized ethnicity in designs of the world order.49 One can see parallels with arguments about the confusion of ethnos and demos in late nineteenth-century state formation in Europe, where protecting ethnicity meshed with the search for political emancipation by the core people rather than promoting the emancipation of individuals as citizens.50 This line of reasoning pinned state policies against strands of contemporary academia and the League of Nations, where alternative ideas took shape that centred on the individual in the attempt to regulate population growth.51 Anti-Malthusian views held that any level of population could be sustained with an appropriate management of the national economy. The British liberal Arthur Salter, an academic, Parliamentarian, and former director of the League of Nations’ economic and finance committee, therefore, argued that no claim for colonies ought to be made on the grounds of overpopulation.52 The right-wing dictatorships of Europe, by contrast, proposed the pursuit of welfare for the alleged benefit of an undifferentiated collective rather than in terms of a pluralistic endeavour. Boosting welfarist credentials meant reinforcing the essentialized identity of the people.

Colonies and the nation’s reproduction Transnational politics of development informed discourses of national redeployment related to arguments about the role of colonies in national character formation, reminiscent of debates before 1914. Colonies ought to serve as tools for the social reproduction of polities and modern states. These arguments meshed with views on “living-space” for the core people, though in different ways from the debates about colonies of settlement conceived by experts in the mid-nineteenth century. Germany in the 1930s shows three distinct sets of ideas relating colonies to national reproduction: one that tied in with Nazi ideas of autarky, a national-liberal one in the legacy of pre-1914 Weltpolitik, and one linked to Germany’s pre-war colonial doctrine. Nonetheless, it will be argued in the following that these three conceptions converged in some respects in the 1930s, while in other respects frictions emerged. For Nazis, colonies were, among others, a means to counter “Anglo-Saxon” liberalism and adjust the international order of states in a revision of the Versailles peace treaty, thus undermining Western power. In prominent speeches between 1935 and 1937, Hitler demanded colonies as a part of the equal treatment of Germany in the international order.53 This theme was taken up relentlessly in Nazi writings and by representatives of the regime who knitted it into the old doctrine of trusteeship as well as the Nazi doctrine of race. Some Nazi sources blamed doubts regarding Germany’s suitability for a colonial role

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on an international Jewish conspiracy.54 The colonial theme was conveyed in a mobilization effort to a wider public embedded within a long historical trajectory in the Hamburg colonial exhibition in 1936, mentioned earlier. Here too, the narrative that criticized the colonial clause of the Treaty of Versailles stressed the role of colonies as a school for character formation, as well as invoking Germany’s sense for responsibility, its suitability for trusteeship, and its tarnished honour.55 Notably Franz Ritter von Epp, the head of the Nazi administration of Bavaria (Reichsstatthalter) and leader of the Reich’s colonial policy office, stressed that a nation of culture like Germany could not accept its political marginalization in the world. In his view, culture was expressed in racial categories based on scientific laws.56 Epp’s claim gave rise to a controversy in an academic journal. The prominent British Conservative politician and critic of the Nazi regime, Leo Amery, challenged Epp’s praise of the German record of “native policy,” referring to the bloody repression of the Herero and Maji Maji rebellions in Southwest and East Africa respectively. On his part, Amery exalted the high moral standards of British colonial rule, and also emphasized that Britain could not cede colonial territory for strategic reasons.57 In spite of representing diverse political strands, Germany’s colonial legacies were fluid enough to allow some conceptual convergence regarding the alleged need for colonies between the international posturing of the Nazis, the traditional strands of conservatism, and national-liberal views. One trajectory built on the national penchant of some German liberals and on collective memories of the nation. Such views, from List to Naumann, stressed the necessity of the nation’s conscious quest to secure economic sustainability, given Germany’s large population. In Nazism, the economic requirement was inverted, though, and linked to the aim to boost population numbers and foster genetic homogeneity in order to counter threats to the “body” of the German people (Volkskörper).58 Such a policy would secure the powerful state that was needed for the competitive “survival” of the “German race” in competition with Britain. Sustaining the national economy could be equated with sustaining the large German population as a people and connect to pro-natalist views. Germany’s need for colonies flowed from this assessment. National-liberals conceived of colonies as a specific extension to the national economy in a competitive globalizing world and as a symbol of the nation-state’s modernity. This group included Schacht and the writer and journalist Paul Rohrbach, who had left the colonial ministry in protest over the mass killings of Herero in 1904–1907. Rohrbach was an acquaintance of Schacht and of the liberal economist Bernhard Harms, the first editor of the Weltwirtschaftliche[s] Archiv.59 To some extent, therefore, the demand for colonies to adjust Germany’s place in the international political and economic order was able to link nationalliberal to Nazi strategies. In fact, debates about colonial space helped

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bridge the considerable divide in political ideology between notions of a global Germany in the tradition of Weltpolitik and the “Greater Germany” (Großdeutschland) of Nazism. The Nazi concept of autarky, however, put strains on this convergence. Linkages between the notions of autarky, welfare, the people, and colonies informed political debates about development. Conceptual ambiguities helped relate colonies to national character formation. Autarkic development meant its delineation from outside influences, including racial segregation, giving rise to an ambivalent attitude towards colonial territory, notably in Africa. Yet engaging this very contrast suggested links to the destiny of the core people and its wider mission for the world. In this sense, debates about colonies and national development in the 1930s tied in with those in the 1900s. The tradition of trusteeship in German colonialism was associated with the German People’s Party and the Catholic centre in opposition to the liberal economy of Weltpolitik. The colonial concept of German nationalliberals did not incorporate the notion of trusteeship. For the People’s Party and the Zentrum, the concept of colonies embodied a German role, responsibility, and mission, including in the religious sense, in both the spiritual and material development of “backward” people. Yet the People’s Party drifted into Nazism from the early 1930s, as epitomized by Schnee’s views.60 He made the case for a German role in the moral development of “native” populations as part of the attempt to alter the Versailles peace settlement that had ended German colonial rule. In doing so, Schnee connected the German colonial tradition with Nazi policies on race. The latter was framed in terms of the respect for the distinctness of “other races,” allowing them to develop on their own, where segregation served as protection against oppression.61 At the same time, the integrity of ethnic Germans, their Deutschtum, would be preserved and even enhanced in a wider imperial setting. Colonies ensured that overseas migrants were not lost for the Volk since “racial mixing” would not occur, or only where it would re-invigorate German “stock” as could happen through intermarriages with the old Aryan races of Samoa in the Pacific. More generally, colonies served character building among the German youth, since colonial experiences helped foster identity.62 Racial autarky would reinforce the German core rather than weakening the Volk. For Schnee, German identity would be particularly strong in the colonies.63 Nazi views on colonies then presented German settlers as part of the backbone of the Volk, establishing links between rurality, the prowess of the German peasantry (Bauerntum), and economic autarky.64 The nineteenth-century romantic legacy of the alleged bond of Aryan civilization between Germany and ancient India due to Indo-European racial and linguistic affinities, though, did not translate into ties with contemporary India in the Nazi state. Indians were deemed to be racially inferior; and when Indian activists in the

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mid-1930s tried to contact German officials, they were only allowed to meet with lower ranks of the Nazi hierarchy.65 All the main political lobby groups in Nazi Germany cautioned against the view that the tropics should serve as an outlet for German mass settlement. National-liberal arguments had never been about settlement, except in association with entrepreneurial activities. Authors proffering Nazi doctrine, too, were quick to point out that tropical settlement space was only of secondary importance. They argued that the German public was opposed to initiatives that would require a strenuous subjugation or the “replacement” of indigenous populations.66 Nazi pamphlets stressed a role for German experts, business, and culture, in developing the tropics, but also that such migration required careful planning.67 At the same time, writers emphasized the general risks of population growth evoking a Malthusian scenario.68 Commonalities between national-liberals and Nazi views, however, existed regarding the vision of selective migration to the colonies in line with a rational, innovative, and entrepreneurial German state. Older German colonial traditions were able to connect to both these views as well as to the agrarian focus in autarky. Diedrich Westermann, for instance, in an edited volume on German colonies, addressed cultural, educational, and scientific aspects in colonial cooperation and migration.69 As an ethnographer and director of the Institute for Oriental Languages in Berlin, whose curriculum was attuned to Nazi doctrine in the mid-1930s, he could give ideology the semblance of intellectual credence.70 Westermann represented the respectable external image of Germany’s colonial tradition, as a former missionary and one time co-director of the International African Institute in London, at a time when Britain’s main advocate of “indirect rule,” Frederick Lugard, acted as its president.71 And Schnee, the former colonial governor, did not rule out that some overseas territories, notably Southwest Africa, would attract settlers over time, as had happened in the British dominions. Small agricultural settlements might eventually stimulate larger migration movements from Germany.72 Westermann also stressed Germany’s ability, trustworthiness, and reliability, among Europe’s civilized nations in taking on the education and development of “inferior” people, notably in Africa. Taking a selective view of pre-1914 German colonial “native policy,” he stressed similarities with British colonial doctrine, arguing that the Nazi doctrine of race and Volkstum mirrored such principles.73 Here too, traditional views of German colonialism were able to tie in with, or at least run parallel to Nazi demands for colonies in the rash Nazi propaganda in international politics. Colonial rule as trusteeship, however, was anathema to Nazi doctrine. Hitler and Göring were often dismissive of colonial space in Africa. Hitler mocked the notion of trusteeship as a waste of vital energy, and stressed the futility of colonies in Africa as a threat to German racial integrity, usually with reference to the French colonial empire and its “diluting”

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influence in metropolitan France. In this connection, Nazi propaganda built on the French occupation of the Ruhr between 1923 and 1926 in which French soldiers of African origin had taken part.75 Colonies could not be reconciled with Hitler’s “Greater Germany,” since they had been part of German Weltpolitik and the globalism of liberal capitalism. When Nazi propaganda invoked colonies for settlement it did so in connection with geopolitics and the aim to revise the Treaty of Versailles. The brochure accompanying the Hamburg colonial exhibition mentioned above entwined the population argument with international politics by correlating population density with European settlement overseas, showing that the ratio for Germany was unfavourable compared to that of Britain, France, and Belgium, especially after Versailles. Included in the brochure was also a text by Hans Grimm, the author of the 1926 novel Volk ohne Raum (A People without Space). He compared population distribution in “the open space of the world,” available to “the English,” with the spatial “narrowness” that was the fate of Germans.76 Readers knowing the novel will have understood the insinuation in the phrase to the predicament of German settlers in Southwest Africa after Versailles and the attempt to retain their land. These views may well have resonated with advocates of the Nazi project aiming to secure “living-space” in Europe’s East. Italian fascist politics shows a broadly similar trajectory to that of Germany when engaging with the population question. In fascist pronatalist policies (even if inconsequential in practice) fertility expressed the power of the people, epitomizing the vitality, virility, and force of fascism rather than a territorially-defined empire. The topicality of emigration had given the academic fields of demography and statistics a prominent position in the Italian state before 1914. In the 1930s, the fascist state turned the debates of the 1890s and 1900s about the overseas Italians’ association with Italy and migrants’ remittances on its head by stressing the need not only to keep Italians at home but to increase their number, especially in “healthy” rural areas. From this perspective, colonies were not about the settlement of surplus population. In fact, the concept vanished from the political discourse of Mussolini and the demographers recruited to design fascist population policies. These policies, instead, became a means to boost population growth in order to reinforce Italian ethnicity.77 In this vein, empire as the legacy of Rome was a sign of a revitalized “Italian race.” Under fascism, colonial space became redefined as a notion of a fascist empire. While pre-1914 ideas of colonies as a resource base or population outlet are still visible, they invariable meshed with the concept of the fascist state. Mussolini transcended discussions about liberal economic practice, and even its critique, into political mobilization defined as the self-expression of the masses. The fascist empire was “the highest expression of human power” on a trajectory from tribal life to empire. Fascism represented the will to power and empire embodied the spirit of

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vitality and discipline where force and violence were signs of strength opposed to the ever present risk of decadence.78 Fascism exhibited the racial vigour of the descendants of the founders of Rome, a view also endorsed by some historians of Antiquity at the time.79 Rather than being the profane quest for territory, the occupation of Ethiopia then bore out the spirit in which colonial space re-invigorated fascism. In this sense, debates about colonies show continuities in the divide in the 1890s between the Africanisti, who claimed that territories in Africa on the Mediterranean and Red Sea coasts were a historical realm in line with Italy’s legacy as the successor of Ancient Rome, and groups opposed to a colonial empire or advocating a closer association with the Balkans. In fact, the Ethiopian war was first only popular among dedicated fascists. The situation changed with the imposition of international sanctions, between November 1935 and June 1936 which rallied wider sections of the population to the cause.80 Italian procreation in colonies was a part and parcel of the building of the fascist state. After the occupation of Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa by Italy, the Giornale d’Italia, for instance, extolled the prospect for a growing Italian population there; within a year the population had increased tenfold. The article stressed the rise in the number of Italian women as a particularly positive sign. By February 1938, women made up about a third of the overall Italian settlement of 15,000.81 In parallel to this discourse, practicalities of managing empire as part of autarky in line with older traditions of Italian colonialism were also relevant. After the occupation of Ethiopia, colonial settlement was discussed as a means to reinforce Italian fascist notions of rurality and agrarian development. Agricultural production ought to be based on Italian peasant producers in regions deemed suitable for European settlers. However, this process was rather coincidental since it involved Italian labour used for infrastructure, mainly roads and hydroelectric power. Yet, Alessandro Lessona, the minister of colonies from June 1936, previously involved in the occupation’s planning, discussed the agrarian vision in an article for the German Illustrierte Zeitung summarized by the journals Le colonie and Lavoro fascista in Italy. Plots of land first ought to be given to the war veterans (after the land rights of local population had been assessed, it was claimed), and later to those labourers employed in infrastructural schemes. Allowing this workforce from rural areas in Italy to bring their families would naturally create peasant settlements. Azione coloniale reported the strength of the Italian workforce as amounting to 130,000 and projected the Italian peasant population at about half a million.82 The connection between agricultural production and Italy’s requirements in raw materials and food stuffs was not specified, though. To be sure, from the fascist perspective of a historical-communitarian order and autarky, this population in itself impelled national-communal, rural reproduction. In parallel,

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however, Lessona also advocated industries relying on indigenous labour in areas deemed unfit for Italian settlement.83 In various forms, issues of demography, core populations, and migration, also affected political debates about colonies in existing colonial empires and in countries without a colonial tradition, particularly Poland. After the formation of the new Polish nation-state, Poland witnessed a political debate about colonies in youth leagues and in the Navy League in the 1930s, modelled on pre-war Germany.84 However, demographic issues were not about Polish migration to colonies. The principal debates show links to the rural exodus, urban industrialization, and employment. Lobbying for the people’s welfare tied in with the proposal to support the Polish economy with the help of tropical raw material zones as an alternative to raw material credits. The wider problem was finding outlets for rural overpopulation in a country of high birth rates. Against this background, moreover, arguments about the ethnic core population entered discussions about selective emigration. Economic competition between Catholic Poles and Poles of Jewish origin over employment and business opportunities in urban centres turned into a confrontation over ethnic, religious, and political space.85 In this connection, the government discussed voluntary emigration schemes for Polish Jews with Zionist groups in Palestine in terms of a negotiated population transfer.86 In the old imperial states Britain and France, empires structured global migration flows, in the British case often related to discussions about the organization of a sustainable imperial economy.87 In both empires, colonial policy inhibited South-North migration, especially after the First World War. With regard to France, this dimension has been discussed in terms of the contemporary distinction between French citizens and colonial subjects.88 Interwar France showed attempts to overcome a growing divide between the colonial empire and the metropolitan economy. Arguments about the mise-en-valeur and the need to rationalize imperial economic policy and development, from Albert Sarraut to the Guernut commission, are testimony to this quest.89 At the same time, however, the Republic’s immigration policies operated according to a hierarchy of migrant labour aimed at protecting French culture and ethnicity. Workers from within Europe, Italian, Spanish, and German, were seen as capable of assimilation, whereas North Africans were not and were being gradually repatriated. At the same time, Sarraut, however, also argued that France ought to acquire an imperial identity, by incorporating cultures of Asia, for which it played an important role in revitalizing its old civilizations with French knowledge.90 The new nation of Greater France would be an imperial version of the France of the regions, “la France des régions.” Yet in the mid-1930s, Blum’s attempt in the Popular Front government to adopt legislation to emancipate North Africans already based in France from subjects to citizens was unsuccessful. The Guernut commission was unusual for an official

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enquiry during colonialism in addressing development as a principle rather than merely the role of colonial development for the French metropolitan economy. Nonetheless, the commission included members who emphasized the opposition between Western and non-Western societies, namely Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, whose sociology posited a sharp contrast between “primitive” and modern rational “mentalities.”91 In Britain in the 1930s, meanwhile, one strand of the discourse on population and the nation harked back to early twentieth-century ideas aimed at re-ordering the empire with the “white” dominions at the core. This was the case in Amery’s revamping of Joseph Chamberlain’s imperial union. Other debates focused on arguments about sustainable or required population levels in a liberal tradition. While the notion of a core population as an ethnic or historical entity mattered in Chamberlain’s constructive imperialism, the liberal concept was epistemologically different. Nonetheless, there are certain points of connection between the two, both at the level of expert debates and in the wider political lobbying for changes to the international order. Once a decline in birth rates had become visible in Western Europe in the 1930s, the normative arguments about sustainable development shifted to debates about optimum population levels for a national economy, including in the thinking of J.M. Keynes.92 Pro-natalist lobbying in the name of the people could instrumentalize this technical reasoning politically. In Fascist Italy, Gini defined the population optimum in organicist terms. During the Second World War, he even claimed that he had anticipated the renewed discussion among economists on population optimums.93 From this perspective, the question of population and welfare required engaging in an entirely new way with the political world order defined by Britain. With regard to India, Italian fascists, and Mussolini himself, had been more welcoming to the Indian activists who had earlier visited Nazi Germany. The Italian fascists challenged Western, “AngloSaxon” domination.94 Gini had in fact cast his net of academic discussion not only in the traditional domains of English-speaking academia in the United States and in Germany but also towards South Asia. He was in contact with the Indian demographer and economist Radhakamal Mukerjee, who advocated an Indian role in the industrialization of Africa as a means to promote India’s development to undermine the British empire. Mukerjee published a book on the subject under Gini’s auspices. Gini, however, prefaced the publication with a long introduction arguing that Italy had reached the cultural-organic equilibrium that required it to take on a world role, whereas India’s position in the cycle of global civilization had not yet reached this stage.95 All the aforementioned arguments about policy norms attributed a role to colonies in the reproduction of nations as peoples in Europe. These conceptions, however, differed in terms of both historical context and epistemology: from national-liberal ideas of the national German developmental

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genius, the association of German-ness with trusteeship as character formation, and Nazi or Italian fascist visions of rurality or organicism, to Greater France and its role in Asia, and Britain’s white empire in its universal role. The next section returns to the question of national welfare, raw materials, and colonial control introduced at the beginning of the chapter. The aim is to analyse how ideas on colonies and national welfare fused with the formulation of economic policy.

Colonies in national economic policy As argued in the preceding sections, European states engaged with colonies and potential colonies in connection with tropical raw materials and the politics of national welfare and core populations. Between late 1935 and the end of 1937, the enquiry at the League of Nations into the problem of colonies and raw materials shaped state strategies. This episode will be used to analyse how states formulated concrete policy approaches, first by summarizing the League’s enquiry, its purpose and arguments, and, subsequently, by exploring the attitudes of individual states towards the investigation. It will be argued that state strategies flowed from the ways in which national economies had become embedded in the international economy from the 1900s. References to economies and raw materials and the colonial question permeated the political and ideological development conceptions of European nation-states in the 1930s. An analysis predicated on the notion of Britain’s economic or colonial appeasement hinders rather than helps to grasp this policy formation. Nonetheless, visions of the role of colonial space for Europe cast a wide web. The debate about colonies also extended into the international realms of economic cooperation, stability, and peace. In September 1935, the British foreign secretary Samuel Hoare suggested that a League of Nations ad hoc committee should investigate the contentious issue of claims by continental European states that their lack of colonies had prompted a raw materials problem.96 To be sure, the proposition was not to assess possibilities of the redistribution of colonies between the European powers. Nor did Hoare call for an investigation of the alleged raw materials problem in its own right. Rather, the League enquiry ought to quell political demands for colonies by showing objectively that the connection between colonies and raw materials was misconceived.97 The British Treasury, however, was wary of focusing on economic issues as an alternative to political ones in making the case, and the British Cabinet in 1936 doubted the wisdom of countering irrational policies with rational arguments.98 The matter was first shelved but revived in late 1936 by Hoare’s successor Anthony Eden.99 The committee was formally established at the end of 1936 with Leith-Ross in the chair.100 As the principal adviser to the British Treasury, Leith-Ross was closely involved in attempts to re-liberalize the international economic

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order, including in relations with Nazi Germany building on discussions with Schacht. The enquiry’s terms of reference were narrowly focused not only to steer clear of issues of dependent territory and the wider raw materials question. But Leith-Ross was also concerned that different investigative foci might lead to different, or at least less clear-cut results.101 For this reason, India, an important raw cotton exporter, was not categorized as a colony but grouped with the dominions and, therefore, fell outside the remit of the investigation. Food and feeding stuffs, expected to strengthen the British case, were included in the statistics but not discussed, and the League published a separate report on this subject in 1939.102 In order to allow non-League members, namely Germany and Japan, to participate, the committee formally recruited its membership as experts rather than state representatives. The investigation produced a solid report under the set terms that in many respects looks like a fuller version of the brochure by the Royal Institute of International Affairs on the subject. The gist of the report’s findings was that no meaningful link could be established between the control of colonies and the access to raw materials by European economies. The main reason given in the report was that many important raw materials were produced outside of colonial empires. Only in rare cases was a significant percentage of specific raw materials produced exclusively in colonies. Imperial powers did not restrict access to raw materials, though a few usually temporary exceptions existed. The “open door” was also guaranteed for mandates, which included the former German colonies. The imports of raw materials by Germany from its colonies before 1914 had been negligible anyway.103 But the investigation was hardly geared towards assessing the requirements of raw materials and the currency nexus of national economies. Arguably, this might not have been possible, faced with unreliable German statistics and the reticence of German officials to disclose relevant figures. The subject of currency was only raised towards the end of the investigation in August and September 1937. Leith-Ross argued that the matter fell outside the committee’s terms of reference and within the purview of the League’s economic and finance committee, whose chairman he was in 1936/ 37. The discussion of the currency nexus was referred to this committee after the end of the colonial raw materials enquiry and petered out in 1938.104 Approaches to the committee’s deliberations by individual states reveal distinct strategies that convey the contexts of national politics. Britain avoided to be drawn on the wider issues of the currency-raw materials nexus. Leith-Ross, aware of the tensions between his position as an international civil servant and advisor to the British Treasury, knew he had little leverage to change Britain’s preferential imperial tariffs, introduced at Ottawa in 1932, and needed to circumvent discussing the subject.105 He cryptically remarked that he would lecture European countries

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on the general principles of the benefits of free trade rather than engage with specifics.106 In this manner, it seems, the vision of economic liberalism became a tactics. The broader diplomatic and political setting needs to be considered, notably regarding Anglo-German economic relations. There is some discussion in the literature of soundings by British officials with regard to the possible ceding of colonial territory to Nazi Germany, allegedly as a bargaining chip appeasing Germany for unspecified concessions in economic management. The scenario relates to two different sets of consultations: one between Leith-Ross and Schacht in the course of 1937, when the League enquiry was under way, and another in 1938 involving the British deputy foreign secretary Lord Halifax.107 However, the British government’s political leverage was narrow. Neville Chamberlain allegedly feared that even minor territorial concession on colonies would mean the end of the national government in Britain and inevitable Conservative defeat in an election.108 The alternative option would have been a cession of French rather than British territory, perhaps French Cameroun.109 In 1936 and 1937, the Foreign Office, notably its permanent under-secretary Robert Vansittart, was opposed to the idea, whereas the Treasury judged the issue in a more general economic context. By 1938, the Foreign Office was involved in secret discussions, whereas the Treasury seems to have lost interest in the matter. The discussions between Montagu Norman, the governor of the Bank of England, Leith-Ross, and Schacht, about Anglo-German relations in the mid-1930s, suggest an economic link that was not simply a quid pro quo “colonies” against “concessions.” Rather, the question of colonial control needs to be related to the broader assessment of the prospects for a qualitative change in Anglo-German economic relations during the period. Discussions between Norman and Schacht held out hopes for a grand redesigning of economic relations, with some form of association of Germany with the sterling bloc. Vansittart had reluctantly agreed that Treasury officials could explore this matter.110 Such cooperation would have made the currency-related raw materials problem irrelevant. Against this background, Leith-Ross’ strategy at the League committee also makes sense. Nonetheless, for the prize of change, Leith-Ross himself would not have objected to Britain ceding some unimportant colonial territory to Germany as a token gesture.111 It is difficult to judge how long Treasury officials and the Bank of England, namely Leith-Ross and Norman, held out hope for such fundamental changes in Anglo-German economic relations, and what these designs exactly entailed in 1937. However, hopes definitely faded after November 1937 with Schacht’s resignation from the German ministry of economic affairs. Nonetheless, from this vantage point, two distinct phases emerge: one, between 1935 and 1937, during which discussions about colonies were related to expectations regarding the reorganization

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in Anglo-German relations; and the other in 1938, when discussing concessions on colonial territory with Germany was a last ditch attempt to secure stability in Europe in what could appropriately be called “colonial appeasement.” In Germany, Schacht had agreed to participate in the League’s enquiry and cleared the decision with the German ministry of foreign affairs. But in January 1936, shortly before the committee’s inaugural meeting, Hitler vetoed Germany’s participation.112 Deprived of the expected international platform to argue his case for German colonies, Schacht embarked on parallel diplomacy. He discussed the matter with Blum, the head of the Popular Front government in France in September 1936, and with Leith-Ross prior to the meeting of the Bank of International Settlements in Basle in April 1937 and again in Berlin in July 1937.113 At the same time, Schacht commented on the question of colonial raw materials in the German English-language review, Völkerbund [League of Nations], published in Geneva, based on information he could glean on the committee’s deliberations with the help of an envoy. In these comments, Schacht continued to insist that colonies would assist Germany in solving its currency reserve problem. For instance, he belaboured the point that the committee miscalculated the figure for German imports from colonies before 1914. He deemed 10 percent rather than 3 percent to be the accurate percentage based on the League’s own statistics.114 Yet Schacht, too, failed to offer a quantitative assessment on German raw materials requirements and did not disclose any detailed figures from Germany. Whatever Schacht’s motives for lobbying for colonies, whether in concrete economic steering, as a means to undermine Germany’s eastward expansion, or as part of a national-liberal design to establish the German economy in the world matching that of Britain, his influence in the Nazi state had waned by 1937. Anyway, overseas territories were not a priority for the Nazi regime but rather connected to propaganda in international diplomacy. Italy’s refusal to take part in the League of Nations’ investigation was in line with Mussolini’s view that the League was a part of a liberal conspiracy against his country. Italian officials, however, waited until they knew Germany’s decision before turning down the League’s invitation. Gini, the most likely candidate as Italy’s expert delegate, continued his lobbying for colonies, now importantly in Germany. Yet, while strictly speaking Italy with its control over Eritrea, Somalia, and Tripolitania, was not a “have-not” state even before October 1935, the conquest of Ethiopia definitely placed the country among the imperial powers, as Gini acknowledged. Therefore, practical imperial politics now began to matter more than theoretical arguments about colonies. Given the absence of Germany and Italy from the investigation, LeithRoss was confronted on the side of countries demanding colonies only with delegates from Poland and Japan.115 The Polish delegate Adam

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Rose was himself cast in an uncomfortable role within the wider context of political lobbying at home. Rose was one of the Polish experts who had argued from the 1920s that Polish industrialization faced structural difficulties in purchasing raw materials with foreign currency. The problem was exacerbated by the increasing difficulty to obtain credits for this purpose. In the mid-1930s, the official strategy of the Polish government required Rose to argue that overseas territory might assist Poland in paying for raw material imports.116 Rose, however, tried to make a case for reforms in international financial governance to support the country’s industrialization. He resented the connection to the colonial question established in domestic politics which tied in with the issue of Jewish emigration and had pronounced anti-Semitic undertones.117 When Rose spoke in Paris on the occasion of a League of Nations conference of experts on questions of demography and peace in mid-1937, he discussed Poland’s raw materials problem without mentioning colonies even once.118 On the part of imperial states, apart from Britain, the French delegate was absent from most of the committee’s deliberations due to a government crisis in the French Popular Front. However, the observer from the International Labour Office, the economic geographer Fernand Maurette, was close to the French administration. The committee did not discuss French proposals, though René Hoffherr’s ideas on rationalizing France’s external economic relations were mentioned in passing. There had been the realization in the wider political debate in France in the early mid-1930s that Germany’s raw materials problem needed to be addressed. However, when it came to Schacht’s request for a cession of colonial territory as a means to improve security arrangements in Europe, Blum refused to get involved.119 Moreover, there was some wariness on the French left of a deal with Schacht that might hark back to ideas of company rule in Africa which he had proposed in the 1920s in view of solving the raw materials problem.120 This proposal was a variant of the possible forms in which tropical raw material resources might be made more easily available for national economies in Europe by tightening the connection between the state, on the one hand, and private resource exploitation and purchasing options, on the other hand, even without formal colonial rule. In an odd alliance then, Colonel Fernandez, who served as the delegate of Salazar’s Portugal, was Leith-Ross’ closest ally in rejecting claims of a link between the access to raw materials and colonial possessions.121 LeithRoss, though, was apparently rather ill at ease with some of the colonel’s comments, since they risked undermining the argument that colonies were futile in a liberal world economy. Portugal’s position is explicable by its defensive imperial protectionism, especially regarding the cotton sector, and by the fact that the cession of Portuguese colonial territory in Angola was one of the hypothetical options Schacht considered in his attempt to obtain colonial territory for Germany.122 Portugal’s approach to colonial

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rule had changed under the clerical-fascist dictatorship from 1926 onwards. In terms of doctrine, empire became an integral part of Portugal’s identity as an organic and historical nation as expressed in the new colonial act of July 1930.123 Nazi Germany and Salazar’s Portugal were thus at odds over the colonial raw materials debate due to the different ways in which overseas raw material regions became part of national economic management in states in Europe. In parallel to the League enquiry in 1937, and in 1938, Belgium emerged as a possible mediator to help kick-start global commerce at a time when international governance had faltered. Leith-Ross had numerous talks with the Belgian Prime Minister Paul van Zeeland, himself an economist. The Belgian connection ought to break the stalemate in international negotiations with Germany.124 What is more, there is some evidence that territory in the Belgian Congo was considered as a raw materials base for Germany, in some way along Schachtian lines of reasoning.125 The economic diplomacy on raw materials and colonies had its parallels in the international relations circles of imperial states and their assessment of Germany’s colonial demands. International political lobbying, moreover, extended to the debates about European cooperation and peace. In Britain, criticism of Germany’s demands for colonies not only reflected the move away from liberal economic policies that occurred under Nazism but was also an expression of a rejection of Nazi doctrine, including by advocates of a protectionist British empire, such as Amery. For peace lobbyists, notably Angell, a member of the board of the Royal Institute for International Affairs, no raw materials problem existed in Germany.126 Moreover, colonial populations would hardly be inclined to accept Nazi German rule. This point can be substantiated with evidence from the press in Nigeria, the Gold Coast, and Tanganyika, in response to rumours about possible transfers of colonial territory to Germany, even if their basis was arguably exaggerated. In French Cameroun, the controversy fuelled nationalist action and, in turn, triggered repressive measures by the colonial government against political activists.127 With regard to Angell, though, it is noteworthy that he was primarily a political commentator and activist. He pointed out the cogent fact, shared by most British observers, that arms manufacturing drained Germany’s currency reserves. However, Angell, too, offered little by way of a detailed analysis of the German economy. It was Angell who had initially proposed that an international conference should prove that the colonial raw materials problem was a charade, the point made by Hoare when proposing the League committee.128 However, Angell was no anti-imperialist but a firm believer in the benefits of imperial rule for Britain, including for the provision of food and raw materials in a national crisis. For this reason, among others, he stressed the need to defend the empire.129 In France, a former administrator of French Indochina, André Touzet, who was a member of the Guernut commission on colonial reform in the

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late 1930s, criticized Germany’s lack of “domestic colonization.” The case links up with the discussion on how states ought to formulate policies rationally in order to serve a country’s development. The critique pointed to the underuse of domestic resources to replace overseas materials. More could be done in Germany to improve local supplies, including in fats and oils. Instead, the German government catered for the old landed elites, Touzet argued.130 In the context of France, however, he stressed the imperial mise-en-valeur. Touzet’s argument is an example of the ways in which the debates about colonial raw materials in the mid1930s were embedded in designs of national economic development and development tout court. Touzet argued that the demand for colonies by Germany had little grassroots support. Schacht was in cahoots with the capitalists, as Dernburg had been before 1914.131 Touzet’s critique connected Germany’s lobbying for colonies to the notion of the global Germany of Weltpolitik at the beginning of the twentieth century. By the same token, there was also praise for Germany in France. Hoffherr heralded Germany’s ingenuity in worldwide economic planning, for instance, by tapping East Asian production zones in Japanese-occupied Manchuria as a source for soya-bean oil.132 Here Schacht’s transnational barter seems to have been interpreted as a German version of France’s colonial-imperial mise-en-valeur. Hoffherr’s and Schacht’s views also show parallels in the chartered company proposal. In different ways, moreover, initiatives in interwar Europe geared towards the reform of international relations and international peace conflated arguments about raw materials, the people, and notions of colonial space. In the 1930s, some French trade unionists influential in the Popular Front, and Sarraut too, saw colonial development as a unifying concept that might help foster European integration and ease relations with Nazi Germany.133 The logic was twofold. Colonial cooperation on raw materials would help workers in their struggle against “capitalism” by sustaining employment. The opportunity to collaborate in an educational effort in colonies would form a common bond between workers and nations. In Britain, peace activists initially had lobbied for the outlawing of war. But in the 1930s, most adhered to the official doctrine of British hegemony and empire as a guarantor for peace in the face of Nazi Germany. In Germany, meanwhile, Schacht believed in imperial states as a factor of stability tied to economic necessity on the course of progressively globalizing economic development. Even after 1945, he remained convinced that advanced industrial states required colonies.134 For Gini, and for Mussolini, war and empire could be paths to a just international order, or a price that was inevitable in order to achieve peace in the future, since the artificially curtailed cultural and organic energy of the Italian people needed to be accommodated by the political world order. Gini had made this point before the League of Nations population conference in 1927, among others.135 A redistribution

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of territory was, therefore, needed, either peacefully or with the help of war. Gini explicitly criticized Angell’s assertion that colonies were economically futile as pseudoscientific. After the conquest of Ethiopia, Fascist Italy associated itself more closely with a Nazi Germany oriented towards autarky. Schacht, however, had been dismissive of the potential of the Italian economy, given its marginal role in the world economy.136 Economic policy approaches in the mid-1930s formed at the intersection with the national politics of welfare and development. Expert opinion rooted in the assessment of the predicament of national economies in the world economy of the time became absorbed in national politics, and in some ways had prefigured them. The result was the consolidation of the model of imperial statehood.

The historical moment of imperial nation-states: A synthesis The so-called colonial question was not only part of arguments about national welfare based on assumptions regarding the necessity of economic control and colonial support areas, as argued throughout this chapter. The model of the European state consolidated itself as an imperial one at the intersection between the functional state and its role for society in a specific historical context. A functional state in the economic realm had become increasingly differentiated during the processes of industrialization and globalization from one representing social interest groups. However, in the case of Britain, a considerable convergence had continued to exist between economic interest groups and a macroeconomic role of the state. In the depression of the 1930s, however, economic management and the nation-state’s welfare credentials were difficult to align. States reinvented themselves as political constructs by dissociating claims to their welfare function from technocratic economic management as well as renegotiating social relations. Colonies, or foreign occupation, acquired a role in this reproduction of statehood. Social-political relations re-entered state development, and imperial statehood became normalized as a necessary developmental trajectory. The case can be argued for Britain, Salazar’s Portugal, and in specific ways Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, whereas France showed evidence of a more tenuous relationship. In Britain, imperial preference became the political alternative to the service sector state and its base in Southern England. Politics to support workers at home and national consolidation in the face of the threat of Nazism went hand in hand with both a repatriation and re-territorialization of the concept of empire, as views expressed by Amery, Angell, and the British Foreign Office suggest.137 Moreover, the high level of industrial unemployment in Britain, notably in the Lancashire textile sector, called for a continued association with colonial India as a protected niche market. Similarly, in Salazar’s Portugal, colonies became an integral part of national political space during the depression, at a time when they served as an

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adjunct to the domestic market for cotton textiles, Portugal’s principal industry.138 For Nazi Germany, it has been suggested that policies of agrarian autarky and “land in the East” appealed to segments of society that were either rooted in old agrarian society and to rural populations under strain that hoped to gain land by supporting the Nazi regime. There was a mutual dependence between the state and these social groups, however. The state needed to incorporate these groups at a time when their income was curtailed by the very effects of autarky policies and rearmament, when fertilizers became scarce and their price soared.139 In essence, the colonial project associated with nationalistic autarky shows a similar logic, though it looks like a mere attachment to the real prize in Eastern Europe. Italy in connection with the conquest of Ethiopia is a striking example for a parallel, informal, and in some way self-organizing polity. Ethiopia mattered for the reproduction of an autarkic Fascist Italy in a socialpolitical and socioeconomic sense. After the end of the war, from May 1936 onwards, occupied Ethiopia served elite consolidation in a clientelist state. The compensation of ordinary combatants with land plots, to the extent to which it actually happened, was hardly an improvement upon their situation in rural areas of Southern Italy. In fact, Italian settlers could be found begging for food in the streets of the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.140 The landless poor in Italy did not benefit materially from the occupation. More important was the sinecure aspect that propped up fascist power. Some dignitaries of the fascist regime obtained estates establishing their right of conquest as landlords in relation to the local population as a source of labour but also vis-à-vis the Ethiopian aristocracy. Benefactors included Mussolini’s family.141 The most prominent case was, however, the Duke of Aosta, who had been in charge of the military campaign and was appointed as the viceroy of Ethiopia in 1937. The Duke was useful for the fascist regime not only because he was a representative of Italy’s old elite, a cousin of the former king of Italy, but also because of his strong nationalist credentials and the bridge he built to wartime patriotism.142 Within the framework of autarky, there were also economic beneficiaries of the conquest due to patronage relations in the state. Here the state reproduced itself as a social-political force. A number of businesses received state orders as a direct result of the occupation.143 The car manufacturer FIAT benefitted from the new demand for transport during and after the war in Ethiopia. An official source claimed that the firm exported 12,005 cars to Ethiopia in 1937, which amounted to about 16 percent of Italy’s total car production in that year.144 Moreover, while the textile sector suffered from the depression and from autarky policies, the extension of the domestic market via colonies became important for Italian textile firms after 1935.145 There were also initiatives to use Ethiopia as a source of raw cotton. In Parliament, Lessona, the colonial

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minister, stressed a wide range of uses, including again vegetable oils, and precious metals. However, from the second half of 1937 onwards, Mussolini reduced Italian petroleum exports to Ethiopia due to foreign currency constraints.146 The precise extent to which interest groups actually obtained new market outlets in Ethiopia is unclear. In parallel, a socioeconomic re-organization occurred within Italy that involved self-organization as well as political patronage in the specific area of food retailing. The sector became critical in the aftermath of international sanctions against Italy, especially between April and June 1936. An argument about relations between the fascist state and private retailers suggests how, during this period, a fascicized retail sector supported the state both politically and economically. Small family-based retailers, organized in the fascist association of commerce, not only tapped local resources to replace shortages in imports. They also accepted a squeeze in profit margins and thus helped absorb the shock from sanctions in exchange for political support and their very survival vis-àvis bigger players.147 In doing so, this segment of society effectively complemented a dysfunctional autonomous state that had mismanaged the economy by endorsing the Ethiopian campaign and continued to do so by stockpiling raw materials for war.148 In France, the legacy of the close imperial ties of textile producing regions continued, since colonies constituted secure markets. Otherwise the depression proved corrosive to the fabric of imperial relationships. The Popular Front’s cautious attempt to initiate building the empire as a single entity of development remained lettre morte largely because of the difficulties in managing economic complementarities. Rural France resented rivalry from North Africa and some French imperial businesses met with hostility in France. The exception, which would boost the image of empire during the Second World War, was a clear subservient role of colonies for France in the mobilization of manpower and resources for a war contingency.149 The aforementioned examples are evidence for the nexus between nation-states and colonial territory as a social-political relation. Moreover, these issues raise questions regarding modern states as imperial states in the interwar period. By the interwar period, the major states in Europe had acquired a degree of autonomy as functional entities in which experts formulated what they deemed to be rational economic agency, giving rise to a greater differentiation of the state from society.150 However, this occurred with reference to a domestic realm posited against an external one. Ambitions for developing mass polities were running parallel to the constitution of nation-states in the wider world. These processes had taken root during economic diversification and globalization in the late nineteenth century, as discussed in chapters 2 and 3. Yet in the 1920s and particularly the 1930s, national economic development was trapped not only by a dysfunctional world economy but also caught in the ambivalence

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between national and universal conceptions of progress. The Great Depression brought these dilemmas to a head, and political manipulators fed on both real and fabricated economic grievances. At the beginning of the twentieth century, rationalizing national economies and state governance had implied building on worldwide economic interconnectedness. The interwar period experienced the reconfiguration of the model of the modern state. Initially, modern states were conceived of as the embodiment of universal development instigated by Western modernity. Now the model reflected a historical moment in which national cores stood at the centre of the technical-economic management of economic crises. The state realm, moreover, became larger, and states were solicited to a greater extent as trustees of welfare for the nation. As a consequence, a reterritorialization of economic space occurred. Crisis management invoked a notion of authentic national development. Transnational control mattered for the nation-state. Colonial territory became integral to the new model of modern statehood as a normalized, though selective tool of support, notably at the raw materials-currency nexus. Colonies were not conceived of as national economies developing in their own right, nor as part of an integrated economy of empires. Therefore, it is not paradoxical that officials in European nation-states frowned upon colonies as being backward but at the same time deemed colonial economies to be indispensable for national economy building. Nonetheless, conceptions of economic space differed significantly in the states under review. In Portugal, and in Amery’s ideas of imperial union in Britain, one can see the classical model of late nineteenthcentury imperial protectionism, where an overseas raw materials domain served industrial sectors at home. Britain’s liberal finance sector state, by contrast, represented a hegemonic area, one which regulated and engineered the pound’s role as a global currency and opposed the institutionalization and bureaucratization of global governance to promote economic development. Examples include, respectively, the approach to India’s currency standard and Leith-Ross’ opposition to Młynarski’s proposals for reforms of the international financial architecture. Schacht’s ad hoc steering of Nazi Germany’s trade and payments settlements was geared towards remedying crises of supplies rather than establishing a model of economic governance. Nonetheless, nationalliberals from Helfferich to Schacht also argued that Germany reproduced itself not only materially but also culturally as a nation through its worldwide business activities. Nazi and fascist autarky differed from this view because they often disconnected technocratic economic policy from notions of development. In terms of food security and welfare, fascist and Nazi ideas of development were predicated on either essentialized notions of the people or communitarian social relations outside capitalism, respectively. Meanwhile, in the search for alternatives to both liberal economic doctrine and protectionism, experts in the 1930s continued to

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discuss universal paths to development, as in US modernization theory or in organicist variants of modern system theory. The former had little impact on states before the Second World War; the latter, however, was prominent in Gini’s international lobbying and in arguments about the role of Italian fascism in adjusting the international political order. Imperial statehood differed from the co-option model of colonial expansion of the late nineteenth century. The latter was part of the process of global economic integration, where private-public relationships contributed to forming the functional state in an emerging world economy. The model differed, too, from the near-global liberal nation-state, epitomized by liberal-imperialist Britain before 1914. In the 1920s, the modern and scientific guise of states and progress epitomized by Germany and Britain obfuscated the fact that, by that time, the trajectory of globalizing development had become disrupted. The Great Depression discontinued the progressive integration of trade, financial flows, and markets, and put international population flows on hold. Hopes that global and national governance could be reconciled were frustrated and nationalistic economic policies aggravated the crisis. In these settings, colonies became associated with national management and development in Europe. In the 1930s, as nation-states reterritorialized, the classical general model of a colony as the protected raw material base and market was still present, though not dominant. The conception influenced policy-makers in Portugal and to some extent in the Fascist Italian empire. In the main, however, colonies now constituted a complementary technique for managing national economies. Both policy practices and designs at the raw materials-currency nexus exhibited a sort of outsourcing of specific areas of economic control for the centre. This was the case in Schacht’s lobbying, in Portugal’s colonies including with plunder and forced labour, and as a vision also in the French mise-en-valeur. The model of the interwar state in its transnational formation, thus postulated, covered a variety of sub-types of states. German imperial statehood was situated between the old notion of global Germany and the Nazi quest for a Groβdeutschland. In the former, colonies were a means of crisis management; in the latter, they were the extension of autarky or merely a tactical tool in diplomacy. Both cases linked up with the mobilization of professional associations in the state, ranging from economists to scientists, as well as with groups lobbying for colonial territory. There were dozens of chairs at universities specializing in colonial science and hundreds of thousands of members of colonial associations. In Italian fascism, empire transcended material economic relations, though in the Ethiopian war, this type fused with older forms of imperial protectionism. In the formation of the new Polish nation-state, meanwhile, overseas territory entered the debate as a tool to manage industrialization and as the political expression of this process. Large

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numbers of youth associations took up the colonial cause. France shows an attempt to transform old imperial protectionism into a policy for a global French economy. The wider polity, though, saw this move as a loss of control for metropolitan France. Imperial Portugal was a protectionistcoercive state, while Britain, in the 1930s, exhibited a tenuous alliance between a version of globalism in the sterling bloc and the protectionist model of a white empire-state centred on Britain. The League of Nations and specialized international organizations like the International Labor Office in Geneva and the International Institute of Agriculture in Rome were arenas in which experts discussed novel ideas of international governance. Yet, as argued at the beginning of this chapter, many prominent experts operated in the bureaucracy of their states and were expected to pursue strategies of national development. Moreover, League thinking regarding non-self-governing territories was closely associated with British colonial doctrine. Lugard, the advocate of the paternalistic “liberal” administrative doctrine of British colonial rule in Africa, was an influential member of the League of Nations’ permanent mandates commission. His ideas of international governance went hand in hand with British ideals of colonialism. Lugard’s thinking was imbued with the view that governance needed to accept racial differences as the prerequisite for building his vision of an equitable international order. The “negro race,” he argued, could “produce individuals of great force of character.” In terms of fundamental ideals, namely education, achievement, and opportunity, he argued, the state ought to promote individual equality. In social terms, however, governance ought to create the conditions that allowed all races to develop in line with their racial characteristics and “inherent traditions.” Doing otherwise would be socially disruptive. For Lugard, British “indirect rule” in Africa was the means to ensure “equality” in this sense. The experience with Europeanized Africans and black people in the United States had shown the limitations of their race. The US experience with race relations in particular should, therefore, inform approaches to race in the world order. Lugard emphasized that his views were taken up by the US president, among others in a speech in the American South.151 The normality in which the new model of the state formed among experts as well as in politics is striking. Colonies acquired importance for European nation-states in the course of a deceptively ordinary process of economic management and developmental politics at a time when nationstates faced a major crisis of global capitalism. The raw materials problem served to convey the plausibility of an economic necessity for the national population in the state. Only few experts and state officials were able to extricate themselves from this view. Continuities existed between the pre-1914 and the interwar period in terms of connections between rationality and atavism. Schumpeter was right, when he pinpointed atavistic legacies in states and argued that imperial war was hardly bearing

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out the real interests of European economies. Yet he was mistaken, when he singled out imperialistic aggression as a deviation from the modern, rational statehood, and when he separated economic rationality from politics in the hope that scientific analysis would ultimately help bridge the hiatus between the two.152 Imperial statehood during the period shows the diversity of conceptions of rationality and how modernity formed in political contexts.

Notes 1 Andrew J. Crozier, Appeasement and Germany’s Last Bid for Colonies (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988); Douglas Rimmer, “Have and Have-Not Nations: The Prototype,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 27 (1979), 307–25; also Martin Thomas, Britain, France and Appeasement: Anglo-French Relations in the Popular Front Era (Oxford: Berg, 1996), ch.5. 2 Norman Angell, This Have and Have-Not Business. Political Fantasy and Economic Fact (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1936). 3 A classical text is F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: George Routledge, 1944); see esp. ch.1. 4 Joseph Schumpeter, “The Sociology of Imperialisms,” in Joseph Schumpeter, Imperialism & Social Classes (New York: Meridian Books, 1955; first published in 1919), 4–5. 5 Corrado Gini, “Fattori latenti delle guerre,” Rivista italiana di Sociologia (February 1915), reproduced in Gini, Problemi sociologici della guerra (Bologna: Nicola Zanichelli, 1921), 1–50. For Dalton’s review, see Economic Journal 32, no. 125 (1922), 80–4. 6 Corrado Gini, “Das Kolonial- und Rohstoffproblem vom Standpunkt der konservativen und expansiven Völker,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 54, no. 1 (1941), 213–4 and 221; and Gini, “‘Trade Follows the Flag,’” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 47 (1938), 181–2. 7 Corrado Gini, Die Probleme der internationalen Bevölkerungs- und Rohstoffverteilung (Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1937), esp. 13–7. 8 Gini, “‘Trade Follows the Flag’”, and Gini, “Das Kolonial- und Rohstoffproblem.” Both articles were published in Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv under Andreas Predöhl as editor. 9 Sir George Clerk to Foreign Office, London, “Delbos-Blum-Schacht conversation,” 20 September 1936, TNA [The National Archives, Kew] FO 954/ 8A; and Leith-Ross to Chancellor of the Exchequer, 4 February 1937, “Record by Sir F. Leith-Ross of a talk with Dr. Schacht,” TNA FO 954/10A. 10 In both respects, the assessment in Christopher Kopper, Hjalmar Schacht. Aufstieg und Fall von Hitlers mächtigstem Bankier (Munich: dtv, 2010), 296–7, requires qualification or elaboration. 11 For instance, in the speech before the German colonial association, BerlinCharlottenburg, 24 March 1926: Ernst Gerhard Jacob, ed., Kolonialpolitisches Quellenheft. Die deutsche Kolonialfrage 1918–1935 (Bamberg: S.S. Buchners Verlag, 1935), 68. 12 Hjalmar Schacht, “Germany’s Colonial Demands,” Foreign Affairs 15, no. 2 (1937), esp. 229 and 233; and “The ‘Have-Not’ States, Dr. Schacht’s Plan, the Alternative to Concession,” The Times (24 December 1937). 13 See for instance, the letter by the Rt. Hon. R. Boothby, The Times (22 December 1936).

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14 Cf. the minutes of the German meeting on raw materials, summer 1936, enclosed with Mathias Riedel, “Die Rohstofflage des deutschen Reiches im Frühjahr 1936,” Tradition 14, no. 6 (1969), 310–34. 15 Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, 9 July 1937, “Discussions at Geneva and Berlin in June 1937,” “Colonial aspirations of certain foreign countries: question of freedom of access to colonial raw materials, 1937,” TNA CO 852/113/10. 16 Preparations for the French colonial conference, 1934, “Palmistes et palmier de l’huile,” 3, ANOM [Archives nationales d’outre-mer, Aix-en-Provence] Agefom 994/3467. 17 “Le Caoutchouc,” 15–7, ANOM Agefom 994/3467, and Eric Phipps, British Embassy, Berlin, to Anthony Eden, Foreign Office, 25 February 1936, TNA CO 852/56/1. 18 Jacob, Quellenheft, 132–3. 19 Crozier, Appeasement, ch.7. 20 “Lord Lothian’s conversations with Hitler, Goering and Schacht,” May 1937, TNA PREM 1/215, and Clerk, telegram to Foreign Office, “BlumSchacht conversations,” 20 September 1936, TNA FO 954/8A. 21 Kopper, Hjalmar Schacht, 294–6. 22 “Committee for the study of the problem of raw materials. Report by the financial experts,” 30 August 1937, League of Nations Archives, Geneva, R4437, 10A 29992/22798; also Rose, 25 May 1937, League of Nations Archives, R4435, 10A 29788/22798. 23 Michel Pobers, ed., “Colonies. Matières premières,” Dossiers diplomatiques [Geneva], 1 (March 1937), 36–9. See also the assessment of views for the League of Nation’s Economic and Finance Committee, 22 June 1938, in accordance with the League of Nations resolution of 28 January 1938, TNA T 160/859. 24 For relevant issues, see, for instance, the introduction in Marc Flandreau, ed., Money Doctors: The Experience of International Financial Advising 1850–2000 (London: Routledge, 2003) and the chapter by Stephen A. Schuker in the same volume. 25 See, for instance, Götz Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War and the Nazi Welfare State (London: Verso, 2007); Carl Ipsen, Dictating Demography: The Problem of Population in Fascist Italy (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1996); and Matthew Connelly, Fatal Misconception: The Struggle to Contain World Population (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press for Harvard University Press, 2008), ch.2. 26 Ruth Jachertz and Alexander Nützenadel, “Coping with Hunger? Visions of a Global Food System,” Journal of Global History 6, no. 1 (2011), 104–5. 27 Dr. Heinrich Schnee, Deutschlands koloniale Forderung (Berlin: Hermann Wendt, 1937), 12. The reference is to a speech by Winston Churchill on 29 September 1935. 28 Schnee, Deutschlands koloniale Forderung, 8–9. 29 Friedrich Lenz, Friedrich List und Grossdeutschland (Leipzig: Lühe, 1938), 14. 30 See the references in Jacob, Quellenheft, 94–6, namely to the speech by Professor Gols, University of Leipzig, 3 May 1934, and Arthur Dix, Weltkrise und Kolonialpolitik. Die Zukunft zweier Erdteile (Berlin: P. Neff, 1932); also Schnee, Deutschlands koloniale Forderung, 20–2. 31 Jakobus Onnen, Rohstoffe aus eigenem kolonialen Raum (Leipzig: EichblattVerlag, 1937), 10–1. 32 Jakobus Onnen, “Entstehung und Entwicklung der Deutschen Kolonialschule Witzenhausen,” Festschrift zum 40 jährigen Bestehen der Deutschen Kolonialschule Witzenhausen 1898–1938 (Deutsche Kolonialschule Witzenhausen, 1938), 45.

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33 34 35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45

46 47 48 49 50

51 52 53 54 55

Empire, modernity, and its discontents Given its name, the school lives on as a joke in a twenty-first century cartoon: www.avant-verlag.de/comics/raus-rein (accessed 3 July 2022). Lamartine Yates, “The German Food Problem,” Political Quarterly 7, no. 1 (1936), esp. 39 and 44; also G. Uhrin, “La politique agraire et alimentaire de l’Allemagne,” Politique étrangère 6 (1936), 80–93. Adam Tooze, Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006), ch.6. Andreas Predöhl, “Staatsraum und Wirtschaftsraum,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 39 (1934), 1–12. Hjalmar Schacht, “Volk ohne Raum,” Berliner Tageblatt no. 583 (9 December 1936). Deutschland braucht Kolonien: eine Werbe- und Leseschrift anläßlich der Kolonialausstellung vom 4. Februar bis 15. April 1936 im Schulausstellungsgebäude Spitalerstraße 6, veranstaltet vom Reichskolonialbund Ortsgruppe Hamburg, von der Landesunterrichtsbehörde und dem NS Lehrerbund Gau Hamburg. Deutschland braucht Kolonien: eine Werbe- und Leseschrift, 66–70. Margarete Muths, Die deutsche Fettlücke und die Möglichkeit ihrer Schließung durch die Rückgewinnung der ehem. deutschen Kolonien (Berlin: Deutscher Betriebswirte-Verlag, 1938), 41. Carol F. Helstosky, “Fascist Food Politics: Mussolini’s Policy of Alimentary Sovereignty,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 9, no. 1 (2004), 7. Le colonie (April 1938), 1, ANOM Guernut 69. Helstosky, “Fascist Food Politics,” 8–9. Jacob, Quellenheft, 69. League of Nations, Committee for the Study of the Problem of Raw Materials, “General aspects of the problem etc.,” 24 February 1937, TNA CO 852/113/10. Ritter von Epp, “The Question of Colonies: The German Standpoint,” Journal of the Royal African Society 36, no. 142 (1937), 3; Schnee, Deutschlands koloniale Forderung, 16 and 20–2; Dr. K. Weigelt, “Koloniale Rohstoffversorgung im Rahmen der heimischen Volkswirtschaft,” in Diedrich Westermann, ed., Beiträge zur deutschen Kolonialforschung (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1937), 80–1; and Dr. Kurt G. Johannsen and Diplomvolkswirt Heinrich Kraft, Das Kolonialproblem Deutschlands (Hamburg: Paul Hartung Verlag, 1937), 36–8. Onnen, Rohstoffe, 13 and 42. Onnen, Rohstoffe, 12. Connelly, Fatal Misconception, ch.2. Alison Bashford, “Nation, Empire, Globe: The Spaces of Population Debate in the Interwar Years,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 1 (2007), 170–201. Michael Mann, “The Dark Side of Democracy: The Modern Tradition of Ethnic and Political Cleansing,” New Left Review no. 235 (1999), 18–45; and Mann, The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2005). A.M. Carr-Saunders, “The Population Conference at Geneva,” Economic Journal 37, no. 148 (1927), 670–2. Speech by Arthur Salter in Peace and the Colonial Problem (London: National Peace Council, 1935), 8. See speeches at Berlin on 21 May 1935 and Nuremberg on 9 September 1936, and on 30 January 1937: Jacob, Quellenheft, 67; also Johannsen and Kraft, Das Kolonialproblem Deutschlands, 11–6. Onnen, Rohstoffe, 43. Deutschland braucht Kolonien: eine Werbe- und Leseschrift, 13–6, 27–30, and 41.

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56 Epp, “The Question of Colonies,” esp. 4 and 7. 57 L.S. Amery, “General von Epp’s Case Examined,” Journal of the Royal African Society 36, no. 142 (1937), esp. 18. 58 Onnen, Rohstoffe, 10. 59 Dr. Paul Rohrbach, Deutschlands koloniale Forderungen (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1935); on Rohrbach, see Internationales Biographisches Archiv 39/ 1956 (17 September 1956). 60 Schnee, Deutschlands koloniale Forderung, and Internationales Biographisches Archiv 31/1961 (24 July 1961). 61 Schnee, Deutschlands koloniale Forderung, 44–5. 62 Schnee, Deutschlands koloniale Forderung, 29–30. 63 Schnee, Deutschlands koloniale Forderung, 29–30. 64 Onnen, Rohstoffe, 10–1 and 42. 65 Leonhard A. Gordon, Brothers against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 275–276 and 302. 66 Johannsen and Kraft, Das Kolonialproblem, 41–2. 67 Johannsen and Kraft, Das Kolonialproblem, 42. 68 Jacob, Quellenheft, 90. 69 Westermann, ed., Beiträge. 70 Karla Poewe, “Liberalism, German Missionaries, and National Socialism,” in Ulrich van der Heyden and Holger Stoecker, eds., Mission und Macht im Wandel politischer Orientierungen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 2005), esp. 640–4. 71 Beatrice Wyatt, “International African Institute,” Civilisations 4, no. 2 (1954), 213. 72 Schnee, Deutschlands koloniale Forderung, 27–9. 73 Professor Diedrich Westermann, “Eingeborenenpolitik,” in Diedrich Westermann, ed., Beiträge zur deutschen Kolonialfrage (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1937), 91. 74 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, ch.2. 75 Richard Overy, The Road to War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999), 125. 76 Deutschland braucht Kolonien: eine Werbe- und Leseschrift, 42. 77 Ipsen, Dictating Demography, ch.3. 78 Benito Mussolini, “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” Political Quarterly 4, no. 3 (1933), esp. 352–3 and 355–6. 79 Kenneth Scott, “Mussolini and the Roman Empire,” Classical Journal 27, no. 9 (1932), 645–57. 80 Gianni Toniolo, L’economia dell’Italia fascista (Rome: Laterza, 1980), 282. 81 Giornale d’Italia, 3 April 1938 quoted from the French Bulletin de Documentation Coloniale, 126 (1–15 May 1938), ANOM Commission Guernut 69. The number of Italians in Addis Ababa was reported as follows: 1,508 in January 1937 (101 women), 12,103 in September 1937 and 14,585 in February 1938 (4,386 women). 82 Azione coloniale, (29 July 1937), ANOM Commission Guernut 69. 83 Quoted from French translations of the articles in Le colonie and in Lavoro fascista in ANOM Commission Guernut 69. 84 Gilbert Maroger, La question des matières premières (Paris: Centre d’Etudes de Politique Etrangère, 1937), 259–62. 85 Maroger, La question, 253–4. 86 Joseph Marcus, Social and Political History of the Jews in Poland, 1919–1939 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1983), 393.

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87 For pertinent observations on the wider debate, see Leo Lucassen, “Migration and World History: Reaching a New Frontier,” International Review of Social History 52, no. 1 (2007), 96. 88 Mary D. Lewis, The Boundaries of the Republic: Migrant Rights and the Limits of Universalism in France, 1918–1940 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 189–96 and 211. 89 See chapter 4. 90 Marco R. Deyasu, “Indochina, ‘Greater France’ and the 1931 Colonial Exhibition in Paris: Angkor Wat in Blue, White and Red,” History Workshop Journal 80, no. 1 (2015), 134. 91 See Frédéric Keck, Lévy-Bruhl entre phiolosophie et anthropologie (Paris: CNRS, 2007). 92 William Petersen, “John Maynard Keynes’s Theory of Population and the Concept of ‘Optimum,’” Population Studies 8, no. 3 (1955), esp. 240; and Arthur Salter, World Trade and Its Future (London: OUP, 1936), 69–72. 93 Corrado Gini, “The Italian Demographic Problem and the Fascist Policy on Population,” Journal of Political Economy 38, no. 6 (1930), 682–97; and Gini, “A Coordination of the Different Population Theories,” Revue de l’Institut international de statistique 11, no. 1–2 (1943), 64–6. 94 Gordon, Brothers, 277–8. 95 Corrado Gini, “I problemi della distribuzione internazionale della popolazione e delle materie prime,” introduction to Radhakamal Mukerjee, Le migrazione asiatiche [text in English] (Rome: I. Failli, 1936), XXXIX-XL. 96 Samuel Hoare, League of Nations Assembly, 11 September 1935 (enclosed with UK Delegate to Foreign Office, 25 September 1936), TNA T 160/859; also Foreign Office note, 14 December 1936, TNA T 160/859, with reference to Foreign Office Paper W 16673/195/98. 97 “Interdepartmental Committee on Freedom of Access to Colonial Raw Materials,” 7 January 1936, TNA DO 35/204/3. 98 Cabinet Conclusion, Cabinet 3(36), 29 January 1936. 99 Anthony Eden, September 1936 (enclosed with UK Delegate to Foreign Office, 25 September 1936), and Morrison, UK Delegation, League of Nations, Geneva, to Foreign Office, 5 October 1936, TNA T 160/859; also Cabinet Conclusions 3(36), 29 January 1936. 100 “The Committee of Investigation into the Problem of Colonial Raw Materials” adopted by the League of Nations, Ninety-Sixth Session of the Council, Minutes, 26 January 1937. 101 Leith-Ross during an inter-departmental meeting on the League of Nations investigation, 26 February 1937, TNA CO 852/113/9. 102 Foreign Office memorandum, “The raw materials enquiry and the ‘open door,’” 15 April 1937, TNA CO 852/113/10. 103 League of Nations, A.27.1937.II.B., Report of the Committee for the Study of the Problem of Raw Materials, Geneva, 8 September 1937, and Royal Institute of International Affairs, Colonies and Raw Materials (London: Information Department Papers No. 18, 1936). 104 League of Nations, Economic Committee, C.339.M.205.1938.II.B., 24 September 1938, “Commercial access to raw materials,” TNA T 160/859. 105 Leith-Ross to Hamilton (T), 9 February 1937, TNA T 160/859. 106 Leith-Ross to Eden, Foreign Office, 15 March 1937; also Note by LeithRoss, June 1937, and Leith-Ross, “Memorandum respecting the raw materials enquiry,” 20 July 1937, all TNA CO 852/113/10. 107 For the former episode, see Crozier, Appeasement; also A. Edho Ekoko, “The British Attitude towards Germany’s Colonial Irredentism in Africa in

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113

114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135

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the Inter-War Years,” Journal of Contemporary History 14, no. 2 (1979), 287–307. For the latter episode, see Carl S. Pansaerts, “Anglo-German Conversations on Colonial Appeasement and the Involvement of the Belgian Congo (October 1937-March 1938),” Cahiers/Bijdragen 16 (June 1994), 41–60; also Klaus Hildebrand, Vom Reich zum Weltreich: Hitler, NSDAP und koloniale Frage, 1919–1945 (Munich: W. Fink, 1969), 511, 529–33, and 569. Vansittart to Eden, 7 October 1936, TNA FO 954/8A. Leith-Ross to Chancellor of the Exchequer, record of a talk with Dr. Schacht, 4 February 1937, TNA FO 954/10A. Note by Richard Hopkins (T), 6 January 1936, TNA T 160/633. “Record by Sir F. Leith-Ross of a talk with Dr. Schacht,” 4 February 1937, TNA FO 954/10A. “Aktenvermerk,” 12 January 1937; also German Foreign Ministry, “Soll Deutschland sich an der geplanten internationalen Rohstoff-Konferenz beteiligen?,” 30 December 1936, TNA GFM 33/2610, Serial 6178 [German Foreign Ministry, Commercial Policy Department: Benzler papers]. Sir George Clerk to Foreign Office, London, “Delbos-Blum-Schacht conversations,” 20 September 1936, TNA FO 954/8A; Crozier, Appeasement, 179; Sir Frederick Leith-Ross, 9 July 1937, “Discussions at Geneva and Berlin in June 1937,” TNA CO 852/113/10; also Richard A. Joseph, “The German Question in French Cameroun, 1919–1939,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 17, no. 1 (1975), 68–9. Völkerbund. Journal for International Politics (Geneva: Wilhelm Schaer), “Kolonien und Rohstoffe,” special issue May-July 1937; also 7, no. 5 (December 1937), esp. 69. “Note by Sir Frederick Leith-Ross,” 9 July 1937, TNA CO 852/113/10. Pobers, ed., “Colonies. Matières premières,” 36–9. Marcus, Social and Political History, 393. Adam Rose, “Le problème de la population et des matières premières en Pologne,” Politique étrangère 3, no. 2 (1938), 103–14. Sir George Clerk to Foreign Office, London, “Delbos-Blum-Schacht conversations,” 20 September 1936, TNA FO 954/8A. Monick, French Financial Attaché, “The problem of raw materials,” 16 January 1937, TNA CO 852/113/9. Foreign Office memorandum, “The raw materials enquiry and the ‘open door,’” 15 April 1937, TNA CO 852/113/10. Crozier, Appeasement, 177. Fernando Rosas and J.M. Brandão de Brito, eds., Dicionário de história do Estado Novo (Lisbon: Bertrand Editora, 1996), 755. Crozier, Appeasement, ch.9. Pansaerts, “Anglo-German conversations,” 41–80. Angell, This Have and Have-Not Business. Joseph, “The German Question in French Cameroun,” 86–8. Angell, This Have and Have-Not Business, 185–6. Norman Angell, The Defence of the Empire (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1937), esp. ch.3. André Touzet, Le problème colonial et la paix du monde (Paris: Sirey, 1937), 127 and 170. Touzet, Le problème colonial, 100–2. Henri Hoffherr, Charbon et pétrole en Afrique du nord (Paris: Félix Alcan, 1935), 291. Maroger, La question des matières premières, 155. Crozier, Appeasement, 173. Bashford, “Nation, Empire, Globe,” 189–190.

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136 Gini, Die Probleme der internationalen Bevölkerungs- und Rohstoffverteilung, 12–6 and 21. 137 L.S. Amery, “Foreword,” A Plan of Action (London: Empire Economic Union Research Committee, 1932); and Angell, The Defence of Empire; also Ashton-Gwatkin (FO) to Leith-Ross (T), 24 February 1937, TNA T 160/859. 138 Fernando Rosas, O Estado Novo nos anos trinta: elementos para o estudo da natureza económica e social do Salazarismo (1928–1938) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1986), esp. 77 and 91. 139 Aly, Hitler’s Beneficiaries. 140 Helstosky, “Fascist Food Politics,” 8. 141 Angelo Del Boca, Gli italiani in Africa orientale (Rome: Laterza, 1976), ch.5, esp. 211. 142 Alberto Sbacchi, “Italy and the Treatment of the Ethiopian Aristocracy,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 10, no. 2 (1977), 209–41. 143 Nicola Labanca, Oltremare: Storia dell’espansione coloniale italiana (Bologna: il Mulino, 2001), 298–9. 144 Le colonie, April 1937, ANOM Commission Guernut 69; for the production figure, see Toniolo, L’economia dell’Italia fascista, 326. 145 Toniolo, L’economia dell’Italia fascista, 316–7. 146 Del Boca, Gli italiani, 173–175 and 181. 147 Jonathan Morris, “The Fascist ‘Disciplining’ of the Italian Retail Sector 1922–1940,” Business History 40, no. 4 (1998), esp. 144–50. 148 Fortunato Minniti, “Le materie prime nella preparazione bellica dell’Italia (1935–1943) (parte prima),” Storia contemporanea 17, no. 1 (1986), esp. 12. 149 Martin Thomas, “Economic Conditions and the Limits to Mobilization in the French Empire, 1936–1939,” Historical Journal 48, no. 2 (2005), 471–98. 150 For the relevant early debate in political sociology, see Michael Mann, “The Autonomous Power of the State: Its Origins, Mechanisms and Results,” in John A. Hall, ed., States in History (Oxford: OUP, 1986), 109–36; and Theda Skocpol, “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research,” in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1985), 3–37. 151 Lord [Frederick] Lugard, The Dual Mandate in British Tropical Africa (First edition 1922, Routledge Reprint), 82–7. The US president at the time was the Republican Warren G. Harding. 152 Schumpeter, “The Sociology of Imperialisms,” 4–5.

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Maroger, Gilbert, La question des matières premières (Paris: Centre d’Etudes de Politique Etrangère, 1937). Minniti, Fortunato, “Le materie prime nella preparazione bellica dell’Italia (1935–1943) (parte prima),” Storia contemporanea 17, no. 1 (1986), 245–276. Morris, Jonathan, “The Fascist ‘Disciplining’ of the Italian Retail Sector 1922–1940,” Business History 40, no. 4 (1998), 138–164. 10.1080/00076799800000342 Mukerjee, Radhakamal, Le migrazione asiatiche [text in English] (Rome: I. Failli, 1936). Mussolini, Benito, “The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism,” Political Quarterly 4, no. 3 (1933), 341–356. 10.1111/j.1467-923X.1933.tb02289.x Muths, Margarete, Die deutsche Fettlücke und die Möglichkeit ihrer Schließung durch die Rückgewinnung der ehem. deutschen Kolonien (Berlin: Deutscher Betriebswirte-Verlag, 1938). Onnen, Jakobus, Rohstoffe aus eigenem kolonialen Raum (Leipzig: EichblattVerlag, 1937). Onnen, Jakobus, “Entstehung und Entwicklung der Deutschen Kolonialschule Witzenhausen,” Festschrift zum 40 jährigen Bestehen der Deutschen Kolonialschule Witzenhausen 1898-1938 (Deutsche Kolonialschule Witzenhausen, 1938), 21–65. Overy, Richard, The Road to War (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1999). Pansaerts, Carl S., “Anglo-German Conversations on Colonial Appeasement and the Involvement of the Belgian Congo (October 1937–March 1938),” Cahiers/ Bijdragen 16 (June 1994), 41–60. Petersen, William, “John Maynard Keynes’s Theory of Population and the Concept of ‘Optimum,’” Population Studies 8, no. 3 (1955), 228–246. 10.1080/ 00324728.1955.10415569 Pobers, Michel, ed., “Colonies. Matières premières,” Dossiers diplomatiques [Geneva], 1 (March 1937). Poewe, Karla, “Liberalism, German Missionaries, and National Socialism,” in Ulrich van der Heyden and Holger Stoecker, eds., Mission und Macht im Wandel politischer Orientierungen (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 2005), 633–662. Predöhl, Andreas, “Staatsraum und Wirtschaftsraum,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 39 (1934), 1–12. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40429293 Riedel, Mathias, “Die Rohstofflage des deutschen Reiches im Frühjahr 1936,” Tradition 14, no. 6 (1969), 310–334. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40697204 Rimmer, Douglas, “Have and Have-Not Nations: The Prototype,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 27 (1979), 307–325. 10.1086/451095 Rohrbach, Dr. Paul, Deutschlands koloniale Forderungen (Hamburg: Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1935). Rosas, Fernando, O Estado Novo nos anos trinta: elementos para o estudo da natureza económica e social do Salazarismo (1928–1938) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1986). Rosas, Fernando, and J.M. Brandão de Brito, eds., Dicionário de história do Estado Novo (Lisbon: Bertrand Editora, 1996). Rose, Adam, “Le problème de la population et des matières premières en Pologne,” Politique étrangère 3, no. 2 (1938), 103–114. 10.3406/polit.1938.5617 Salter, Arthur, World Trade and Its Future (London: OUP, 1936). Sbacchi, Alberto, “Italy and the Treatment of the Ethiopian Aristocracy,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 10, no. 2 (1977), 209–241. 10.2307/217347

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Schacht, Hjalmar, “Volk ohne Raum,” Berliner Tageblatt no. 583 (9 December 1936). Schacht, Hjalmar, “Germany’s Colonial Demands,” Foreign Affairs 15, no. 2 (1937), 223–234. Schnee, Dr. Heinrich, Deutschlands koloniale Forderung (Berlin: Hermann Wendt, 1937). Schuker, Stephen A., “Money Doctors between the Wars: The Competition between Central Banks, Private Financial Advisers, and Multilateral Agencies, 1919-39,” in Marc Flandreau, ed., Money Doctors: The Experience of International Financial Advising 1850-2000 (London: Routledge, 2003), 49–77. Schumpeter, Joseph, “The Sociology of Imperialisms,” in Joseph Schumpeter, Imperialism & Social Classes (New York: Meridian Books, 1955; first published in German in 1919). Scott, Kenneth, “Mussolini and the Roman Empire,” Classical Journal 27, no. 9 (1932), 645–657. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3290234 Skocpol, Theda, “Bringing the State Back In: Strategies of Analysis in Current Research,” in Peter Evans, Dietrich Rueschemeyer, and Theda Skocpol, eds., Bringing the State Back In (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1985), 3–37. Thomas, Martin, Britain, France and Appeasement: Anglo-French Relations in the Popular Front Era (Oxford: Berg, 1996). Thomas, Martin, “Economic Conditions and the Limits to Mobilization in the French Empire, 1936-1939,” Historical Journal 48, no. 2 (2005), 471–498. 10.1017/ S0018246X05004474 Toniolo, Gianni, L’economia dell’Italia fascista (Rome: Laterza, 1980). Tooze, Adam, Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2006). Touzet, André, Le problème colonial et la paix du monde (Paris: Sirey, 1937). Uhrin, G., “La politique agraire et alimentaire de l’Allemagne,” Politique étrangère 6 (1936), 80–93. 10.3406/polit.1936.5574 Weigelt, Dr. K., “Koloniale Rohstoffversorgung im Rahmen der heimischen Volkswirtschaft,” in Diedrich Westermann, ed., Beiträge zur deutschen Kolonialforschung (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1937), 77–89. Westermann, Professor Diedrich, “Eingeborenenpolitik,” in Diedrich Westermann, ed., Beiträge zur deutschen Kolonialfrage (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1937), 91–110. Wyatt, Beatrice, “International African Institute,” Civilisations 4, no. 2 (1954), 213–218. Yates, Lamartine, “The German Food Problem,” Political Quarterly 7, no. 1 (1936), 33–48. 10.1111/j.1467-923x.1936.tb01287.x

6

Continuities in the Second World War: Overseas support for the nation’s war

Wartime is usually studied in its exceptionality. By contrast, this chapter, which falls outside the twin structure of the book’s core chapters, aims to join the various threads of research on the war in Europe with the legacy of colonial policies in Asia and Africa. The narrative will pursue two lines of enquiry that are embedded within the book’s investigation of the role of overseas economies for states in Europe. It will be argued that the Second World War in many respects continued the normality of imperial statehood and its economic strategies rather than marking a turn towards unusual, imperialistic policy approaches. The conscious ordering of war economies and war finance exhibits the familiar quest for complementarities between colonies and metropolitan economies in settling payments in relation to raw materials requirements. The outsourcing of control relations to support the war effort of the national core defined overseas relations. The war, however, differed from peacetime in terms of certain priorities of resources. What is more, the war was highly volatile and presented unanticipated circumstances due to the contingencies of the military campaigns. These circumstances required policy to adjust in the search for supplies. The Second World War has generated a massive body of research. The historical literature engaged with the organization of the war of aggression by Nazi Germany, the organized mass extermination in the Holocaust, and the Allied counter-offensives in Europe and in the Far East. The study of wartime experiences followed in the wake of this research, ranging from victims and survivors of the Holocaust to the lives of soldiers in the different theatres of war. Research has shed light on the upheaval produced by war in terms of living conditions, economies, and austerity, and investigated the memory and commemoration of war in the post-war decades. In all these areas, most research has focused on Europe and the West, though a growing number of studies has tried to remedy this bias.1 Nonetheless, while detailed studies of economic management and war finance do exist, this literature is less widely known. Importantly, the intersection between the management of war economies on different continents, raw material resources, and war finance requires systematic analysis. The subject relates DOI: 10.4324/9781003346425-9

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to the study of labour and military manpower, which has been explored more fully since some time. Correlations are visible between the circumstances of the war, on the one hand, and the regulation of the supply of materials and labour, often bearing out older practices of coercion. Policies, however, were also imbued with purpose as economies were put on a war footing and conditions of war changed. One can identify a distinct pattern in which war economies in Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa converged. The reordering of war economies involved resource planning in which the traditional colonial commodities of rubber and vegetable oils played an important role. Due to wartime developments, sources of supplies shifted from Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa. The war put a premium on ensuring that demand for raw materials was matched by labour, in addition to the military manpower for which India and Africa secured essential support. Africa’s role was also enhanced because the war prompted an increased demand in strategic minerals, which were met, among others, from supplies from the Belgian Congo and Portuguese colonies, at times for the Allied and the Axis powers simultaneously. Colonies were associated in a “common cause” with imperial states in their austerity planning. Planning during the war and in view of its post-war outcomes crucially related to war finance. Britain’s political control in India substantially helped to finance the Allied war effort, as did South Africa with considerably greater political autonomy. Specific methods of war finance and payments arrangements were used within colonial empires and governed financial relations between Britain, the United States, and Free France operating from Africa. Occupied territories in Europe, meanwhile, played a role in financing Nazi Germany’s war. Not least, war strategies and propaganda underpinned future projects of development. These involved the African colonies of Britain, and both Vichy and Free France, as well as Portugal. Germany’s propaganda continued to herald the uses of a subservient Eastern Europe as the raw materials domain for a future Nazified Europe. But Germany also used its contacts with Vichy France and Salazar’s Portugal to manage supplies. The chapter will begin by discussing the role of tropical economies, and those of territories under occupation, for war economies in Europe. Both structural continuities with pre-war empires and changes due to wartime logistics will be addressed before highlighting how relations with Africa and Asia influenced the organization of European economies during the war, especially regarding raw material requirements and finance. This theme will subsequently be pursued further by discussing how policymakers attempted to control colonial development, including in approaches to labour. The conclusion looks into wartime visions of postwar development.

Continuities in the Second World War 249

War economies, imperial normality, and contingency The war changed the demand structure of national economies in Europe, prioritizing resources to support the war effort at the expense of so-called non-essential supplies. As a result, the economic and political geography of sources of supply became highly volatile compared to peacetime. Wartime conditions also prompted the search for alternatives to available produce, and extended the interwar discussions on ersatz into the war. Questions of payments, moreover, continued to be relevant in relation to the sources of supply, and raised questions of the transnational structure of war economies. Wartime demand enhanced the significance of the tropics for economies in Europe, partly due to the ways in which supply channels had formed since the late nineteenth century. Essential raw materials for the war effort included rubber, and fats and oils for machinery, besides a range of strategic minerals, notably tin, tungsten, and copper, as well as petroleum for fuel. The need for these sources put a premium on certain regions of supply. Africa became a crucial supplier for both the Allies and the Axis powers once the Japanese army advanced in Southeast Asia. In this sense, one can see a divide between the first two years of the conflict and the period from 1942. Within Africa, French Equatorial Africa and the British and French mandates of Cameroun saw their role for the Allied war effort greatly enhanced. In addition, food production in Africa became important for the theatres of conflict in North Africa and Southeast Asia. For the Nazi war in Eastern Europe, meanwhile, Russian agrarian production was a logistically important area of supply for oils and fats in order to feed the troops, as was Southeast Europe. The transnational organization of wartime demand, supply channels, and payments arrangements had a clear rationale, including in ambiguities between the war of the Allies and that of the Axis powers. Many aspects of this structuring are still under-researched. An attempt will be made in the following to outline how overseas supplies supported war economies in Europe. The question of war finance will be posited as a structural problem and pursued further when discussing policy strategies in wartime. War economies in Europe aligned overseas colonial economies according to the priorities of the war effort. From the beginning of the twentieth century, rubber supplies for Europe had shifted away from Africa towards plantation rubber in Southeast Asia, namely Malaya, Indochina, and the Dutch East Indies. During the Second World War, however, Africa became again the main supplier. In an unprecedented manner, French Equatorial Africa and French Cameroun replaced Malaya as a source for rubber for the Allies. Previously, these regions had hardly mattered as suppliers of the world market. The period also witnessed a return to the exploitation of wild rubber to complement plantation production. Rubber from Cameroun came about half each in the form of plantation rubber and wild rubber sources.2 In addition, wild rubber from the Belgian Congo increased in

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importance. Until mid-1940, Equatorial Africa had constituted a complement to Indochinese rubber for Vichy France. The ambiguous relationship between Vichy France and the Japanese occupying power of Indochina hampered rubber supplies for France from the region.3 By 1941, however, the relevant colonial territories in Africa had all come under the rule of Free France. Ironically, due to war conditions Cameroun’s significance as a supplier of rubber for the Allies came to resemble the visions of officials in Nazi Germany, notably those of Hjalmar Schacht, in the mid-1930s.4 For the Nazi war effort, though, rubber resources became increasingly scarce. Consequently, the search for supplies resorted to emergency measures, including the collection of rubber tyres in occupied France.5 Substitute production of Buna by IG Farben also infamously continued in occupied Poland, though the output of this production was arguably very limited. Synthetic rubber production was on the increase in the United States during the war but hardly mattered elsewhere.6 The wartime supply channels of vegetable oils and fats are more complex and less well researched than those for rubber. During the war, fats were more important for their strategic uses than as a food source. On the one hand, as was the case with rubber, the role of African production was enhanced as demand increased, as reflected, for instance, by British purchases of Nigerian palm produce.7 Oil fruit outputs also increased in Portuguese colonies.8 On the other hand, Vichy-occupied Senegal faced a problem of overproduction in its groundnuts sector because of the shrinking of overseas markets, which importantly included countries that sided with the Allies during the war.9 The British blockade arguably exacerbated the difficulties to export. On the Gold Coast, some Ashanti cocoa farmers turned to palm fruit in an attempt to find a profitable export crop, but met with similar constraints due to overproduction and lacking transport facilities as shipping was geared to the war.10 In fact, the war disrupted the cocoa economy even further than the depression of the 1930s had done. Cocoa exports were not a priority during the war. Similarly, export markets for Nigerian cotton dried up.11 By contrast, in neutral Portugal, the support role of the Portuguese colonies Mozambique and Angola for the Portuguese cotton textile sector intensified, even compared to the 1930s.12 In the British mandate of Tanganyika, meanwhile, pyrethrum extracted from botanical resources as an insecticide and sisal for rope making became important as war supplies in addition to rubber from 1942 onwards, whereas groundnuts and cotton found no market.13 Under-researched is the fat sector not least in relation to the war economy of Nazi Germany. Diminishing fat resources were prominent in the debate about German colonies in the 1930s. Such a link has been suggested during the war by Leo Waibel, a German economic geographer who before 1914 had done research for Germany’s colonial office and who, as a critic of the Nazi regime, left Germany for the United States in 1937. At some point, Germany’s war effort may well have needed

Continuities in the Second World War 251 vegetable fat resources from “the East” in order to secure its requirements due to Europe’s dependence on tropical fat sources and the inaccessibility or unavailability of tropical sources for Nazi Germany.14 War obviously put a high value on minerals required for arms production. In overall terms, the United States was the most important producer of strategic minerals during the war. Africa, however, was crucial for the provision of industrial diamonds, cobalt, uranium, and gold.15 Moreover, the war parties individually organized their specific supply channels. The Congo’s uranium mined by the Belgian firm Union minière in Katanga went mainly to the United States. The Belgian Congo was also crucial for cobalt exports to the United States.16 During the war, the entire copper output of Northern Rhodesia went to Britain.17 Tin from Nigeria replaced tin from Malaya.18 Chromite production expanded, with Southern Rhodesia as the main producer. Manganese for British steel production came from India and from the Gold Coast. Southern Rhodesia was an important supplier of tungsten for Britain.19 Tungsten supplies from Portugal for the production of ammunition went to the Allies and to a lesser extent to Nazi Germany.20 Otherwise, Nazi Germany relied on its stockpiles to overcome its inability to access many strategic minerals during the war.21 Food production in the British empire was tied to British austerity policies. Food production in East Africa and Egypt, moreover, was essential for the military campaigns in North Africa and the Middle East. Tanganyika is a case in point. Its maize was exported to feed the Allied troops in these regions.22 The examples in the preceding account show that wartime demand enhanced already existing complementarities within colonial empires, and in the cases of Belgium and Portugal across colonial empires. However, trading relationships were highly volatile. Blockades and the hazards of attacks from enemy ships affected transport during wartime. What is more, ships were sometimes not available even for goods considered essential for the war effort. As some regions became more accessible than others, the existing supply channels became modified and monopolized by the war parties. The complementarities in terms of the wartime provision of raw materials are mirrored in the structure of payments relations. Analysing the arrangements and strategies of war finance requires paying attention to tropical Asia and Africa. During the Second World War, the Allies operated with a two-pronged method to deal with costs ensuing from military operations and supply logistics to avoid the ominous wartime debts and post-war repayments of the First World War. One method was lend-lease between the Allies, the mutual provision of military facilities between different members of the alliance. The other less widely known mechanism of war finance was reciprocal aid, which crucially involved colonial empires in the provision of manpower and raw materials.23 To some extent, goods were provided for wartime uses without being paid for. In other cases, the countries that provided materials were

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foregoing their consumption during the war. As a result of so-called unrequited exports, huge sterling balances accrued to Britain as the consequence of the role played by British colonies as providers of materials and personnel during the war. Britain’s wartime indebtedness, or, put conversely, the role of British colonies as creditors to Britain was most pronounced with regard to India, which held more than half of the sterling balances in 1945.24 Moreover, Egypt held almost one-fifth of the sterling balances.25 Already during the war, the sterling balances held by British colonies in Sub-Saharan Africa, namely by West African and East African colonies in roughly equal measure, increased to about 10 percent in 1945. However, their level was dwarfed by that of Indian sterling balances and soared only after the war.26 Besides, other countries played a quantitatively less important but specific role in similar arrangements. These countries included Brazil and Argentina.27 And Portugal’s sterling balances in London were related to sales of tungsten to Britain.28

1600

1400

1200

India/Pakistan/Ceylon

1000

Egypt Malaya

800

Colonial West and East Africa Portugal 600 Brazil 400

200

0

1940

1941

1942

1943

1944

1945

Figure 6.1 Main Holders of Sterling Balances, 1940–1945 (₤ Million). Source: Based on data in Marcelo de Paiva Abreu, “Britain as a Debtor: Indian Sterling Balances, 1940–53,” Economic History Review 70, no. 2 (2017), 586–92; H.A. Shannon, “Sterling Balances of the Sterling Area, 1939–49,” Economic Journal 60, no. 239 (1950), 550; Judd Polk, Sterling: Its Meaning in World Finance (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 67; Abreu, “A ‘Blank Cheque?’ Portuguese Second World War Sterling Balances, 1940–73,” Economic History Review 67, no. 2 (2014), 540; and Abreu, “Brazil as a Creditor: Sterling Balances, 1940–1952,” Economic History Review 43, no. 3 (1990), 453. These sources convey territorial subdivisions based on Bank of England data. Official publications, however, often focused on regional aggregates rather than territorial figures.

Continuities in the Second World War 253 With regard to payments settlements, it is noteworthy that not all colonial raw materials were being channelled directly to Britain or used as war supplies in the various military campaigns. Some exports flowed to the United States, and in this way, earned dollars which Britain used on imports, as was the case, for instance, with exports from the Gold Coast.29 Portugal’s colonial escudo zone shows similar relationships. On the one hand, unrequited exports to Portugal increased, notably in raw cotton. On the other hand, Portuguese colonies exported materials to the dollar area in order to obtain hard currency for the Portuguese economy.30 To some extent, the war generated export surpluses due to increased demand. But wartime also prompted austerity policies in a boom due to the restriction of imports and price inflation.31 Gold flows from South Africa to Britain were requited by goods; no South African sterling balances accumulated in London.32 The situation was different for gold exploited in the colonies of Free France, which in fact reduced the latter’s post-war payments obligation vis-à-vis Britain. However, here, unlike in South Africa, trade-offs needed to be made between mining gold and exploiting materials directly relevant to the war effort.33 Moreover, both Vichy France and Free France relied on various other means to raise finance in colonies, as will be discussed further. The Nazi war machinery, meanwhile, transferred considerable amounts of foreign currency and gold reserves from Nazi-occupied Europe to Germany. These plundered assets served to pay for imports of materials and supported Germany’s domestic economy during the war.34

Organizing supplies and arranging payments The need to organize raw material resources for the military campaigns and the domestic economy as the “home front” not only refocused existing supply channels from the tropics and subtropics. The war also foregrounded resource management and payments relations. To some extent, these too show continuities with established economic policies in colonial empires in the attempt to gear overseas relationships to support nation-states in Europe. However, the specific conditions in the war also prompted contradictions and ambiguities in the organization of channels of supplies and payments arrangements. In terms of logistics, war economies needed to adapt rapidly to the changing circumstances of the war, though often failed to do so. All cases under review show how the normality of existing pre-war designs and practices of economic steering were adapted to wartime conditions. This held true for Britain’s colonial supply management and sterling arrangements as it did for the colonial war economies of Vichy France and Free France and for the resource and payments arrangements in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The policy process shows some continuity in the political and expert debates on policy strategies. The regions outside the core national territory which

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mattered for economic policies in wartime, though, markedly differed between the Allied and Axis powers. In 1939, Britain’s organization of war supplies from the dominions and colonies built on the contingency preparations that had been made for this case in the mid-1930s, namely in the Committee of Imperial Defence and the deliberations at the Imperial Conference of 1937. The planning had been advocated by imperial unionists, who not only emphasized the clash between imperial Britain and Nazi Germany but also saw Germany’s hegemony over Eastern Europe as legitimate for a rising global economic power.35 Conservatives, like Leo Amery, had also underscored the economic importance of African colonies for Britain, against the view of liberal economic officials, like Frederick Leith-Ross. Amery insisted that colonial Africa was the domain Britain needed to fall back on in times of economic crisis, notably war.36 The depression had put pay to Joseph Chamberlain’s pre-1914 vision of African development. However, when war broke out, and especially when Japan advanced in Southeast Asia, British planning needed to rely on India and Africa, for resources, troops, and financial support. India played a decisive and diverse role in the British war effort, from the manufacturing of small arms and ammunitions to the supply of clothing for the troops. The country contributed the Indian army, whose soldiers fought in Asia and to a lesser extent in Europe. The costs for operations by the Indian army in the defence of India were covered by the colony’s budget. South Africa, by contrast, successfully avoided bearing operational costs for the war of the Allies, and agreed to cover some of the costs for South Africa troops in North Africa and the Middle East only in 1943. Political opposition in South Africa against covering these costs were exacerbated by factions in the settler state favourably inclined towards Nazi Germany and sceptical of the country’s alliance with imperial Britain.37 The majority of supplies from India showed up on the payments side as Indian sterling balances held in London. In principle, these balances constituted a claim on the British balances of payments that would need to be met after the war ended. There was considerable controversy during the war regarding Indian sterling balances, and immediately after the war in connection with the Anglo-American loan agreement and the Indian sterling balances negotiations, notably between John Maynard Keynes and Amery.38 Opinions were divided as to the wisdom of allowing the accumulation of such balances. Keynes had warned against the mechanism early in the war; Amery, however, argued that imperial Britain would re-emerge strongly after the war and needed not to worry about ensuing claims on the economy, since post-war India would purchase capital goods from Britain.39 The question was also whether Britain would ever need to honour these debts or might simply cancel them, arguing that their accumulation resulted from a common war effort that

Continuities in the Second World War 255 ought not to distinguish between different national burdens. Keynes advocated the cancellation of wartime sterling balances before his death in 1946. With regard to resources from Africa, the British Ministry of Supply attempted to create monopolies, notably for copper and rubber, and to increase output in resource exploitation. Part of rubber supplies did come from the British mandate of Cameroun. However, the larger extent of rubber was produced in French mandates and colonies, and in the Belgian Congo, and was supplemented by rubber from the US Firestone company in Liberia. In the case of the Belgian Congo, Britain bartered manufactured goods against strategic minerals.40 But obtaining rubber supplies from Africa for the British war effort also involved associating French colonial production in a subservient role. With this objective, the British Ministry pressured the colonies of de Gaulle’s Free France to increase output. Agreements covered the supply of cotton, rubber, and palm oil, among others.41 Through supplying rubber from its colonies, Free France made an important contribution to the British and Allied war effort. At the same time, however, the Allies fought to liberate metropolitan France from the Vichy regime. Britain agreed to support the Gaullist movement, covering its expenses. However, this came at the risk of a political and not only a financial dependence on Britain by a future Gaullist government in France. During the war, de Gaulle transferred gold from production in Gabon to the Caisse centrale de la France libre located near the Bank of England in London’s Threadneedle Street. The aim was arguably to accumulate gold that could be used in peacetime as an economic reassurance against political dependence. The strategy, though, also undermined the Allies’ war effort, since it conflicted with measures aimed at enhancing the output of strategic war materials. What is more, stockpiling the gold withdrew it from the circulation that could have allowed Free France to obtain dollars to pay for imports, though some gold flowed into war finance in the form of subscriptions to British war bonds.42 More generally, the question of controlling supply channels involved expectations regarding the course and outcome of the war. The strategies used by António Salazar, the dictator of the nominally neutral Portuguese state, in its African colonies, are instructive in this connection. Exports from Portuguese colonies to the United States, in particular of copra, sisal, and rubber, were important for Portugal’s economy, not least since prices were high.43 In this sense, continuities with earlier periods are visible in the development of colonial export markets. Minerals, including copper, manganese, and gold, became a privileged area of exploitation during the war. In the vegetable oil sector, production was intensified. German and Italian firms were among those involved in the exploitation of sisal, though Salazar ultimately decided these should be taken over by Portuguese firms.44 The context of

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the war accounts for the shift in strategy. Early in the war, Salazar feared that Britain, South Africa, or even Nazi Germany might occupy the Portuguese colonies. He was not alone in being wary of the foreign occupation of colonies. In Africa, in different episodes, Vichy France feared occupation by Nazi Germany or by Allied troops (and regarding Madagascar rightly so), and Britain worried about possible attacks by Nazi Germany on independent Liberia, its own colonies, or indeed on those of Portugal.45 Franco Spain’s neutrality, meanwhile, had tactical advantages for a possible later intervention on the side of the Axis powers with the intention of enlarging a Spanish colonial empire in Africa. Ports on the Canary Islands served to supply war materials to Germany, notably fuel and rubber, as an extension to similar arrangements with Portugal.46 With regard to the tungsten exports from mainland Portugal, Salazar steered a course that allowed sales to both the Allies and Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany compensated supplies in barter deals or paid in Swiss francs.47 Britain did so via a special Anglo-Portuguese payments agreement, which included a clause stipulating that the accruing balances would be settled in gold after the war. Due to wartime conditions, British officials initially worried that Portugal would refuse to accumulate sterling balances; later they worried about their very accumulation, even if Portuguese balances amounted to less than half of those accumulated by African colonies during the war. With regard to Portugal, too, Keynes favoured cancellation after the war. However, the Anglo-Portuguese sterling agreement with a confidential gold clause remained in operation after the war, though there was a phased reduction of the Portuguese sterling balances over twenty years.48 Mutually conflicting arrangements with neutral countries had their own logic. The need for the Allies to obtain specific timers for bombs, for instance, required to keep the Swiss franc a convertible currency, thus allowing Swiss francs to be used by Nazi Germany for some raw material purchases.49 More direct contradictions existed, too. The British rubber manufacturer Dunlop was able to sell tyres to Nazi Germany throughout the war.50 These purchases, however, cost Germany foreign currency. On the Axis side, the organization of supplies in the colonies of Vichy France in Africa exhibited special payments arrangements between 1939 and 1941, and shows ambiguities between Vichy and Nazi Germany on that matter. War finance in Vichy France included forced subscriptions to war bonds in colonies which, therefore, became known locally as forcements.51 Colonial supplies from Africa were being gradually reorganized and an attempt was made to maintain the uses of rubber exports from Indochina for metropolitan France. An increasing body of research on the subject concludes, however, that Vichy officials were reluctant to associate French colonies in a specific support role for the Nazi war and successful in keeping Nazi pressure at bay.52 One of the reasons was that

Continuities in the Second World War 257 Vichy officials in the colonies feared that Nazi influence would inevitably undermine France’s colonial position in Africa. They were wary of allowing Nazi Germany entry points into formal colonial rule. Regarding the dwindling rubber supplies from Japanese-occupied Indochina, Vichy was able to ensure that the rubber was exported to France, a part of which was resold to Nazi Germany for dollars.53 However, Vichy terminated the operations of German and Italian firms in the mandate of French Cameroun. There, German firms had joined French enterprises in the second half of the 1930s, notably in the exploitation of timber, for which Germany needed to import half of its resources, for which the Białoweża forest in Eastern Poland constituted an alternative.54 The relevant resource links were organized by Kurt Weigelt, who was a deputy director at Deutsche Bank. During the First World War, he had been in charge of the commission securing resources of oils and fats.55 Weigelt had been an expert on colonial raw materials, and particularly on the nexus between currency management and raw material acquisition, adopting a position similar to Schacht.56 While German and Italian agents infiltrated some Portuguese and British colonies, Vichy France in West Africa steered a course that tried to reconcile relations with Britain and the United States. Earlier designs of collaboration that intended to bring technical experts from Germany into the administration in Vichy colonies to promote economic development were not carried out.57 With regard to the Allies, too, officials in Vichy France worried that opposing them might jeopardize the existence of France’s colonial empire in Africa. This attitude was mirrored in Vichy’s approach to Nazi propaganda. In West Africa, Vichy censored Nazi propaganda more strictly than in metropolitan France. And in West Africa, Indochina, and among prisoners of war in France, Vichy attempted to counter the anti-colonial effect of the war by Nazi and Japanese propaganda, respectively.58 Certain aspects of the wider complex of Nazi Germany’s war finance belong here because of certain continuities with debates in the 1930s about raw material resources and payments in terms of conceptions, techniques, and expert opinion. In Nazi Germany, as in Britain, external payments mechanisms arguably contributed substantially to the financing of the Nazi war, and more so than hitherto assumed. One method through which Germany financed the war were forced credits from occupied territories and clearing arrangements. A detailed assessment has estimated that such arrangements, which covered manufactured imports from occupied territories in Western Europe, amounted to about 20 percent of Germany’s GDP in 1943–1944. More importantly, for the present purpose, and even less researched, however, is the extent to which raw materials from occupied territories in Eastern and Southeastern Europe were directly channeled to the war effort without being registered in any German payments statistics. Among others, petroleum exports from Romania for the war in Russia were part of this trade.59

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Italy’s war effort used the materials stockpiled before the war.60 However, in the case of the Italian lire zone in Albania during the war, Italy benefitted not only directly from the plunder of the Albanian gold reserves. Albania operated on a lira exchange standard similar to the Indian sterling (gold exchange) standard discussed in chapter 4. Therefore, the Bank of Albania was no longer able to invoke the gold clause for payments in view of the weak Italian lira as it had been able to do before its currency reserves were exclusively held in lire.61

Colonial development for the European war The organization of the war effort in Europe can also be traced within the colonies. Maximizing raw material exploitation according to the changing requirements of the war required policies to control labour. The war highlighted the legacies of coercive colonial practices but limited their acceptance and made contradictions in these policies apparent. The war accentuated the very relations that underpinned colonial rule, namely in associating and controlling external economies for an imperial core polity. This support was coincidental in the sense that it was governed by the demand for war materials. However, this factor converged with the assumption in imperial governance that colonial labour control was elastic, even if colonial officials worried that undue strain might trigger political unrest in colonies. Recruiting colonial soldiers for the military campaigns raised concerns among colonial and imperial officials not only for this reason, though. Officials also saw risks in undermining a colonial system that hinged on assumptions of racial difference. Debates harked back to discussions about racial “contamination” and political conflict emanating for Britain from the “detribalization” of “pre-modern” societies in Africa. The need for colonial labour for war production was not in doubt. How to obtain and retain labour and make efficient use of labourers, however, was the subject of much debate. Approaches to colonial labour show some parallels but also important differences to the “home fronts.” Social and legal categories governed policy approaches, notably the difference between subjects and citizens, and the regime for prisoners of war, as did assumptions that some labour was expendable due to ethnic, racial, or political difference. Nonetheless, the war shows commonalities between the different colonial empires in approaches to labour. Some similarities also existed between forced labour in colonial production for the war and practices of slave labour in Nazi Germany. In Africa, the war prompted an intense recruitment of soldiers. Imperial powers had long relied on local armies, such as the Indian army and the Kenyan King’s African Rifles in the British case and the tirailleurs sénégalais for France. About two and a half million soldiers from India and one million soldiers from Africa participated in the Second World War. However, about a quarter of these soldiers came from Italian

Continuities in the Second World War 259 East Africa, namely from Eritrea and Somalia, and from Ethiopia, which Fascist Italy had occupied in 1935.62 In Europe’s colonies in Africa, reinforced recruitment practices during the war often amounted to forced conscription. In principle, Vichy France, Free France, and Fascist Italy operated a policy of conscription for which chiefs were crucial and urged on by colonial officials with quotas to provide soldiers. In British colonies, joining the army was voluntary. But district commissioners, too, had to meet quotas. Africans were incited, tricked, and forced into military service. Recruits were often social outsiders rounded up in urban areas or in mines.63 Colonial soldiers were essential for the war effort, but occupied subservient roles in the military and in labour battalions.64 Only a handful of black soldiers from British colonies and dominions did make it to the rank of officer during the war.65 Black recruits from British colonies fought for Europe mainly in East Africa, North Africa, the Middle East, and Burma (Myanmar), rather than in the European theatres of war. Attitudes to race played a role in assessing the suitability for specific types of service for African and black soldiers. In the British army, troops were initially organized in racially segregated units for fear of racial tensions and their corrosive effect on fighting prowess. For the same reason, though, this principle was later relaxed, and not fully adhered to in East Africa.66 Vichy France reinforced racial views latent in the Third Republic, and at times also gave in to Nazi pressure demanding racial segregation.67 Organizing the war effort necessitated securing sufficient access to labour, and the recruitment of workers shows similarities to the search for military manpower. Not only was the need for workers in some cases directly related to military operations and the maintenance of the military infrastructure. Labour was also often conscripted, and soldiers were conscripted as labourers. African soldiers served in labour battalions for military support roles, such as the Native Military Labour Corps.68 In British colonial Africa, the Compulsory Service (Essential Works) Regulations allowed the forced conscription of personnel for food production, as cooks, nurses, or clerks. This affected over 50,000 people in East Africa alone.69 In Southern Rhodesia, labour corps built airfields, since the territory served for training purposes of Britain’s Royal Air Force. For this work, recruits were paid, though less than farm labourers, the lowest paid labour in the economy. Later in the war, labour was also conscripted for Rhodesian farms under the Compulsory Native Labour Act.70 The war heightened state involvement in labour control in marked contrast to the 1930s. War triggered old coercive reflexes in approaches to colonial labour, especially in Africa. But labour was also consciously managed in the wartime environment. The structuring of the war effort helps to account for strike action in some sectors and regions. The response by colonial authorities to such protests had its logic. According to the

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requirement of resources and need for labour, coercion alternated with incentives, and the suppression of labour activism was complemented by wider access to imported consumer goods.71 Specific contexts are important for this analysis. The exploitation of strategic minerals boosted the search for labour for mines in regions in which mining had previously not been important, namely in French Equatorial Africa and Portuguese Africa. For instance, colonial officials in Free French Africa were under strong pressure from the British Ministry of Supply to increase output and ensure that workers were available. Felix Eboué, the Caribbean governor of French Equatorial Africa, complained about this attitude.72 As in numerous episodes of the colonial past, chiefs were involved in mobilizing the community, including women and school children, to engage in informal economic activities. The collection of wild rubber and palm fruit became a form of community work under an assumed traditional authority. These activities occurred alongside the more formal recruitment of labour for plantations and in the mines and of labour organized for public works, infrastructure, and porterage for wartime needs. Forms of forced labour during the Second World War mirrored approaches to colonial labour before 1914. Forced labour is an aggregate term for a range of coercive and compulsory labour regimes. Such policies had been rationalized in colonial doctrine and practice in various ways. In French colonies in Africa, the practices of corvée labour was an obligation to work for essential community needs. Labour was at times also a substitute for taxation. Taxes were normally paid in cash, and occasionally in kind. But the prestation in French and Belgian colonies was a tax payment imposed in the form of a labour service, a labour “duty” in the double meaning of the term. In the French Sudan under Vichy in 1941–1942, for instance, half of the recruited soldiers formed part of what French colonialism called the deuxième portion du contingent, working to build transport infrastructure in the colony.73 Such arrangements in both wartime and peacetime were not covered by the International Labour Office’s convention on forced labour of 1930.74 The war raised again the spectre of the human rights abuses in the Belgian Congo related to the collection of wild rubber in the 1890s and 1900s. Yet, the very fact that demand was so inelastic in sectors like minerals and rubber meant that policy-makers needed to innovate in their methods on how to control and retain labour that was no longer expendable. Policy approaches varied considerably under the different conditions in regions and sectors. It has been argued for Free French colonies, for example, that the global market place made itself felt in the payment of high prices for rubber and relatively high wages in parallel to the use of coercive measures. Policy oscillated between coercion and incentives in order to secure wartime labour for the exploitation of natural resources. French colonialism also changed legal provisions during the war. Laws

Continuities in the Second World War 261 prescribing punishment for leaving work were no longer used; instead, control was exerted by invoking laws against vagrancy.75 The colonial legacies of outsourcing labour control show commonalities with labour support for the war effort in different national contexts. Gearing state employment to the war effort and measures scraping the barrel of available labour resources at a time when an important part of the male workforce was on war duty were common to all belligerent countries. However, while some legal arrangements in colonies resembled those in the metropoles, both regulations and practices in colonies also differed from those in the imperial centres. More often than not, work for the war in colonies amounted to slave labour. In this sense, some practices in colonies were similar to the use of slave labour from, and in, Nazioccupied countries in wartime Germany. In both cases, production or raw material exploitation occurred with the help of a coerced external labour force underpinned by racialized constructions in a servant-master relationship. Similar points are underscored by the fact that Nazi Germany’s planning for a future colonial empire was predicated on the question of labour control, though this planning envisaged a mixture of coercion and incentives attuned to the colonial economy.76 The coercive wartime organization of foreign labour in Germany resembled visions of the 1930s, including those of Schacht, on how Germany would be able to extract more economic uses from colonies than the existing colonial powers. The more efficient organization of labour with state regulation and coercion, whether in Africa or by coerced migration from Germany, was a part of these ideas.77 How African labour was expected to support wartime economic uses then reflected practices that, in one way or another, were widely followed during the war in Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Japan, though relevant research often ignores the imperial dimension.78 The contemporary state discourse represented this mobilization with reference to national communities of fate facing hardships. In colonial contexts, mobilization and coercion were closely entwined, not least because colonies, in developmental terms, were not part of the core nation. Nazism showed similar ethnic and political fault lines. During the Second World War, formal labour control became increasingly thwarted, however, because wartime economic organization was a catalyst of social change. Strikes reflected both the pressures on the workforce for increasing output in resource exploitation, and the realization of the growing relevance and bargaining power of labour activism. The mounting pressure labour was able to exert and its growing bargaining power manifested themselves especially in the formal sectors that mattered for the war, namely mining and transport. Here strikes frequently occurred and a labour proletariat formed. For instance, strikes affecting wartime infrastructure, such as harbours in East Africa and mines in Katanga and Northern Rhodesia, were consciously organized, and interpreted in that

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way by colonial officials rather than in terms of colonial rebellions.79 It is no coincidence that mining and transport constituted the sectors in which incentives were seen as expedient and required by imperial managers of the war effort. At the same time, however, colonial powers saw these economic sectors as politically particularly sensitive.80 Labour activists were imprisoned on conspiracy charges for undermining the war effort, essentially for breaking the particular bond of colonial loyalty. This loyalty was based on the assumed acceptance of the delineation that existed between imperial centre and colony. The contradiction inherent in colonialism that demanded allegiance but delineated colonies from the nation’s core of development became increasingly apparent during the war. The dilemma of the importance of colonies for European states by maintaining them as subservient control relations came to a head. Eventually, the war also prompted the search for means to ease the contradiction between imperial and colonial development, such as in Britain’s Colonial Development & Welfare arrangements and in de Gaulle’s Brazzaville discourse on colonial reforms by Free France. However, both initiatives were cosmetic changes rather than measures aimed at overcoming the dichotomy inherent in colonial development. Incentives also existed in the informal areas of palm oil and rubber collection. However, these were given mainly to chiefs and were, therefore, in line with the doctrine of British colonial rule which saw tribal, kinship-based Africa as a tool to secure political stability while ensuring resource extraction. Nonetheless, the war affected agricultural producers not only due to specific wartime needs, as in the production of sisal in East Africa, but more widely regarding food production, as in agricultural areas of Kenya, for instance, or in French Equatorial Africa. The enhanced demand for food allowed smallholders to obtain higher prices for their produce on the market. As a consequence, the transformation of some colonial economies through increases in domestic demand, which had begun in the 1930s, continued.81 Labour and the boundaries and dilemmas of colonial control, finally, became also visible within wartime Europe. The areas of employment and the treatment of colonial soldiers and prisoners of war (POWs) in Vichy France and of colonial POWs in Nazi Germany illustrates wartime economic priorities and the politics of imperial and quasi-imperial states.82 Nazi Germany captured about 15,000 POWs from French colonies.83 These were held in occupied France and generally treated in line with the Geneva Convention. As was the case with Jewish, Polish, and Spanish POWs, colonial POWs were mainly employed as substitutes for absent agricultural labour and in public works projects, apart from being directly involved in the exploitation of resources for the war, mainly coal and timber.84 However, Nazi Germany saw colonial POWs as politically less risky than those from Europe. For both Nazi Germany and Vichy France, POWs came to play a role that was embedded in the wider

Continuities in the Second World War 263 organization of relations between colonies and the imperial state. Nazi Germany employed Arab students for propaganda broadcasts in Arabic diffused in North Africa, and tried to influence colonial POWs by hiring Arab medical students for the camps.85 There was a correlation then between the circumstances of the war and the treatment of POWs in the transnational politics of colonial space. It has been argued that Vichy France improved the treatment of colonial POWs in relation to Germany’s propaganda initiatives because it feared German influence in French colonies.86

Planning for the post-war order The Second World War caused destruction and loss of life on a hitherto unprecedented scale and disrupted societies as well as economic relationships. There is a risk, however, to lose sight of the fact that state agency in the war was embedded in a continuing normality in terms of developmental conceptions of colonial empires and their control. To some extent, these conceptions prefigured visions of post-war imperial statehood. This held true for Britain and Free France, as it did for Vichy France in Africa and Nazi Germany in Eastern Europe, though in the cases of Germany, and Italy, the defeat in the war ultimately imposed a break with the past. War economies in Europe bear out continuities with the past, and indeed with the immediate post-war future, because wartime uses of overseas and colonial economies resembled those of colonial empires. Commodities, like rubber and vegetable oils, mattered during the war, as they had done before the outbreak of hostilities. Moreover, for payments settlements, empire had long been viewed as a potential tool of support. The Second World War enhanced Africa’s relevance to Europe. In the case of Britain, Africa’s role had been disputed by liberals but emphasized by imperial unionists in the 1930s, especially in view of a wartime scenario. At the same time, however, the war changed economic conditions in Africa. On the one hand, austerity policies aggravated the social malaise. On the other hand, war economies provided the basis for new economic activities and for building new alliances between economic agents. In Britain, the war strengthened ideas of development based on African smallholder producers as the backbone of an emerging African contribution to empire. Vichy France rekindled a version of the French mise-envaleur in development planning, including ambitions for certain forms of industrial development in Africa. These doctrines were becoming modified as the result of both the experience of the depression of the 1930s and the Second World War. Still, imperial states continued to assume that they would be able to shape future development overseas, notably in Africa. Vichy’s so-called nationalist revolution in France went along with conscious development planning in the colonies. Only about 10 percent of the

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total budget allocated for development flowed to the colonies. However, there was a ten-year plan for African development (1941–1952), though few provisions of the plan were implemented during the war.87 The main focus of the plan was infrastructure development in transport and communications in order to facilitate the export of agrarian resources from the colonies, during the war especially vegetable oils. For post-war development, Vichy envisaged limited colonial economic autonomy through local textile production for markets in West Africa and rubber processing. These ideas resembled those developed in the late 1930s by Paul Bernard for Indochina and discussed under the government of the Popular Front in France.88 The exploitation of forestry resources in West Africa, moreover, became especially important for Vichy development.89 This resource had considerable historical depth in France as well as Germany. Timber was used for wood gas vehicles, such as tractors, trucks, and cars, for instance, by the French firm Imbert.90 In the late 1930s, exploiting colonial raw materials had led to initiatives of the private sector in France and Germany in view of cooperating in the exploitation of West African vegetable fats, wood resources, and perhaps the mining for minerals. In Germany. These initiatives implicated businesses like IG Farben, related to Deutsche Bank, and were pursued by Weigelt, as already discussed. Under the generals Pierre Boisson and Maxime Weygand, though, Vichy rule in West Africa and North Africa steered a course that sought to immunize French colonies from Nazi influence. The initiatives on colonial cooperation in Germany point to continuities from pre-1914 Germany to Nazi rule in the 1930s and the Second World War. These projects also suggest similarities in the use of external economic spaces in conceptions of Germany’s development regarding colonial Africa and Eastern Europe. During the war, Nazi Germany operated on the assumption of a division of labour between the Axis powers. Italy would be in charge of its colonies, and Vichy responsible for the French colonies. Nonetheless, at the beginning of the 1940s, Nazi planning shifted to the state to prepare for the organization of future German colonies. Weigelt’s career and development conceptions epitomized the continuities in the orientation of these plans, from his affiliation with the German colonial ministry before 1914, his membership of the state’s oils and fats commission during the First World War, his function as a board member at Deutsche Bank and interaction with industries from IG Farben to Krupp, and his directorship of the Deko-Gruppe, founded in 1936, a group that united former colonial enterprises.91 In 1940, the Deko-Gruppe embarked on planning for the future exploitation of vegetable fats, forestry resources, rubber, and some minerals, in coordination with the minister of economic affairs, Hermann Göring.92 The main objective was to maximize the use for Germany of colonial economies and colonial labour. This strategy was in line with claims since the early twentieth century that under German expertise colonial resources

Continuities in the Second World War 265 would be more efficiently geared towards the metropolitan economy than in other colonial empires.93 In 1937, Weigelt had charted resources of timber and fats for Cameroun, Togo, Nigeria, French Equatorial Africa and the Belgian Congo to argue about the potential of Africa for Germany’s national economy.94 During the Second World War, Nazi propaganda for colonial raw materials extended to the Wehrmacht. There was a special knapsack brochure (Tornisterschrift) on “colonial politics today,” which, among others, informed soldiers about the increasing importance of Cameroun as a potential supplier of rubber, timber, palm oil, palm kernels, cocoa, and bananas.95 Forestry resources, meanwhile, indicate long-term continuities in the ways in which Eastern Europe, notably Poland, and Central Africa converged in the exploitation and planning of raw material support areas for Germany. As in France, timber was sought for a range of uses: for construction, as fibre in chemical industries, and as an energy resource to create engine fuel. The primeval forest of Białoweża in Poland had been exploited early in the century and especially during the First World War with the help of slave labour. In 1940, Göring again turned to these projects in resource planning.96 There were parallels here between subservient raw material zones and planning based on the assumption of racial difference.97 According to Nazi propaganda, German welfare was best served by following this model of economic and political organization of Europe, with industrial Germany at the centre and subservient economies on the periphery, whether in Eastern Europe or Africa.98 Ultimately, in Nazi planning for the future, as in the national-liberal one in the past, the German entrepreneurial spirit drove economic progress in conjunction with rigorous state regulation and political domination. In Weigelt’s views in particular one can see converging conceptions in economic organization between the global Germany of the Industrieestaat of the 1900s and the “Greater Germany” of the Nazis, including in its eastward expansion. During the war, Weigelt reported on Deko-Gruppe planning for cotton projects in Southern Russia along colonial lines, and asked colonial experts to get involved.99 Speculation made colonial enterprise attractive in 1940. During the Second World War, enterprises in Northern Germany that had engaged in trade with Africa and the German colonies before 1914 shifted their attention to Poland as an alternative which they conceived of as a quasi-colonial environment. Hamburg firms were planning for a post-war order in the East. The head of the colonial policy office (Kolonialpolitisches Amt, KPA), Ritter von Epp, asked colonial firms to become active in East and Southeastern Europe during the war. The German East Africa Company (DOAG) became involved in trade in Polish Galicia during the Second World War.100 However, there were exceptions. From a nationalistic liberal perspective, Schacht saw the colonial domination of Africa as an alternative to, rather than in conjunction with Germany’s eastward expansion, which he deemed to be economically futile.101

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In Britain, the war not only reinforced links between supplies from Africa and the British economy but also reactivated ideas of development prevalent at the beginning of the twentieth century. Planning for development in the colonies harked back to Fabian doctrines to boost agricultural output in colonies. Fabian reformers had influenced Joseph Chamberlain’s ideas of developing what he called the “imperial estate.” Planning for post-war colonies agreed upon at the end of the 1930s abandoned the principle of colonial self-sufficiency for the new Colonial Development & Welfare acts. Initiatives in Nigeria to create a state-led colonial development cooperation in Africa started in 1944.102 In all these respects, the war prefigured the attention given to Africa by economic planners during the sterling crises of the late 1940s. Continuities in state agency and development doctrines are one thing; the impact of the Second World War on economies and economic activities is quite another, though. The war changed how economies were and could be organized, also offering new opportunities for economic activities that varied significantly in their economic effect. War economies showed the impact of the politics of entitlements, sometimes in a dramatic manner. Such a case of a colonial war economy is exemplified by the case of the Bengal famine in 1944, which caused massive loss of life due to the prioritizing of the provision and pricing of staple foods, namely rice, for the urban population and at the expense of rural Bengal.103 In this case, the often-stressed “common cause” in wartime had disastrous repercussions, whereas in others, it amounted to generalized austerity or gave economic sectors a boost. The latter was the case in parts of East Africa and in South Africa, while the former affected those regions whose economies did not fit in with the direct or indirect demand stimuli of the war. In South Africa, the war allowed iron and steel industries to emerge as a growth sector in the economy.104 Keynes saw South Africa as a war profiteer because it did not subject itself to the burden-sharing of the Allied war effort, instead seeking to benefit from economic niches prioritized by the war.105 In Portugal, relations with the colonies during the war boosted textile production and encouraged visions for an industrial Portuguese economy after the war.106 In Britain and France, official views of a “common cause” between the colonies and the imperial state, which had loosened in the 1930s, strengthened again in the course of the war. The transformation that occurred in terms of economic and social structure hardly filtered through to the level of colonial and imperial policy and doctrine. The British welfare state that had its roots in wartime was an imperial state in which welfarism was mainly geared towards the national centre. De Gaulle’s Free France, too, rekindled the colonial pact. Ironically, Free France followed Vichy’s development plans for Africa at the Brazzaville conference in 1944, which discussed the future constitution of France’s colonial empire with colonial governors in Africa in the light of the

Continuities in the Second World War 267 continent’s contribution to France’s liberation.107 In Germany before 1914, building the economy had included conceptions of external support realms by associating colonial economies with that of the nation. In the absence of colonies, the German state of the 1920s and 1930s emphasized domestic technological innovation but still adhered to different forms of hegemonic conceptions. During the Nazi war, the legacies of colonial entrepreneurship shifted to Eastern Europe and state planning for hypothetical colonies in Africa lingered on. After Germany’s defeat in the Second World War, economy building became more inward-looking but also regional and bound up in West Germany with the US-led construction of the post-war liberal economic order.108 After the demise of the fascist state, Italy experienced a similar economic reordering and, in addition, needed to withdraw from Italian East Africa and repatriate its officials and migrants.109

Pre-war to post-war statehood: A synthesis The Second World War shows more continuities than ruptures, when viewed from the angle of how European imperial states engaged with their tropical colonies, and utilized them to ease supply shortages and payments problems in the home economies. What is more, as in the First World War, once hostilities had broken out, the economic and territorial reordering of colonial empires was deemed possible by state officials and their experts. On the whole, conceptions for post-war statehood in individual imperial states mirrored those of earlier periods. Officials envisaged some adjustments but no radical changes. Policy-makers did not anticipate that shifts in the international economic architecture might affect relations with colonial economies. Nor did they realize that economic and political changes in colonies might limit the leverage they could exert on imperial economic organization. Policy-makers were largely oblivious to the potential effects of the wartime politics of extraction in colonies. In some cases, though, as notably France in Indochina, imperial states were literally forced to face the immediate consequences of global conflict in ensuing wars. In essence, the imperial model of the major nation-states in Europe survived the war. In Britain and France, the functional conception of imperial economies combining complementary industrial sectors in the centre and raw materials areas in colonies was similar before and immediately after the war. In fact, national-imperial economic organization epitomized how the world economy was supposed to work. Conceptions of national development continued to be conceptions of imperial development. Policy-makers in Britain contemplated, for instance, some political concessions to India as compensation for its role in the war. However, the main economic relationships did not enter these considerations. Winston Churchill perpetuated the opinion that Britain, the small island, carried

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India through the war, without mentioning the wartime financial arrangements.110 The concept of Greater France in 1945, too, was one of economic complementarities between colonies and France, showing a renewed attempt to organize the imperial economy more rationally for the metropolitan one, though empire was now confined to Africa, as France’s relations with Indochina were marred by war. In Portugal, exploring complementarities with industrial sectors in the centre was still in its infancy. The Belgian Congo, meanwhile, played the role of a raw materials hub for the economies of the Allies. In the cases of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, conceptions of imperial statehood were ultimately only stopped from being realized by military defeat. As soon as the war in Europe had broken out, German policy-makers had harked back to the period before 1914 in planning for the post-war future. In the early 1940s, the Nazi party’s colonial think tank discussed regulations for colonial currency for the Reichsbank for hypothetical German colonies.111 These initiatives occurred in parallel to the search for a grand economic reordering at the European level. The German state was conceived of as the central organizer of quasi-colonial economic spaces in Eastern Europe, which was also reflected in propaganda campaigns depicting Germany’s industrial economy supported by East European agriculture as the future vanguard of world development. During the war, such an economic organization by the state was arguably required for practical reasons alone in order to allow Nazi Germany to sustain its war effort.112 Fascist Italy’s war bore out the continuation of the Ethiopian conquest in the concept of the inherent role of violence in fascist empire but also show other continuities in empire building. Albania was the wartime model for a fascist Italian empire in the Balkans, exhibiting similarities with the colonial civilizing mission of liberal Italy. Albanian nationalism was associated with an imperial community under the aegis of Italy rather than subjected to central control. Other regions of the Balkans, however, were forcibly subjected to the Italian version of Albanian nationalism. The model was a part of the fascist practice of legislating empire according to ethnic and racial hierarchies, claiming to correct the errors of ancient Rome while creating empire in its image.113 The Italian state’s wartime agency was also reflected in economic emergency measures geared towards patching up the war effort, whether in the Balkans or in Africa. In both Nazism and fascism, violence and coercion related to these measures and fed on these contexts. What changed, however, partly as a result of the war, were some of the parameters within which imperial states operated and which in the medium term transformed their characteristics. Three factors are particularly relevant. In the colonies, the war left legacies of economic extraction geared towards yet another European war, including those of war finance in the form of forced credits and sterling balances. These facts clashed with the

Continuities in the Second World War 269 colonial discourse of imperial solidarity. The war, moreover, changed patterns of production in certain colonies, for instance giving some economic actors in Africa a more prominent role and thus laying the foundations for a political mobilization beyond small Western educated elites. Labour activism allowed elites to tap a new political potential in order to open a closed colonial system, even if elite and labour interests rarely converged and labourers remained marginalized in the new states. Indirectly, finally, the extent of wartime destruction in Europe, together with the memory of national antagonisms as the cause of the conflict, meant that national economies in Europe formed differently after the war from before the war. Post-war statehood ushered in regional economic cooperation in Europe in contrast to national economy building that associated support regions across the world with rivalling nations in Europe as had happened in the late nineteenth century. These factors worked themselves through the fabric of state organization, eventually transforming the characteristics of statehood in Europe. The next two chapters will argue this case. Policy-makers in imperial states grappled with the social consequences of wartime production methods, such as in Kenya. They also struggled to reconcile new demands for colonial development with the attempt to make colonial economies conducive to metropolitan economy building, and, in the 1950s, reassessed the ways in which national economies in Europe related to the wider world.

Notes 1 An early influential text on Britain is Michael Cowen and Nicholas Westcott, “British Imperial Economic Policy during the War,” in David Killingray and Richard Rathbone, eds., Africa and the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1986), 20–67. A range of perspectives on Africa are covered in Judith A. Byfield, Carolyn A. Brown, Timothy Parsons and Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, eds., Africa and World War II (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2015). For France, see Eric T. Jennings, Free French Africa in World War II: the African Resistance (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2014). For the British empire, see also Ashley Jackson, Yasmin Khan, and Gajendra Singh, eds., An Imperial World at War: Aspects of the British Empire’s War Experience, 1939–1945 (London: Routledge, 2017). 2 Eric Jennings, “Extraction in Equatorial Africa and Cameroon under Free French Rule,” in Judith A. Byfield, Carolyn A. Brown, Timothy Parsons and Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, eds., Africa and World War II (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2015), 206, and Jennings, Free French Africa, 181–2. 3 Jennings, Free French Africa, 181. For the wider picture, see Jacques Cantier and Eric Jennings, L’Empire colonial sous Vichy (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2004), 34. See also Martin Thomas, The French Empire at War, 1940–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), which is, however, less clear in its analytical focus. 4 See chapter 5. 5 Jennings, Free French Africa, 181. For a contemporary account on substitute materials in Nazi Germany, see Olaf Nissen, Germany – Land of Substitutes (London: The Scientific Book Club, 1944).

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6 Stephen L. Harp, A World History of Rubber (Oxford: Wiley Blackwell, 2016), 105–7; also William G. Clarence-Smith, “Synthetic and Temperate Rubber in the Interwar Years and during the Second World War,” Journal of Global History 5, no. 1 (2010), 171–76. 7 Judith A. Byfield, “Producing for the War,” in Judith A. Byfield, Carolyn A. Brown, Timothy Parsons and Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, eds, Africa and World War II (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2015), 30. 8 Malyn Newitt, “The Portuguese African Colonies during the Second World War,” in Judith A. Byfield, Carolyn A. Brown, Timothy Parsons and Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, eds, Africa and World War II (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2015), 229. 9 Byfield, “Producing,” 31–2. 10 A. Olorunfemi, “Effects of War-Time Trade Controls on Nigerian Cocoa Traders and Producers: A Case-Study of the Hazards of a Dependent Economy,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 13, no. 4 (1980), 672–87. 11 Allister Hinds, “Colonial Policy and Nigerian Cotton Exports, 1939–1951,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 29, no. 1 (1996), 30. 12 Newitt, “The Portuguese African colonies,” 225. 13 Nicholas Westcott, “The Impact of the Second World War on Tanganyika, 1939–49,” in David Killingray and Richard Rathbone, eds., Africa and the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1986), 146. 14 Leo Waibel, “The Political Significance of Tropical Vegetable Fats for the Industrial Countries of Europe,” Annals of the American Association of American Geographers 33, no. 2 (1943), 118–28. 15 Raymond Dumett, “Africa’s Strategic Minerals during the Second World War,” Journal of African History 26, no. 4 (1985), 405. 16 Dumett, “Africa’s Strategic Minerals,” 392–93. 17 Byfield, “Producing,” 25. 18 Dumett, “Africa’s Strategic Minerals,” 402; also Carolyn A. Brown, “African Labor in the Making of World War II,” in Judith A. Byfield, Carolyn A. Brown, Timothy Parsons and Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, eds, Africa and World War II (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2015), 41. 19 Dumett, “Africa’s Strategic Minerals,” 398–400. 20 Newitt, “The Portuguese African colonies,” 220. 21 Dumett, “Africa’s Strategic Minerals,” 382. 22 Westcott, “The impact,” 148. On Egypt: Emad Ahmed Helal, “Egypt’s Overlooked Contribution to World War II,” in Heike Liebau, Katrin Bromber, Katharina Lange, Dyala Hamza and Ravi Ahuja, eds., The World in World Wars: Experiences, Perceptions, and Perspectives from Africa and Asia (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 231. 23 For succinct analyses, see Cowen and Westcott, “British Imperial Economic Policy during the War,” and R.S. Sayers, Financial Policy, 1939–1945 (London: HMSO, 1954), ch.1. 24 Sayers, Financial Policy, ch.9; also Marcelo de Paiva Abreu, “Britain as a Debtor: Indian Sterling Balances, 1940–53,” Economic History Review 70, no. 2 (2017), 586–604. 25 Judd Polk, Sterling: Its Meaning in World Finance (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 67. 26 Cowen and Westcott, “British Imperial Economic Policy,” 30. 27 M. de Paiva Abreu, “Brazil as a Creditor: Sterling Balances, 1940–1952,” Economic History Review 43, no. 3 (1990), 450–69.

Continuities in the Second World War 271 28 Marcelo de Paiva Abreu, “A ‘Blank Cheque?’ Portuguese Second World War Sterling Balances, 1940–73,” Economic History Review 67, no. 2 (2014), 535–55. 29 Olorunfemi, “Effects,” 685. 30 Newitt, “The Portuguese African colonies,” 224. 31 See, for instance, David Anderson and David Throup, “Africans and Agricultural Production in Kenya: The Myth of the War as a Watershed,” Journal of African History 26, no. 4 (1985), 341–2. 32 Iain E. Johnston, “Gold and Dollars: Canada, South Africa and British War Finance,” in Jackson, Ashley, Khan, Yasmin and Gajendra Singh, eds., An Imperial World at War: Aspects of the British Empire’s War Experience, 1939–1945 (London: Routledge, 2017), 135–58. 33 Jennings, Free French Africa, ch.6. 34 Jonas Scherner, “Der deutsche Importboom während des Zweiten Weltkriegs. Neue Ergebnisse zur Struktur der Ausbeutung des besetzten Europas auf der Grundlage eine Neueinschätzung der deutschen Handelsbilanz,” Historische Zeitschrift 294, no. 1 (2012), 79–113. 35 See chapter 5. 36 For a relevant summary of Leith-Ross’s views, see Gerold Krozewski, “Problematizing an ‘Imperialism of Intent’: Colonial Raw Materials, Globalism, and European Nation States, from the Pre-1914 Period to the 1930s,” in Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell, eds, Africa, Empire and Globalization (Durham: N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 362–3. 37 Johnston, “Gold and Dollars,” 146–7. 38 B.R. Tomlinson, “Indo-British Relations in the Post-Colonial Era: The Sterling Balances Negotiations, 1947–1949,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 13, no. 3 (1985), 142–62. 39 Abreu, “Britain as a Debtor,” 590. 40 Jennings, Free French Africa, 176. 41 Jennings, Free French Africa, 176. 42 Jennings, Free French Africa, 204–6. 43 Newitt, “The Portuguese African Colonies,” 224. 44 Newitt, “The Portuguese African Colonies,” 229–31. 45 See Byfield, “Producing,” 31 on Liberia; Newitt, “The Portuguese African Colonies,” 221; Johnston, “Gold and Dollars,” and Chantal Metzger, L’Empire colonial français dans la stratégie du Troisième Reich (Paris: Direction des Archives, Ministères des Affaires étrangères, Peter Lang, 2002), 277. 46 Juan J. Díaz Benítez, “The Spanish Support for the Third Reich in the Second World War: New Considerations about the Etappenorganisation,” International Journal of Maritime History 28, no. 3 (2016), 513–31. 47 Abreu, “A ‘Blank Cheque?,’” 542. 48 Abreu, “A ‘Blank Cheque?,’” 539, 546–8. 49 Philippe Marguerat, La Suisse face au IIIe Reich (Lausanne: Édition 24 heures, 1991), 100, 104, 157. 50 Jennings, Free French Africa, 182–3. 51 Robert Ageron, “La survivance d’un mythe: la puissance par l’empire colonial (1944–1947),” Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer 72, no. 269 (1985), 390. 52 Cantier and Jennings, L’Empire colonial sous Vichy, and Metzger, L’Empire colonial français. 53 Marianne Boucheret, “Les plantations indochinoises de caoutchouc entre Vichy et l’occupation japonaise,” in Hubert Bonin, Christophe Bouneau and Gervé Joly, eds., Les entreprises et l’outre-mer français pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Pessac: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine, 2010), 303–24;

272

54

55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63

64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

Empire, modernity, and its discontents and Marcel Boldorf, “Les tentatives d’intervention allemandes dans le commerce colonial français,” in Bonin et. al, eds., Les entreprises, 47–58. Chantal Metzger, “Des visées allemandes en Afrique équatoriale et occidentale française sous le Troisième Reich,” in Hubert Bonin, Christophe Bouneau and Gervé Joly, eds., Les entreprises et l’outre-mer français pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Pessac: Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine, 2010), 33–46; and Thaddeus Sunseri, “Exploiting the Urwald: German Post-Colonial Forestry in Poland and Central Africa, 1900–1960,” Past & Present 214, no. 1 (2012), 305–42. See “Weigelt, Kurt,” in Deutsche Biographische Enzyklopädie, ed. Rudolf Vierhaus (Munich: K.G. Saur, 2008), vol. 10, 481–2. See Dr. K. Weigelt, “Koloniale Rohstoffversorgung im Rahmen der heimischen Volkswirtschaft,” in Diedrich Westermann, ed., Beiträge zur deutschen Kolonialfrage (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1939), 77–89. Catherine Akpo-Vaché, L’AOF et la Seconde Guerre mondiale (septembre 1939-octobre 1945) (Paris: Karthala, 1996), 48–9; and Metzger, L’Empire colonial français, 293–4. Ruth Ginio, “Marshal Pétain Spoke to School Children: Vichy Propaganda in French West Africa, 1940–1943,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 33, no. 2 (2000), 305; and Raffael Scheck, French Colonial Soldiers in German Captivity during World War II (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2014), 137, 143, 149. Scherner, “Der deutsche Importboom,” 106–7, and 93. Fortunato Minniti, “Le materie prime nella preparazione bellica dell’Italia (1935–1943) (parte prima),” Storia contemporanea 17, no. 1 (1986), 5–40, and 17, no. 2 (1986), 245–76. Alessandro Roselli, Italy and Albania: Financial Relations in the Fascist Period (London: I.B. Tauris, 2006; first Italian edition 1988), 101–5, and chs.8 and 10. David Killingray, “African Voices from Two World Wars,” Historical Research 74, no. 186 (2001), 427, and Marika Sherwood, World War II: Colonies and Colonials (Oare: Savannah Press, 2013), 33, 38–9. Killingray, “African Voices,” 430; and Timothy Parsons, “The Military Experience of Ordinary Africans in World War II,” in Judith A. Byfield, Carolyn A. Brown, Timothy Parsons and Ahmad Alawad Sikainga, eds, Africa and World War II (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2015), 5, 12, 14. Sherwood, World War II, 24, 30. Sherwood, World War II, 24, 29. Sherwood, World War II, 34. Cantier and Jennings, L’Empire colonial sous Vichy, 219–20. Parsons, “The Military Experience,” 6. Brown, “African labor,” 58; and Sherwood, World War II, 64. Kenneth P. Vickery, “The Second World War Revival of Forced Labor in the Rhodesias,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 22, no. 3 (1989), 425, 427. Jennings. “Extraction,” 207–9. Jennings, Free French Africa, 187. Vincent Joly, “‘Se défendre contre quiconque’: L’effort militaire au Soudan français, juillet 1940-novembre 1942,” Outre-mers 91, nos. 342–343 (2004), 88. Catherine B. Ash, “Forced Labor in Colonial West Africa,” History Compass 4/3 (2006), 404. For a contemporary view condoning the use of forced labour, see the opinion of a South African writer in Nazi Germany: Heinrich Mutzenbecher, “Verwaltungs- und Wirtschaftsmethoden in Französisch-Äquatorialafrika,” Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 50 (1939), 636.

Continuities in the Second World War 273 75 Jennings, “Extraction,” 207–9 and 218–9. 76 Karsten Linne, “The ‘New Labour Policy’ in Nazi Colonial Planning for Africa,” International Review of Social History 49, no. 2 (2004), 197–224. 77 See chapter 5, and Linne, “The ‘New Labour Policy,’” 211–2. 78 For an example, see Stephen Kotkin, “World War II and Labor: A Lost Cause?,” International Labor and Working-Class History 58 (2000), 181–91. 79 John Higginson, “Steam without a ‘Piston Box’: Strikes and Popular Unrest in Katanga, 1943–45,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 2, no. 1 (1988), 97–117. 80 Brown, “African labor,” 52. 81 Anderson and Throup, “Africans and Agricultural Production,” 335. 82 Scheck, French Colonial Soldiers, ch.6. 83 Parsons, “The military experience,” 14. 84 Scheck, French Colonial Soldiers, 172, 174–5. 85 Scheck, French Colonial Soldiers, 142. 86 Scheck, French Colonial Soldiers, 137–8, 149. 87 Bernard Droz, “Avant-propos,” Outre-mers, 91, nos. 342–343 (2004), 9. 88 Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch, “Vichy et l’industrialisation aux colonies,” Revue d’histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale 29, no. 114 (1979), 91–3. 89 Coquery-Vidrovitch, “Vichy,” 88. 90 Jacques Wolf, Le gasogène à bois Imbert (Sarre-Union: Association d’histoire et d’archéologie de Sarre-Union, 1999). 91 Karsten Linne, “Afrika als ‘wirtschaftlicher Ergänzungsraum’: Kurt Weigelt und die kolonialwirtschaftlichen Planungen im ‘Dritten Reich,’” Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte 47, no. 2 (2006), 141–62; also “Note on Dr. Kurt Weigelt, formerly Deutsche Bank,” 1946, TNA [The National Archives, Kew] FO 371/55596. 92 Metzger, L’Empire colonial français, 92–3. 93 Karsten Linne, Afrika jenseits des Äquators? Die NS Kolonialplanungen für Afrika (Berlin: Ch. Links Verlag, 2008), 72–3, and Karsten Linne, “Deutsche Afrikafirmen im ‘Osteinsatz,’” Zeitschrift für Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 16 (2001), 49–90. 94 Dr. Kurt Weigelt, Koloniale Rohstoffversorgung im Rahmen der heimischen Volkswirtschaft (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1937), 86–7. 95 See Dr. J.H. Krumbach, Kolonialpolitik heute (Tornisterschrift des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht Abt. Inland, 1941), 57. For the purpose and characteristics of a Tornisterschrift, see Omer Bartov, The Eastern Front, 1941-45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 72. 96 Sunseri, “Exploiting the Urwald”, 333–4. 97 For the wider context, see Robert L. Nelson, Germans, Poland, and Colonial Expansion to the East. 1850 through the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), esp. chs.4, 5, and 6. 98 See Nazi propaganda posters picturing Germany between Britain as a spent force and the Soviet threat: “Europas Sieg dein Wohlstand” (London, Imperial War Museum collections, www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/ 28271 (accessed 3 July 2022); and Africa within Europe’s field of vision: “Afrika im Blickfeld Europas,” Rheinisches JournalistInnenbüro, “Unsere Opfer zählen nicht:” Die Dritte Welt im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Hamburg und Berlin: Verlag Assoziation, 2005), 38. 99 Linne, “Deutsche Afrikafirmen,” 89. 100 Linne, “Deutsche Afrikafirmen,” esp. 56, 62, 88, 77. 101 See chapter 5.

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102 Mike Cowen, “Early Years of the Colonial Development Corporation: British State Enterprise Overseas during Late Colonialism,” African Affairs 83, no. 330 (1984), 63–4. 103 For a concise presentation of the argument, see Amartya Sen, “Ingredients of Famine Analysis: Availability and Entitlements,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 96, no. 3 (1981), 441–7. 104 Dumett, “Africa’s Strategic Minerals,” 388. 105 Johnston, “Gold and Dollars,” 145. 106 See chapter 7. 107 Brazzaville, janvier-février 1944: aux sources de la décolonisation (Colloque organisé par l’Institut Charles-de-Gaulle et l’Institut d’Histoire du Temps présent les 22 et 23 mai 1987) (Paris: Plon, 1987), esp. part 1 and part 6. See also Coquery-Vidrovitch, “Vichy,” 85; and Coquery-Vidrovitch, “Industry and Empire: The Beginnings of French Industrial Politics in the Colonies under the Vichy Regime,” in Maurice Lévy-Leboyer and Paul Bairoch, eds., Disparities in Industrial Development since the Industrial Revolution (London: Macmillan, 1981), 29–33. 108 Adam Tooze, “Reassessing the Moral Economy of Post-War Reconstruction: The Terms of the West German Settlement in 1952,” Past & Present 210, no. 6 (2010), 47–70. 109 Pamela Ballinger, “Borders of the Nation, Borders of Citizenship: Italian Repatriation and the Redefinition of National Identity after World War II,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 3 (2007), 713–41. 110 Sayers, Financial Policy, 271. 111 See “Währungsaufbau und Währungsregelungen in den Kolonialgebieten,” 1940–1942, R 2501/10245, German Federal Archives, Berlin-Lichterfelde. 112 Waibel, “The Political Significance.” 113 Davide Rodogno, Fascism’s European Empire: Italian Occupation during the Second World War (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2006), 57–63, and ch.8; also Sabina Donati, A Political History of National Citizenship and Identity in Italy, 1861–1950 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2013), ch.7.

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Shannon, H.A., “Sterling Balances of the Sterling Area, 1939–49,” Economic Journal 60, no. 239 (1950), 531–551. Sherwood, Marika, World War II: Colonies and Colonials (Oare: Savannah Press, 2013). Sunseri, Thaddeus, “Exploiting the Urwald: German Post-Colonial Forestry in Poland and Central Africa, 1900–1960,” Past & Present 214, no. 1 (2012), 305–342. 10.1093/pastj/gtr034 Thomas, Martin, The French Empire at War, 1940–1945 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998). Tomlinson, B.R., “Indo-British Relations in the Post-Colonial Era: The Sterling Balances Negotiations, 1947–1949,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 13, no. 3 (1985), 142–162. 10.1080/03086538508582697 Tooze, Adam, “Reassessing the Moral Economy of Post-War Reconstruction: The Terms of the West German Settlement in 1952,” Past & Present 210, no. 6 (2010), 47–70. 10.1093/pastj/gtq040 Vickery, Kenneth P., “The Second World War Revival of Forced Labor in the Rhodesias,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 22, no. 3 (1989), 423–437. 10.2307/220204 Westcott, Nicholas, “The Impact of the Second World War on Tanganyika, 1939–49,” in David Killingray and Richard Rathbone, eds., Africa and the Second World War (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1986), 143–159. Waibel, Leo, “The Political Significance of Tropical Vegetable Fats for the Industrial Countries of Europe,” Annals of the American Association of American Geographers 33, no. 2 (1943), 118–128. 10.2307/2561004 Weigelt, Dr. Kurt, Koloniale Rohstoffversorgung im Rahmen der heimischen Volkswirtschaft (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1937). Weigelt, Dr. Kurt, “Koloniale Rohstoffversorgung im Rahmen der heimischen Volkswirtschaft,” in Diedrich Westermann, ed., Beiträge zur deutschen Kolonialfrage (Essen: Essener Verlagsanstalt, 1939). Wolf, Jacques, Le gasogène à bois Imbert (Sarre-Union: Association d’histoire et d’archéologie de Sarre-Union, 1999).

Part 4

The liberal reordering of statehood and the world’s developmental divide

7

European recovery and economic liberalization: From overseas complementarities to the “developing world,” 1945–1960s

The period between the end of the Second World War and the late 1960s contrasted considerably with the years between the two world wars. In terms of both the developmental thrust of European nation-states and state techniques, a transformation occurred towards a closer integration of national economies in the Western world in line with the emerging hegemony of the United States. Nonetheless, the cases of Britain, France, and Portugal should caution against the assumption that the integration of open economies was rapid and smooth or a self-sustaining process as envisaged by the classical liberal economists of the nineteenth century. In fact, the transition happened incrementally and was marred by structural crises. Moreover, managing economies in the global environment was accompanied by measures that, among others, aimed to shield national balances of payments and regulate borrowing. Western Europe’s adjustment to economic liberalization went hand in hand with the economic and political re-structuring of its overseas relationships. In some respects, the period shows the reverse image of developments in the late nineteenth century. European economies moved away from the co-option of overseas territorial space. What is more, the state interfered less with the overseas activities of private businesses. Nonetheless, the 1950s and 1960s were not simply the reversal of the overseas relationships established by Europe during the emergence of nation-states and the formation of national economies in the nineteenth century. The characteristics of the world economy in the two periods markedly differed. Conceptually, moreover, there is no automatic correlation between an abstract notion of economic liberalism and the absence, or presence, of control over a territorial empire. What drove this reorientation were changes in economic requirements and in the feasibility to steer economic policy transnationally, not least in colonies. States also became more actively involved in managing macroeconomic fundamentals yet intervened less as developers in the day-to-day running of economies. It will be argued that the closer integration of Western industrial economies changed trade flows and affected the relations of imperial powers with the global economy. Britain, France, and Portugal followed different DOI: 10.4324/9781003346425-11

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trajectories of adjustment to economic liberalism due to distinctive economic conditions and policy approaches. In Britain, the US dollar challenged the role of the pound sterling during the transition from the discriminatory sterling area of the Second World War and the late 1940s to the new multilateralism. Economic reorganization and cooperation in Europe, moreover, raised questions regarding Britain’s alignment with the sterling area. Formally, the sterling area existed until 1968, and London continued to be a global financial centre thereafter. However, important shifts occurred during the period in the geographical distribution of the assets held by overseas countries in Britain, away from India and African countries and towards Middle Eastern holders. As managing colonial development became difficult to reconcile with the process of economic liberalization in the second half of the 1950s, Britain progressively extricated itself from segments of the overseas sterling area, notably in Africa. France’s redeployment of its overseas relations, by contrast, tied in with its position in the European common market. In the 1960s, the franc zone of formally independent states in Africa came to play a role in French economic adjustment. French policies in the European Economic Community (EEC) helped this cooperation. At the same time, Portugal entered a closer formal imperial relationship in the escudo zone geared towards assisting the association of Portuguese economy with liberalizing Europe. In this role, investment in resource exploitation and economic diversification in overseas Portugal became entwined with multinational corporations and their links to Portuguese companies. This occurred in spite of the colonial wars of the 1960s and the intensifying Cold War. From the 1960s onwards, European polities defined themselves in new ways in a global context, with implications for doctrines of development. The transnational professionalization of knowledge about developing economies replaced expertise on imperial-colonial development. Yet in organizing national economies and addressing issues of national welfare, states continued to operate on the basis of a dichotomy between a domestic and an external domain. This chapter focuses on structural economic changes and their implications for state policy. Chapter 8 will then explore the wider social and political contexts of policy-making and discuss repercussions on colonial ties. The chapter begins by discussing how Western European economies changed in the course of economic liberalization. Particular attention will subsequently be paid to relations between regional economies within Europe and shifting economic complementarities in overseas relationships. This discussion re-posits the linkages between regional economies, national economies, and globalization, analysed for the late nineteenth century in chapter 2. A separate section explores how experts assessed approaches to external and transnational economic policy in this framework. Colonial currency zones featured prominently in proposals for reform. The argument then moves on to discuss the characteristics of economic governance

Europe and economic liberalization 283 during the period. The management of currency areas shows how political factors affected economic policy. The final section will argue that the transition to economic liberalism gave rise to definitions and delineations of economic spaces that differed conceptually from earlier periods. The argument about France presented in this chapter builds on studies of economic redeployment and the reordering of French imperial economic relationships.1 A host of contemporary expert views, moreover, allows assessing this dimension. Linkages between Portugal’s colonial economies, industrialization, and its European relations have been suggested in some research on the 1960s.2 The bulk of the literature on Britain has focused on decreasing economic growth rates, institutional aspects of economic performance, economic relations with the United States, and the aggregate performance of sterling and sterling area relations.3 The changing function of overseas relationships in Britain’s globalism has received less attention, however. With regard to European integration, authors have debated whether its construction epitomized the demise of the European nation-state or, conversely, reinforced it.4 It will be argued in this and the next chapter that nationstate politics in Europe’s overseas relations reasserted themselves during economic liberalization and the transition from imperial to postimperial statehood.

Western Europe and economic liberalization In the period after 1945, the international economic architecture and norms of governance became oriented towards the gradual liberalization of trade and eventually of capital flows. Measures to liberalize economies were importantly driven by the United States, epitomized by the European Recovery Programme (ERP, Marshall Aid) phased in from 1948. This financial assistance was a means to promote growth in Europe by providing the dollars Europe lacked to purchase American goods and a way to close this so-called dollar gap.5 The institutions of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) monitored and regulated global liquidity and the reduction of barriers to trade, respectively. From the late 1950s, Western European economies liberalized in the framework of a customs area in the EEC within the framework of the Treaty of Rome from 1957 or in a European Free Trade Area (EFTA) from 1959. Expert debates focused on the manner in which Western economic integration could be achieved. In terms of economic organization, the period witnessed the move away from national economic development in the Western hemisphere driven by relations with overseas agrarian and raw material-based economies. Instead, economic growth ought to be stimulated by trade and investment between advanced industrialized economies and by the expansion of domestic and regional markets. As a corollary, managing food production

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and trade in agricultural produce became a central feature during early European economic integration. Overseas raw material resources became less contested than in the interwar period. They were deemed to be available on the open world market in sufficient quantity. Exceptions included petroleum and some strategic minerals, notably uranium from the Belgian Congo.6 The synthetic production of rubber now rivalled plantation production, though price advantages on the world market fostered exceptional growth in the Malay(si)an rubber economy in the 1950s and 1960s.7 Only in the late 1990s, with the industrialization of China, did trade in raw materials again become more important than trade in industrial goods in the world economy, as had been the case before 1939.8 After 1945, Western doctrine in international relations endorsed economic liberalism in opposition to the Communist world. However, this was not a return to laissez-faire capitalism where the state was absent. Rather, states and international and supranational institutions ought to help create the conditions in which open economies could thrive. Friedrich Hayek, who became one of the most influential neoliberal economists, argued that the state required the knowledge of society’s structure and functions, similar to a gardener’s knowledge of plants, in order to improve techniques of economic governance.9 A rapid, even, and generalized move towards economic integration in the Western world did not occur; nor should one confuse the doctrine of liberalization with state policies. However, the parameters in which states operated changed as new states in Africa and Asia replaced the colonial empires of the European powers and as international governance and international institutions became more relevant. In essence, international relations and agency continued to be centred on Western nation-states, though. Individual states managed national economies and engaged with the wider world according to their political capacity to exert influence in governance, building on the structural power of their economies in trade and on financial markets.10 Reliance on relational power shows continuities with the formative period of European nation-states in the nineteenth century. Yet there were marked differences regarding how relations with the tropics and subtropics would assist economic recovery and fit in with the liberalization in Western Europe of currency relations, investment flows, and business activities. Within Europe, policy-makers envisaged a common market or free trade area that would ultimately take the place of national markets. This vision contradicted the old premise that overseas economies, as providers of natural resources or as market outlets, would help imperialnational economies of industrializing states to compete within Europe. However, on the path to economic liberalization and integration in Europe, overseas economies were still expected to play a role, notably in Portugal’s escudo zone and France’s franc zone in Africa. The following sketch shows commonalities and specificities in the economic conditions in Britain, France, and Portugal, and will be tied in, in the

Europe and economic liberalization 285 next section, with an argument about the role of regional and overseas relationships for national economic recovery in Europe. In the aftermath of the war, European economies faced liquidity problems and supply shortages during the massive task of post-war reconstruction.11 The 1950s, though, ushered in a domestic economic boom that was particularly pronounced in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and in France and lasted until the early 1970s.12 In 1959, a significant step occurred towards liberalizing economies with the current account convertibility of most West European currencies with the dollar. However, to cushion the impact of the liberalization of capital flows, the process formally separated current account convertibility from the capital account.13 By the mid-1960s, the Bretton Woods system with its convertible currencies at fixed, though adjustable rates was already in crisis. This was largely due to the fact that sterling could no longer fulfil the role of the world’s trading currency and the dollar was not yet in a position to do so. The best performing economies were Germany and Japan. As sterling’s future was doubtful and the dollar’s appeal questionable, gold reserves became once again attractive. However, their supply was limited.14 This situation foreshadowed the disconnection in currency management from gold in Western economies and towards the adoption of floating exchange rates in the 1970s. Meanwhile, new growth areas emerged globally in the 1960s, namely Japan, the Middle East, and South America. Individual economies differed markedly in the challenges they faced during post-war reconstruction and the dismantlement of barriers to trade and financial flows. Britain’s difficulties were reflected in the welltreaded story of sterling’s diminishing position as an international currency. Britain’s recovery was hampered by lower growth rates than those of its main competitors. The British economy struggled to secure the annual balance of payments position required to allow sterling to operate as an international trading and reserve currency, though it maintained this position in the sterling area until 1968.15 Britain negotiated a loan with the United States in 1946 in order to prop up its currency reserves. Nevertheless, Britain experienced recurrent balance of payments crises. During the convertibility crisis of 1947, overseas holders of sterling with monetary autonomy, including Egypt, converted short-term assets into dollars forcing Britain to suspend the convertibility of the pound and introduce different regional categories of transfers to prevent the sudden withdrawal of assets by overseas holders of sterling. Britain also devalued the pound by 30 percent in 1949 in order to boost exports.16 Britain’s reserves, however, benefitted from the export boom for raw materials to the dollar area in the colonial sterling area, as notably in the case of Malaya during the Korean War.17 Nonetheless, balance of payments crises persisted throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The Suez crisis in late 1956 was not only a confrontation with Egypt against the backdrop of the Cold War, but a massive reserve crisis.18

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Suez marked a juncture in sterling relations in the sense that it heightened the need of domestic adjustments to support the balance of payments and, under Harold Macmillan’s new government, prompted a closer cooperation with the United States to achieve this goal. From this point, the prospect of sterling in the world economy hinged on two factors: the ability of the British economy to sustain a convertible pound, and the manner in which a global role for the dollar and the pound could be reconciled. International confidence in the British economy grew as it spearheaded the move towards the convertibility of European currencies in line with the objectives of the Bretton Woods agreements. Moreover, sluggish growth in the United States in the mid-1960s handicapped the dollar in its role as an international reserve currency. However, pressure on sterling again heightened from the mid-1960s.19 The quest for the diversification of currency reserves by overseas holders of sterling intensified especially after the devaluation of 1967. The Basle agreements of 1968 with the Bank of International Settlements, which allowed Britain to shield the pound against withdrawals of sterling assets held by overseas countries in London, signalled the end of the sterling area.20 However, the thrust of developments during the period was difficult to anticipate and often coincidental. Policy assessments and the particular mechanisms of overseas sterling relationships show a rather more volatile dynamics than suggested in a cursory narrative of its historical trajectory, as the next section will argue. Post-war France was in principle a part of the wider quest for global liberalization bound up with the US-led reform of the international economic architecture and the ERP. The French Ministry of Finance in particular promoted this course.21 However, the French economy, too, suffered from balance of payments imbalances that inhibited a smooth transition to liberal economic globalism as stipulated by Bretton Woods. Devaluations served as a partial remedy to make liberalization feasible. But in 1948, France imposed new import restrictions. During the crisis of the early 1950s, and prompted by the lack of stockpiling of raw materials during the Korean War, France imposed new import tariffs.22 Nonetheless, balance of payments crises reoccurred.23 In the late 1960s, moreover, in view of the dollar becoming the world’s main trading currency without a peg to gold, France opted out of international monetary arrangements, accumulating gold in a way reminiscent of its attempt to isolate its economy from volatile monetary relations in the interwar period.24 France’s economic woes were rooted in structural problems of the export competitiveness of its industries and its large agricultural sector. Both problems involved considering policy approaches towards European integration in conjunction with France’s overseas relations. Given its neutrality during the Second World War, Portugal did not face the same problems of post-war reconstruction as most other European countries. Immediately after the war, the Portuguese balance of payments was positive and its reserve position sound, not least due to trade with the

Europe and economic liberalization 287 25

Allies during the war. Nonetheless, economic liberalization in the Western world after 1945 prompted officials in Portugal to question whether the autarkic imperial protectionism that António Salazar’s regime had pursued in the interwar period was still a feasible and advisable economic strategy. As Portugal encountered balance of payments difficulties at the end of the 1940s, it joined the US-led recovery programme for Europe.26 The country also became a member of the European Payments Union (EPU), created in September 1950 to coordinate payments relations.27 In essence, the question was how the Portuguese economy could adjust to the international economic environment, given that Portugal’s industries were uncompetitive in the 1950s. From the 1960s onwards, however, the economy benefitted from remittances of Portuguese workers abroad and increasingly from incomes from tourism. In 1959, moreover, Portugal joined EFTA under special provisions designed to allow its industrial sector to adapt gradually to compete in EFTA markets, which included Britain. In the same year, Portugal became a part of the Bretton Woods institutions.28 In the Portuguese case, too, the reorientation towards Europe and the West’s liberalization suggest an enquiry into linkages with imperial reorganization as well as with the role of overseas colonial Portugal in this process in the 1960s. In contrast to Britain and Portugal, the economic upswing facilitated by Marshall Aid in Germany from the late 1940s, derived primarily from “regional export integration.”29 In this policy, the liberalization of the French and Italian economies played an important role.30 Meanwhile, Poland, whose economy had struggled during the interwar period to gain access to Western European markets, rejected the Marshall programme and became a part of Soviet-sponsored regional economic organization from the late 1940s onwards.

Shifts in transnational and transregional economic relations In the 1950s and 1960s, regional patterns of economic interaction changed and new boundaries emerged in the transnational organization of economic spaces. In parallel to a similar perspective on the late nineteenth century in chapter 2, the following analysis focuses on shifts in economic geography, namely in relations between regional economies within Europe and both regional and national economies in Europe and overseas. Not only did complementarities in regional relationships become reconfigured; but in certain respects, the functioning of established imperial economic relationships became problematic. For Britain, shifts became apparent in the regional composition of overseas capital relations that mattered for the balance of payments. Recurrent sterling crises burdened the transition to liberal multilateralism and the implementation of Bretton Woods; but overseas relations also eased this transition. In Britain, large overseas holdings of sterling

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became a structural feature of Britain’s balance of payments management rather than merely the overhang from war finance. Meanwhile, in Britain, France, and Portugal, economic sectors within national economies reorganized in view of the new liberalism, with implications for trade and capital flows. Reorganizing overseas relations related to the move to integrate the French and Portuguese economies within Western Europe. This environment, in turn, affected approaches to national development and external economic policy. Britain’s economic liberalization after 1945 was marred by setbacks and owed a great deal to the coincidental circumstances in which overseas economies related to sterling at particular points in time. A discussion of who owned sterling assets serves as an indication of these shifts. A rough periodization of the support role for the British balance of payments by overseas holders of sterling assets in London suggests a division into three main periods: from wartime to the beginning of the 1950s, the period of the 1950s, and the period form the early 1960s to 1968. Relevant junctures were the sterling convertibility crisis of 1947, the Korean War, 1949–1951, the Colombo Plan during the 1950s, the sterling crisis prompted by Suez in late 1956, the period of convertible sterling after 1959, and the developments leading up to the Basle accords in 1968. In the first period, India was by far the largest holder of sterling assets in London due to its significance for the Allied war effort. These holdings were ultimately claims on the British economy as the centre of the sterling area. What had been expedient for Britain during the war, though, was economically and politically inconvenient in peacetime. During reconstruction, the British economy was unable to sustain a degree of output that would absorb a possible running down of sterling assets by India, contrary to the expectations of politicians like Leo Amery during the war. The onus of the political argument, however, shifted from one of imperial solidarity during the war to a controversy regarding the nature of the Anglo-Indian economic relationship in view of the developmental ambitions of the independent Indian state. Discussions on Indian sterling balances became entwined with the negotiation of alternative supports for the British economy, notably the US loan agreement in 1946. US officials advised the cancellation of the sterling balances, arguing that peacetime called for a new beginning.31 AngloAmerican negotiations about implementing Bretton Woods then not only hinged on Britain’s economic recovery but also on its leverage in overseas relations. The Colombo Plan which connected sterling relations with Indian development offered an alternative framework. From the British perspective of sterling management, the plan fulfilled an important objective by phasing the withdrawals of India’s assets in connection with a development plan.32 In the late 1950s, the wartime legacy of Indian sterling balances ended, since assets had been reduced in this manner.

Europe and economic liberalization 289 1400

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Figure 7.1 Main Holders of Sterling Balances, 1940–1956 (₤ Million). Source: Based on data in Marcelo de Paiva Abreu, “Britain as a Debtor: Indian Sterling Balances, 1940–53,” Economic History Review 70, no. 2 (2017), 586–92; H.A. Shannon, “Sterling Balances of the Sterling Area, 1939–49,” Economic Journal 60, no. 239 (1950), 550; Judd Polk, Sterling: Its Meaning in World Finance (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1956), 67; Gerold Krozewski, Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–1958 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Palgrave, 2001), 35, 44, 46; and Abreu, “Brazil as a Creditor: Sterling Balances, 1940–1952,” Economic History Review 43, no. 3 (1990), 453. These sources indicate the relevant territorial subdivisions based on Bank of England data. The reduction of balances in the case of India reflects release agreements in the framework of the Colombo Plan (see B.R. Tomlinson, “‘The Weapons of the Weakened’: British Power, Sterling Balances, and the Origins of the Colombo Plan,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015), 34–49). Britain and Egypt negotiated release agreements between 1951 and 1955 (see Cmd. 9611).

As India’s role in the management of Britain’s debt was phased out, alternative creditors emerged, partly due to coincidence and partly due to conscious policy. After the convertibility crisis of sterling in 1947, the colonial segment of the sterling area became a discriminatory zone that maximized exports for dollars and implemented restrictions on imports from the dollar area. The policy coincided with a boom in the world price of certain raw materials. Colonial sterling balances increased notably as a result of exports of Malayan rubber and agricultural produce from Africa, importantly cocoa from the Gold Coast (from 1957 Ghana) to the dollar area. Malaya and British colonies in West Africa were the principal

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contributors to the sterling area’s dollar pool at the time of the dollar gap. In 1947, Britain’s balance of payments deficit would have been over 50 percent larger without the support from overseas holders of sterling balances, mainly the colonies.33 Under the colonial monetary system of currency boards, the colonies in effect earned their money supply with their export performance. In the orthodox West African Currency Board, colonial currencies were fully covered without a fiduciary issue. The sterling assets of Malay(si)a and some other (former) colonies remained high until the Basle agreements. The balances of Ghana, though, decreased considerably in the early 1960s.34 Rapid large-scale withdrawals of colonial sterling balances were checked by technicalities, and also by some doubts about the dollar’s expedience as an alternative in the 1960s. Yet, the high aggregate of (former) colonial assets was hiding another reality. Changing trade flows, such as in the case of Malay(si)a, prompted demands for some diversification in currency reserves with a dollar component. Britain reluctantly made a formal concession in the Malayan currency agreement in 1960, though Malaysia moved into dollar reserves only in the late 1960s.35 Besides, doctrines of development and Bank of England orthodoxies of financial management became controversial in a new international setting, especially after the Suez crisis had weakened confidence in sterling and further discredited Britain’s foreign relations as imperialistic. Exceptions to restrictions to convert sterling into dollars had existed since some time. These became associated with the so-called Kuwait gap and the Hong Kong gap. Hong Kong was associated with the vision of a return to cosmopolitan sterling. But a free dollar market in the colony potentially undermined the position of sterling.36 The Kuwait arrangements were a concession to retain the allegiance to the sterling area of an important petroleum-producing state. However, the existing open dollar market in Kuwait also posed a risk because it meant that sterling could be converted into dollars, undercutting the logic of the sterling bloc in its support for the British balance of payments.37 Nonetheless, in the early 1960s, the sterling assets of petroleumexporting countries in the Persian Gulf increasingly supported the sterling system. At that time, British energy policy consciously moved from its dependence on coal to petroleum.38 Nonetheless, after the introduction of sterling convertibility on current account, speculative pressures on sterling continued and it became increasingly difficult to isolate pressures from the capital side.39 In the mid-1960s, a confidence crisis in the pound once again translated into a reserve crisis, when overseas holders of sterling renewed demands for liquidating assets and converting them out of sterling.40 Meanwhile, from the mid-1950s onwards, the prospects for interregional economic organization beyond national economies in Western Europe changed conditions for economic sectors within countries, with repercussions on priorities in national economic policy. In continental Europe, the

Europe and economic liberalization 291 Middle East (mainly oil producers)

Malaysia and Singapore

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Figure 7.2 Main Holders of Sterling Balances, 1962–1968 (₤ Million). Source: Based on data in Bank of England Quarterly Bulletin 2 (1974), “Overseas Sterling Balances 1963–1973,” and The National Archives, Kew, T 312/1955, and T 312/1486.

interregional orientation of economic sectors boosted prospects for economic growth, particularly in the industrial regions of West and Southwest Germany, the Northeast of France, the Netherlands, and Northern Italy. The post-war peace project of European economic cooperation initially required to reconcile German industrial growth with French agricultural production. Besides, low-cost producers, notably the modernizing old textile industries in Portugal began to complement growth in the EEC core. Envisaging economic organization on the European scale was part of the effort to coordinate production and resources, as in the scheme initiated between France and West Germany with the formation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1951. Liberalizing trade in the Organization of European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) and payments in the EPU also required addressing industrial competitiveness by France, Britain, and Portugal, notably in relation to West Germany. However, a Europe-centred analysis of this economic redeployment would be misleading because of the significance of overseas connections. Agrarian produce flowed into France from the West African franc zone. And in the 1960s, Portuguese colonies in Africa played a role for the West German economy, as well as for Portugal, as transnational financial flows opened and multinational businesses expanded their activities in Africa. Transregional relationships at the intersection of national economies, states, and multinational firms (and in the French case parastatals) in Germany, Portugal, France, and the United States, still need to be more

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fully researched. The manner in which the economies of France, Portugal, and Britain, converged at the transnational European level, suggests important lines of enquiry with regard to the reorganization of overseas relationships in the world order after 1945. France needed to enhance its competitiveness in order to be able to play an economic role in Europe. Protected colonial export markets, however, supported some industrial sectors, particularly the textile industry but also car manufacturing.41 France’s move towards closer European cooperation was not least prompted by the realization that its large agricultural sector, including a colonial one, would not be able to find sufficient market outlets in a protectionist economic order. West Germany in particular ought to absorb food produced by the increasingly mechanized commercial agriculture in France, after the problem of underproduction shifted to one of overproduction in the course of the 1950s.42 In spite of the risks it entailed in industrial competition, France was committed to the European common market as a founding member and signatory of the Treaty of Rome in 1957 not least as a means to negotiate new agricultural markets. At the same time, exports of West German machinery and chemical products benefitted French industrial development.43 After his return to the presidency in the Fifth Republic in 1958, Charles de Gaulle endorsed a radical liberalization plan advocated by his economic adviser Jacques Rueff. France accepted a 17.5 percent devaluation of the franc as one step to make trade liberalization possible and as a means to show its commitment to greater European integration to Konrad Adenauer’s Germany.44 However, the twin perspective of agricultural and industrial modernization in the French economy implied that a European economic community that was confined to industrial liberalization did not meet French requirements. The overseas franc zone was not a part of the liberalization process. The question, therefore, arose in what ways economic relations between metropolitan and overseas France could be complementary to liberalization and European economic integration or needed to be reorganized. For France, the main problem was that in some areas of agricultural production, overseas France aggravated French agricultural surpluses for which European integration was deemed to be a possible solution. From the perspective of external economic management, it would have been conducive to the French economy if the overseas franc zone had used its potential of raw material exports outside the zone, thus incurring a surplus with foreign countries. At the same time, however, overseas France ought to have curtailed exports to metropolitan France. In the early 1950s still, the problem was that overseas France, while now exporting more of its produce to foreign countries still incurred a trade deficit with countries outside the franc zone as well as with metropolitan France.45 In that respect, the management of the African segment of the

Europe and economic liberalization 293 sterling area, especially in the 1940s and early 1950s, differed considerably from franc zone relationships. Britain’s relations with continental European economies in the mid- and late-1950s showed up frictions in sterling area relationships and the legacy of economic links in the Commonwealth. For Britain, the proposal for a free trade area in Europe, as initially suggested by Reginald Maudling and Prime Minister Macmillan in late 1957 as an alternative to a common market, was rather more congenial to its overseas links. A free trade area was a form of liberalization that did not alter established relationships in preferential trade with the Commonwealth and empire. The option would have left patterns of trade and payments in the sterling area largely unimpeded. Therefore, the idea of the cooperation of colonial powers contemplated in France in the mid-1950s was a chimera from the start.46 The proposal for an economic association between the British and French colonial empires in 1956 by Guy Mollet, the socialist prime minister, aimed at preventing France’s integration in Europe, reached a dead end for this reason.47 However, had a reorientation occurred in Britain towards joining the common market, as advocated by Macmillan in 1960 (and vetoed by de Gaulle in 1961), the move would arguably have had structural implications. It appears likely that the pressure on Britain from the overseas sterling area would have increased, and the sterling area might have been phased out earlier than in 1968. From the mid-1950s onwards, Britain witnessed initiatives in view of a transformation towards a post-imperial economy, away from empire as a support domain in managing world trade and its main trading currency, sterling. Some observers envisaged reinventing London’s cosmopolitan finance. Others aimed at re-invigorating the industrial North of England, moving away from the entrenched divide between Southern finance and laggard Northern industry. The debate was about whether the financial sector in London was inhibiting economic growth – a point made by contemporary economic observers and historians later.48 They argued that economic cooperation with the growth areas on the European continent would at least complement, though not necessarily constitute an alternative to old Commonwealth bonds. This was also Macmillan’s view.49 In Portugal’s escudo zone in the 1950s, and in the Portuguese Economic Space (Espaço Económico Portugês) that set up the colonial empire as an economic bloc with the escudo zone monetary union in 1961, the question was not one of a contradiction and choice between Europe and empire. Some authors have drawn this conclusion based on the fact that Portuguese trade flows during the period shifted from the empire to Europe.50 The official vision, however, was that colonial relationships ought to be instrumental to the adjustment of the Portuguese economy in the European context.51 Between the early 1950s and the early 1970s, the nature of Portugal’s economic relations with its territories in Africa changed, though there was continuity with the interwar period in the overseas support role

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for the metropolitan economy. Metropolitan Portugal’s balance of payments was in deficit until 1968 (except in 1967). From 1969, it was in surplus, notably due to the growth in tourism and remittances. Until the early 1960s, the Portuguese colonies were running considerable balance of payments surpluses in trade with foreign markets. The exports in the 1950s that sustained the positive visible balance with foreign countries were mainly raw materials, with West Germany as an important market for iron ore, for instance. The exports of colonial raw materials allowed Portugal to purchase goods from foreign currency sources in Europe and the United States.52 However, the visible balance turned negative from 1965.53 At the same time, relationships within the imperial economic space came under pressure as the Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique incurred significant balance of payments deficits with metropolitan Portugal.54 These deficits resulted from increases in purchases for infrastructural development, remittances of colonial residents to family members in Portugal, and transfers of income derived from capital invested by Portuguese firms in these colonies. This happened in the face of foreign currency shortages, since Portuguese colonies were no longer running surpluses in their export balance with foreign countries.

Visibles

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6000 5000 4000 3000 2000 1000 0

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Figure 7.3 Balance of Payments on Current Account by Portuguese Colonies with Foreign Countries, 1948–1972. Source: Based on data in Fernando Rosas, História de Portugal: o Estado Novo (1926–1974) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1993), 481; data from the Bank of Portugal.

Europe and economic liberalization 295 In the 1960s, moreover, foreign direct investment in Portugal’s colonial empire was significant for the exploitation of raw materials. The principal sources of foreign investment included West Germany, Britain, the United States, and Belgium.55 At that time, EFTA provided an expedient framework for using complementarities in a Portuguese empire-state by fostering investment ties for colonial development while moving only gradually away from protectionism towards more open markets.56 In the 1960s, an association with the EEC would have complicated relations with Europe in the agricultural sector due to colonial production.57 As an industrial free trade area, EFTA allowed Portugal to operate a tightly regulated escudo zone of agrarian production. The priorities of transnational and interregional economic relationships changed in view of the move towards more open economies in the 1950s and 1960s. The changing constellation called for reform and adaptations in overseas relations, though in different ways in Britain, France, and Portugal. For Britain, the question was how to reinvent cosmopolitan sterling dealing with the legacy of the discriminatory sterling area and how to relate intra-industrial trade in Europe with Commonwealth trade. France needed to address agrarian overproduction at home and in the franc zone while boosting industrial competitiveness in European markets. Portugal, meanwhile, looked for ways to use its colonial raw material producing economies as a means to facilitate its economic integration in Europe.

Experts, colonial currency zones, and economic redeployment Structural transformations and challenges during economic recovery after the Second World War prompted debates about how to facilitate the adjustment of national economies while moving towards a liberal world economy. The case will be made by examining expert approaches to external economic relations and colonial currency zones in Britain and France, and in a cursory manner in Portugal. The discussion of Britain sketches out the position of cosmopolitan sterling, which informed the views of prominent officials in the British Treasury, notably those of Leslie Rowan, the head of the Treasury’s Overseas Finance Division. His reasoning will be discussed further in the next section to demonstrate actual policy formation. The French case will be anchored in an analysis of the views of François Bloch-Lainé, an influential official in the Ministry of Finance, and those of Pierre Moussa, a high ranking official engaging with colonial affairs. Debates about the British economy show continuities with older strands of sterling cosmopolitanism and, in its temporary suspension as a strategic tool, also some connections with neomercantilism. The debate in France aimed at a break with the past in economic policy in the franc zone and at the reorganization of the state’s economic bureaucracy. However, continuities persisted in Republican state doctrine.

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The late 1940s and 1950s witnessed a renewed search for rational economic policy, as the economies under review needed to adapt to new designs of an international economic architecture and governance. The views of expert-practitioners reflected differences in the specific legacies of imperial overseas relationships and the paths towards liberalizing metropolitan economies. Economic liberalism was the guiding principle, and optouts ought to be the exception rather than the rule. Analysts discussed overarching concepts of national progress, and examined the efficiency of bureaucracies and innovation in national economic steering, similar to arguments in France and Germany in the 1920s. They discussed how colonial commodity exports could assist the centre’s national welfare, engaged with doctrines of colonial development in Africa, and addressed questions of growth and regional economic integration in Europe or between Africa and Europe. Meanwhile, a new professionalization relevant to global governance and the “developing world” in the IMF and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD, World Bank), respectively, grew in importance at the juncture between imperial and post-imperial statehood. National designs of development delineated themselves from, or engaged with, these approaches to developing economies and global growth strategies. After the Second World War, reforming Britain’s external economic relations signalled for the British Treasury a return to objectivizing sterling policy in its hegemonic role in an open world economy, an aim that had been suspended in the 1930s. The thrust of external economic policy shows historical continuities in prioritizing the financial sector. Debates in Britain about the future organization of the economy exhibited the oft-debated fork between the continuing legacy of liberal cosmopolitanism centred in London and manufacturing industries in the North of England. The institutional memory of the Treasury and Bank of England was in principle synergetic with the US advocacy of one-world liberalism, though British officials did not wish to subject themselves to US hegemony. Policy-makers, moreover, were reluctant to devalue the pound, and when they did, as in 1949 and 1967, the move had become unavoidable after long delays and remained below the margins that might have boosted the performance of manufacturing. There was little conscious reflection on a more wide-ranging adjustment away from the financial sector’s priority over the manufacturing sector. Past priorities were future priorities. The main concern in external economic policy was to ensure that the London money market remained globally competitive. A range of studies have discussed this fact in terms of a failed modernization and explored its reasons in terms of policy norms and economic growth or in relation to the nature of the British state.58 In principle, the official British position in the mid-1950s was again that sterling relationships ought to reflect the old orthodoxy of global Britain that had precipitated the model of the finance and service-sector state in the

Europe and economic liberalization 297 late nineteenth century. The overseas empire (and some other countries) held their assets in London while obtaining privileged access to borrowing for overseas countries from the London money market. The British balance of payments was importantly supported by invisible earnings. This was an economic space with a clear centre, which was, moreover, characterized by a developmental distinction between overseas raw material producers and an advanced industrial economy. Trade flows ought to sustain the British economy at the centre of the sterling network, balancing global trade in Britain’s favour. A real world vision of the sterling area was equated with an optimum model centred on the London City as the financial hub.59 However, economic organization produced winners and losers, involving controversies about developmental designs. Borrowing and lending depended on conditions overseas as well as in Britain. In the course of the 1950s, contradictions emerged in the functioning of this essential mechanism. The corollary to the sterling doctrine was orthodox financial and monetary management within associated overseas economies. The latter was borne out notably by the exclusive use of sterling. Circumstances in the real world, however, prompted the realization among cosmopolitan civil servants in the British Treasury, like Rowan, of the urgency to deal with cracks in the sterling system. The late 1940s witnessed first a curious alliance between sterling cosmopolitanism and development policies in Britain’s colonies in Africa. Later there was considerable concern among sterling internationalists regarding the rising level of sterling balances held by overseas countries in London, notably by colonies and former colonies. During the Labour government, 1945–1951, arguments about welfare had a constructivist imperial dimension reminiscent of Joseph Chamberlain’s campaigns at the beginning of the 1890s and 1900. State enterprise as an agent of agricultural development in African colonies became a part of external economic management during the construction of the British welfare state. This development was initially conceived of in terms of a Fabian doctrine for “African” development. Officials in the Colonial Office, notably Andrew Cohen, saw the initiative of active development as a virtue in its own right, and also as a means to pre-empt social and political conflict. At the same time, commodity production schemes initiated by the Colonial Development Corporation had a commercial objective that benefitted the management of sterling as a world currency.60 Designs of the British welfare state, meanwhile, tied in with a policy for the imperial state which some authors have, therefore, labelled “socialist imperialism.”61 Stafford Cripps, appointed in November 1947 as the Cabinet minister for economic affairs, exceptionally in charge of both trade and finance, ensured the connection between colonial development and the discriminatory management of the sterling area.62 Imperial economic relationships advocated by Ernest Bevin, the foreign secretary and leader of

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the Trade Union Congress, had undertones of Chamberlain’s pre-1914 demands for the development of the imperial estate in an empire-state geared to serve workers at home.63 Bevin’s and Cripps’ project of empire was also explicitly oriented towards Britain. The aim was not least to retain Britain’s identity as a power in the world’s political order between the United States and the Soviet Union at the onset of the Cold War.64 A particular form of socialist-imperial development might even allow Britain to opt out of or seek a revision of Bretton Woods.65 This empire was thus different from the integrative conception pondered by the French Popular front in the mid-1930s. Nonetheless, in terms of personnel, a link is visible between Labour’s empire and international governance for development. At the end of the 1940s, Cripps’ adviser, David Owen, became the United Nations’ official in charge of organizing technical assistance for what became known as “developing economies.”66 Under the Conservative government from 1951, old financial orthodoxies then reasserted themselves. Advocates of international sterling in the British Treasury considered ways of reforming the sterling area to make it sustainable in a liberalizing world economy. The path required an assessment of pressures from overseas sterling holdings and the risk of sterling crises. The colonial empire also ought to be bound more closely into the investment and lending mechanisms of the London money market in a manner similar to the dominions.67 Given the global reach of the British economy, external economic policy had anyway remained closely entwined with a wider commercial logic also during its socialist phase. In contrast to the inertia in British designs of external economic policy, economic thinking in France was shaken up in terms of doctrine to a greater extent after 1945. Civil servants in economic departments once again took on the task of trying to instil a macroeconomic impulse into the workings of the colonial franc zone. In the 1950s, a new generation of technocrats, notably Bloch-Lainé, addressed the need to make the French economic bureaucracy more efficient in order to facilitate the adjustment to liberal multilateralism. Reforming the overseas franc zone in Africa ought to complement and ease the process of modernizing France. Bloch-Lainé, firmly embedded in the Republican tradition of French technocrats, the haut fonctionnaire, was highly influential in re-conceptualizing doctrines of financial and monetary management in France’s international and imperial relations, notably regarding the franc zone. Between 1947 and 1953, he was the director of the treasury (ministre du trésor) in the French Ministry of Finance. Already in 1945, he had spent seven months in Indochina as the trésor’s deputy director.68 As a Keynesian, Bloch-Lainé had a wider interest in macroeconomic theory. At the same time, his thinking was firmly rooted in a distinctly French tradition of state planning. Engaging with the ongoing debate about imperial economic policy in 1962, he argued that the French state’s economic organization was outdated. A ministry for economic planning,

Europe and economic liberalization 299 or even an enhanced institutional cooperation between government departments and professional bodies, was in itself not sufficient for France to adapt to the changing world economy. Rather, the state needed to carry out functional planning and its organization needed to be adjusted for this purpose. In this light, Bloch-Lainé advocated planning in key domains of the economy: agricultural and industrial production, communications, labour and social services, and finance and exchange.69 Giving the state a role in the financial and monetary domain tied in with Bloch-Lainé’s interest in the franc zone. Some reorganization occurred in the franc zone from the early 1950s which also influenced debates about the purpose of the colonial empire. Bloch-Lainé’s assessment of reforms in 1953 explicitly commented on the principles and mechanisms that existed in the sterling area and in the escudo zone. He compared these experiences with the franc zone with the intention of learning from them. Planning was in part technical. The franc zone suffered from a lack of procedures for the collection of relevant statistics, in particular regarding territorial figures on trade within the zone. The creation of the committee of the franc zone in 1952 had partially remedied deficiencies in data collection.70 But Bloch-Lainé also argued that informal relations rather than detailed regulation were important to secure successful cooperation in currency areas. The operation of a currency zone was importantly conditioned by politics, he argued. In particular, the smooth functioning of currency areas that associated an advanced economy with agrarian and raw material-based economies related to political conditions overseas; these could help or harm the centre. Bloch-Lainé’s consciously political approach contrasted with British orthodoxy. British officials normally assumed that the sterling area was the optimal economic organization that best served overseas development. Development was a relation spreading out from Britain to the periphery rather than one in which overseas agency affected the British economy. The sterling area operated with a high degree of informality rather than being based on legalistic blueprints. Ultimately, the mechanisms were assumed to work because Britain, quite naturally, so it was claimed, fulfilled the function of an economic hegemon. Jean de Sailly, however, the author normally invoked by French officials when comparing the franc zone with the sterling area, stressed political factors in assessing the future of the sterling area, too. In 1957, he expected that Britain would need to make concessions towards overseas holders of sterling after the pound’s current account convertibility with the dollar, even at the expense of an optimum currency area. Changes in trade flows would need to be accommodated by some flexibility regarding dollar holdings in the currency reserves of overseas countries.71 According to Bloch-Lainé’s view in the early 1950s, the escudo zone was the ideal currency zone. The overseas escudo zone was so beneficial to the Portuguese economy that the escudo became a hard currency

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within the EPU, even if not in relation to sterling and the dollar. Portugal’s balance of payments deficit was offset by the empire’s surplus with foreign countries. As Bloch-Lainé put it, the “immense service” that the colonies rendered Portugal in this manner could be sustained not only because of their dependent status but also due to imperial solidarity and the fact that metropolitan Portugal applied stringent import austerity. Nonetheless, the Portuguese system would not be applicable to France because of the different political conditions in the two colonial empires. Unlike in French colonies, Bloch-Lainé alleged, political personalities challenging the economic status quo did not exist in Portuguese Africa.72 Consequently, Bloch-Lainé posited the very conception of franc zone reform in terms of far-reaching political debates on France’s interests in Africa and on the question of whether or not the economies of French Africa ought to be integrated with those of Europe.73 He also argued that the sterling area was to some extent similar to the escudo zone; the reference here was arguably to its discriminatory management under Labour. But the sterling area markedly differed from the franc zone due to Britain’s role as a capital exporter.74 Pierre Moussa, the director of economic affairs and planning in the French overseas ministry, meanwhile, focused more specifically on relations between metropolitan France and overseas France. His conceptions of France’s future relations with Africa, like that of Bloch-Lainé, represented a new departure in terms of doctrine in the 1950s but also showed continuities with debates about economic complementarities in the empire in the 1930s. Moussa argued that overseas development was done for humanitarian reasons. Narrowing the gap in per capita income between metropolitan and overseas France was a means to create a more equitable communauté, the political organization of the colonial empire at the time.75 Theoretically, Moussa endorsed a developmental and economic logic for French Africa similar to Walt Rostow’s “take off.” A growth strategy would eventually allow overseas France to step over what he called the “modernity threshold.”76 The reasoning had a psychological tangent: economic behaviour in Africa would change from one based on considerations of selfsufficiency to one in line with the characteristic of “modern men” in a capitalist, profit-oriented society. In turn, there would be multiplier effects in African economies changing the very nature of development and consequently also relations with metropolitan France. Overseas economic growth would create new demand in France. To be sure, as overseas development progressed, overseas France would cease to be a protected niche for globally underperforming sectors of the French economy, such as textiles, Moussa argued. For metropolitan France, however, this meant that the divide in the economy between modern sectors and those lagging behind associated with empire was bound to end. Thus, overseas growth would have a beneficial and modernizing effect on the French economy, spurring businesses on to modernize that had hitherto relied on protective colonial markets.

Europe and economic liberalization 301 Nonetheless, according to Moussa, it was the French state that needed to ensure with conscious planning in the franc zone that the innovative “dynamic solidarity” between the economies of metropolitan and overseas France could work. Organization was required especially with regard to industrial development.77 Industrialization was necessary to offer employment opportunities overseas. Value-added products were more conducive to growth than raw material exploitation. Moussa’s thinking differed from neoliberal conceptions in which the state limited itself to creating the general conditions for growth by ensuring the free operation of market forces. Moussa was rooted in the French tradition of statehood, where the state mediated between private interests and public objectives. The idea was to marry key industrial sectors in France with investment in overseas industrialization aimed at the conscious creation of economic complementarities. Primarily Moussa’s project involved economic linkages between France and its overseas territories “sector by sector,” thereby establishing a symbiosis between industries overseas and at the centre. To some extent, however, foreign investors, too, could become part of this project of the franc zone.78 In practice, however, both in British and French colonies in Africa, there was considerable inertia privileging agricultural development rather than industrialization. René Hoffherr, for instance (who had been involved in the discussions about complementarities in French imperial development in the 1930s), was sceptical of the ongoing debates about colonial development that contrasted agriculture with industry, when he was governor of French Cameroun in the 1950s. He complained that often the provision of tools and machinery was confused with proper planning in agricultural mechanization and proper policies of industrialization.79 Portugal, meanwhile, witnessed debates about modernizing its corporatism, which eventually linked up with the reorganization of the escudo zone. Portugal underwent a transformation in which the model of the imperial corporatist state shifted towards technological innovation and the economic diversification of firms in liberal capitalism. Salazar himself promoted the move, as did new technocrats in the bureaucracy straddling the private and public sector. One of the traditional pillars of Salazar’s development ideology had focused on agriculture, deemed to be associated with rural social harmony as well as Catholic values.80 After 1945, however, the corporatist state changed incrementally, moving away from agriculture-led autarky and endorsing industrialization. Some of the voices that advocated technological modernization in the economy challenging old doctrine go back to the 1930s. There are parallels here with interwar Germany in terms of the growing awareness among technical professionals of their role as developers for modern nation-states. Technology became a concern for those who lamented that the Portuguese economy had stayed on the margins of Europe. The engineer J.N. Ferreira Dias, undersecretary of commerce and industry during

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the Second World War, led the way in arguing this case; Portuguese economists subsequently took up his ideas.81 Against firm opposition from agricultural pressure groups, Ferreira Dias lobbied for a reversal of two entrenched lines of reasoning. One argument was that industrialization was impossible in metropolitan Portugal due to the country’s lack of natural resources and capital. The other view held that industrialization was not desirable, either because of an entrenched ideal of deriving produce from the land or due to a widespread disregard for “dishonourable” manufacturing.82 The new course that eventually manifested itself from 1953 was planning for intermediate industries. Meanwhile, new expertise on development agency emerged after 1945 in the wider world. One can conceive of the realm of transnational governance as akin to the quest for rational problem-solving and specialization and professionalization in states in the late nineteenth century. However, this time, the process was not geared towards nation-states. Rather, purposeoriented research on the conditions of the world economy and now also increasingly regarding a notion of the “underdeveloped” or “developing” world informed policy doctrines in both international organizations and national bureaucracies, especially after India’s independence in 1947. On the one hand, new doctrines and institutions constrained the leverage of states in managing national economies. On the other hand, states derived synergies from the emerging framework of international governance. The academic discipline of development economics formed, for whose foundation the Caribbean economist and later Nobel laureate William Arthur Lewis, has been credited.83 Lewis was firmly rooted in the tradition of liberal economics. But he differed from most of his Western counterparts in aiming to extricate approaches to overseas economic development and their methods from their links to imperial development. Development outside the West thus became an intellectual endeavour in its own right and, at its inception, also one with its own political dimension. There are similarities in this quest with research and attempts at institution building in the interwar period which aimed to establish universal governance norms for individuals and their welfare from food to health in the framework of the League of Nations. Experts of the developing world influenced international institutions on development and their doctrines, notably the IBRD. Normative standards were formulated with regard to aid and growth targets, notably related to the United Nations’ first “development decade” from 1960. In the 1950s and 1960s, moreover, the IBRD conducted survey missions in a wide range of countries, including Malaya, Nigeria, and Kenya. Experts in these institutions acted as technical facilitators and monitors of economic growth and progress in a setting of developing economies, and no longer related to an imperial framework of states.84 This trend had its corollary in the constitution of state bureaucracies in newly-independent states and the economic doctrines and ambitions of new states more

Europe and economic liberalization 303 generally. The process, therefore, involved political debates as tensions emerged between established doctrines and new ones, notably in the British empire between British officials and the IBRD in the 1950s. Yet these doctrines later often became the subject of contestation as representative of a world order that advocated modernization in terms of the dichotomy between a “developed” West and an “underdeveloped” world that needed to be oriented towards progress.85 The experts discussed in this section, however, searched for new forms of economic steering mostly related to the economic policy objectives of nation-states.

State governance for a liberalizing world Expert arguments about policy norms reflected adaptation strategies under changing conditions in the international economy as well as new conceptions of progress in the post-war world. Both factors informed state policy. Moreover, the politics of economic relations reshaped governance and statehood in specific contexts. This occurred in different ways. Portugal embarked on a top-down reorganization to create an empire-state and imperial economy aimed at modernizing the Portuguese economy in association with Western Europe, while also waging a colonial war. The move ignored developments in colonial politics at a time when most colonies of Britain and France obtained their independence. In France, competition in the emerging EEC framework in the late 1950s required policy-makers to fall back on liberalizing the domestic economy. In the 1960s, however, some of Moussa’s ideas influenced the reorganization of the franc zone.86 Britain attempted to rescue imperial sterling relations into the post-imperial world. Rowan’s arguments exemplify this course of action. However, diverging politics in the empire and post-empire narrowed the scope for such a policy. In Portugal, a reconceptualization of the state’s economic organization occurred, when Salazar decided to embed Portugal’s economy within the European and Western post-war order rather than continue an isolationist economic policy. Portugal’s participation in the ERP was part of this new course. Economic adjustment went hand in hand with legal steps in the state’s organization of the imperial economy in the 1960s. Portugal’s gradual adaptation to more open trade was reflected in constitutional and economic planning that preceded and then accompanied the joining of the EPU and Portugal’s association with EFTA. The constitution of 1951 defined an entity of a “multi-continental” nation (nação pluricontinental); the 1961 constitution established the framework for a future Portuguese imperial free trade area. From the early 1960s onwards, Portugal’s imperial economic space operated as a support realm to achieve the gradual reduction of restrictions in Portugal’s trade with Western Europe.87 The closer association of Portugal with the West also

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meant that the government, in 1955, signed the International Labour Office’s convention against forced labour.88 Portugal, however, was peculiar in the ways in which expertise influenced state agency, and differed from Britain, where economic institutions were firmly established, as well as from the haut fonctionnaires in France, who represented an established tradition rooted in the concept of an autonomous state. Technocrats in the Portuguese state represented an elite stratum of society indicative of the fluidity between the commercial activities of the landed classes, the educated elite, and employment in the state bureaucracy. The career of members of elite families, in the social and economic sense, led from universities to state employment and from there back to family firms.89 As the economic activities of these social elites changed, so did the state. State planning ensued from this transformation. In the 1950s and 1960s, therefore, a new generation of modernizing technocrats in the state mirrored a new generation of entrepreneurs. From this vantage point, planning was not confined to metropolitan Portugal. Rather, the state ought to support the strategies of the main family firms in Portugal as well as in the overseas escudo zone which together formed the Portuguese Economic Space in the 1960s. These firms had been active in agricultural production in Portugal and involved in the overseas plantation economy in the old African colonies, especially Angola and Mozambique, since the late nineteenth century, notably in cotton, coffee, and fats and oils. From the 1950s, the activities of the dominant firms diversified in Portugal as well as in the colonies, eventually dominating the modern economy. For instance, the Companhia uniâo fabril (CUF), which had set out from vegetable oil processing and soap production, expanded into the mechanical and chemical sector, retail trade, and overseas commercial banking with the Banco Totta in Angola. The bank Espírito Santo diversified into agricultural production and food, mechanical industries, real estate, and petroleum exploitation in Angola. With regard to new activities and investment in the colonies in the 1960s, family firms built on complementarities with metropolitan Portugal: maritime transport (CUF), the promotion of intermediate industries and investment in cotton plantation for textile production and resources for beverages like coffee and beer (Banco nacional ultramarino, BNU, related to the Ulrich family; and Espírito Santo), and insurance firms (Champalimaud; BNU).90 Portugal had also renewed the concessions for diamond mining in Angola for the Diamang firm in 1954. Diamang was mainly controlled by the Burnay family and by Espírito Santo. Burnay also expanded into engineering and road construction in Portugal.91 The active promotion of development was of particular concern with regard to Angola in connection with extractive industries and processing industries in the development plans of 1959–1964 and 1968–1973.92 The 1960s marked a period of economic growth in Angola.93

Europe and economic liberalization 305 French external economic policy, meanwhile, encountered considerable obstacles in its quest to liberalize. France’s integration in Europe found it difficult to keep up the pace in adapting the country’s industrial capacity. Most French officials were committed to France’s closer association with Europe while at the same time hoping to retain an association with overseas France. Yet liberalizing economies in the course of post-war recovery was not easily achieved. As the French economy was unable to maintain its commitment within the OEEC framework to open up its markets in the early 1950s, policy-makers aimed at postponing the reduction of barriers to trade until after the modernization of the French industrial sector. In fact, although France was part of Bretton Woods, it operated with opt-outs designed to ease its way into the system. In 1948, the French franc was allowed to use mechanisms of multiple exchange rates. These were ironically geared towards reducing France’s dollar expenditure by permitting it to import more from non-dollar sources. The United States gave its consent, given the medium and long-term benefits it expected to derive from European economic integration.94 France’s problems to liberalize trade were in part due to the legacy of a protectionist colonial empire. Trade liberalization not only put pressure on metropolitan competitiveness but also made it more difficult for colonial producers to compete in the French market. Yet if overseas France was allowed to turn to sterling sources for its imports, such as for instance agricultural machinery, this risked cutting off outlets for those French industries that at the time were insufficiently prepared to compete in markets outside the protected colonial domain.95 From this perspective, France’s attempt to reconcile the common market with established overseas relationships exhibited a distinct logic in the negotiations of the European common market. In 1957, France made its signing of the Treaty of Rome dependent on the association of overseas territories in this framework in order to ensure continued complementarities between the economies of metropolitan and overseas France. The treaty stipulated that colonies could be associated with the common market; association agreements could also be negotiated by colonies that had become independent, and relations with Algeria would be governed by a special regime.96 The episode shows the attempt to reconcile France’s liberalization in Europe with its imperial protectionism. Such a strategy, however, was soon overtaken by events outside French influence. At the end of the 1950s, France was thrust back onto domestic measures of liberalization for fear of being left out from Germansponsored initiatives for European economic integration. British officials who advocated cosmopolitan sterling, like Rowan, did not cherish a policy of economic liberalization in Europe, since the move risked burdening the British balance of payments in relations with regions outside established British trade. Nonetheless, Rowan realized that Britain had to live with these pressures because doing otherwise might have even

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more dire consequences for sterling’s position as an international trading and reserve currency.97 In the attempt to make the liberalization of the British economy feasible, recurrent sterling crises proved the greatest challenge, as reflected in Rowan’s assessment in the Treasury’s Overseas Finance Division. The British Treasury’s pursuit of a new macroeconomic policy was deemed essential in order to reinvigorate one of the mechanisms that had underpinned Britain’s economic growth since the late nineteenth century. The appeal of the London money market had ensured that overseas countries held their assets in London. However, the smooth working of these complementarities in trade and finance required remedies for distortions that hindered the process. In the early 1950s, after the return of the Conservative government, Rowan argued that securing a future for the sterling area required policies of adjustment in the home economy. But he continued to treat the sterling area as a single entity. There was no question of eliminating any “weak brethren,” which would anyway not only be a financial and economic question but importantly a political one.98 The smooth functioning of the system not only required addressing the hangover from India’s sterling balances, which Britain did in the framework of the Colombo Plan during the 1950s. Policy also needed to tackle problems posed by a further accumulation of balances that might not be sustainable in an open world economy. In 1953, Rowan was particularly concerned about the apparent inconsistencies that seemed to emerge between three areas: the continuing accumulation of colonial sterling balances, the potentially growing pressures on the London money market likely to arise from overseas economic development in the future, and the continuing and potentially increasing commitments by Britain within the framework of colonial welfare legislation.99 Grants and loans under the Colonial Development & Welfare (CD&W) acts ought to foster colonial economic growth through investment in areas from housing to basic utilities and health care. The CD&W bill for 1955–1960 was based on the assumption that an equivalent amount of finance would be raised on the London money market.100 The nexus between economic liberalization, the balance of payments, and the sterling balances, also related to the situation on the London money market as an essential part of Britain’s economy. In his attempt to re-establish cosmopolitan sterling, Rowan also worried about the financing of colonial economic development in the future.101 Given these concerns, Rowan argued that overseas and particularly colonial economic policy and development should ideally become aligned with sterling policy. In practical terms, the Treasury’s Overseas Finance Division, in agreement with the Bank of England, therefore, advocated the greater use of local funds for development, and perhaps even some investment in local securities instead of the London market. Moreover, while the abandonment of import restraint regarding consumer goods, and to some extent even regarding capital goods for development, was

Europe and economic liberalization 307 not deemed to be advisable, officials expected that the level of such imports would inevitably rise in the medium term.102 This would occur in the normal process of development and ultimately ensure that London assets would reach a secure level and not be prone to the risk of fluctuation. Still, the rising import propensity in colonies was a concern. New patterns of consumption might result in unpredictable claims on the British economy, thus making Britain’s integration in an open world economy more difficult rather than easing it. In order to re-establish liberal sterling relationships, the return to sterling convertibility, at least on current account, was a crucial objective for Rowan. The longer this step got delayed, the more likely was the progressive fading of sterling’s appeal as an international currency in a liberal world order for which the convertibility crisis in 1947 and pari passu its repetition during the Suez campaign provided evidence. Sterling convertibility was, therefore, a risk as well as a requirement. About half a year before the Suez crisis, Rowan sketched out why convertibility between sterling and the dollar had to be an important goal of British international economic policy. Doing otherwise would invite the holders of sterling currency reserves to seek alternatives, namely move into dollars. Commonwealth and independent sterling area members might be tempted to diversify their reserves, thereby going beyond the holding of gold reserves which already existed in the sterling area framework. However, the prospects would be even more serious. In fact, failing to move to convertibility would raise the spectre of a return to a world of bilateralism and discriminatory trade. Yet, with convertibility, trade liberalization would deepen. Such liberalization with the dollar area might burden the balance of payments over the short term. Moreover, Rowan argued that Britain could not go back on its obligation within the OEEC to liberalize trade with Europe. But in the medium and long terms, overall trade liberalization would benefit Britain’s balance of payments. And in his view, this open trade suited Britain’s economy best. Some dollar liberalization might even be contemplated for the colonies where dollar imports continued to be restricted.103 In the course of the 1950s, the designs of international sterling brought about changes in Britain’s policy approaches to independent states in Asia, too. Once the overhang of the Indian balances had been addressed, Britain initially conceived of the Colombo Plan as a forum through which it could influence a congenial economic order in Asia. India was still seen as central to a new British relationship with the Commonwealth. It is relevant in this connection that the plan had been initiated with the aim to create a regional growth area in the Asia-Pacific region by the Australian minister for foreign affairs, Percy Spender, and was supported by Britain with this objective. In the second half of the 1950s, however, British policy progressively retreated from this position. Requests for capital aid arising from initiatives

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and expectations regarding the Colombo Plan’s role for the regional organization of Asia were putting undue strain on Britain’s resources. One of the implications was that Britain gave up its opposition to Japan’s accession to the plan. Japan had been seen as encroaching into the domain of British influence in Asia.104 However, as the 1950s progressed, the plan increasingly became a tool expected to help Britain shed commitments in Asia. At that time, however, multilateralism was of little concern, since recipient countries of aid preferred bilateral relations which allowed them to exert political influence. British officials uncompromisingly adhered to bilateralism as a means to control policy, though this principle, too, became diluted in the course of the 1960s. After the Suez crisis in January 1957, Rowan sounded alarmed in view of new pressures on the British economy. These were arising from the post-Suez settlements requiring the repayment of loans from the United States and the IMF. But Rowan also identified potential burdens due to the “uncertainties” of policies by Malaya, the Gold Coast (Ghana), and the Middle Eastern countries. Nonetheless, in the late 1950s he stressed the even greater urgency that Britain needed to pay its own way in view of the process of liberalization, with an increased margin of an annual surplus in the balance of payments to be earned by boosting exports and domestic production in order to save imports.105 After Suez, increasing the efficiency of economic management in order to improve Britain’s balance of payments position became a particular concern for the Macmillan government. As a consequence, the British government urged rationalization and modernization of the state’s economic bureaucracy. Confronted with continuously poor balance of payments data, Macmillan initiated reforms with regard to a more systematic collection of statistics for economic management.106 Thus, until 1958, over a period of more than ten years after 1947, Britain’s overseas economic policy was guided by the ad hoc fathoming of the feasibility and implication of returning to sterling internationalism. In the early 1960s, the analyst Samuel Britain, a critic of the adherence by the Treasury’s Overseas Finance Division to the pound sterling as the world’s principal trading and reserve currency, argued that, even after Suez, the division refused to acknowledge the burden that the very sterling system put on British growth. Insisting on sterling’s role as an international currency, he claimed, was “like a prisoner kissing the rod with which he [was] being beaten.” The Treasury position also stood in the way of any considerations of solutions to the sterling problem via mechanisms of international cooperation, including schemes for joint reserve pooling with continental Europe that were discussed by experts in Britain at the time.107 From the early 1960s, the pound benefitted from the fact that Middle Eastern petroleum-producing countries held an increasing amount of sterling assets in London, effectively extending an unexpected lifeline to

Europe and economic liberalization 309 sterling. However, the manner in which the sterling system of coordinated relations had worked in the empire and beyond had become considerably distorted by that time. By the end of the 1950s, British hopes to resuscitate economic complemetarities with Asia in continuation of projects of the interwar period had faded. And Africa did not emerge as an area of economic growth in the medium term. British policy approaches adjusted, shifting from colonial economic policy to notions of the developing world. In the 1960s, technical cooperation became a tool to promote the Commonwealth, in the hope of regaining some economic influence in growth areas in Asia. In 1963, Rowan, now chairman of Vickers Ltd., was among the industrial sponsors of the Delhi Engineering College, one of Britain’s attempts to retain technological influence relevant to the British economy among the increasing number of competitors in Asia during the Cold War.108 In the mid-1960s, moreover, he was involved in direct lobbying, for instance for the firm’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia.109 Policy practices in Britain and France during the 1950s struggled with the legacies of their colonial relationships in the attempt to align their economies with the liberalizing Western world. Portugal, meanwhile, tried to explore the uses of its imperial connections for these processes.

The transformation of national economies in the globe As the external economic policies of Britain, France, and Portugal engaged with a liberalizing economic environment, their overseas economic relationships became reconfigured. Changes in the characteristics and geography of economic complementarities between the overseas world and national economies in Europe redefined policy approaches. These became entwined with the reconsideration of the colonial question in Britain and France and the reorganization of colonial relations in the Portuguese case. The renewal of the project of liberal globalism and the vision of integrating the world economy in the mid-twentieth century re-posited arguments about national economies in Europe. As state officials reconsidered the prospects of national, imperial, and global development, and the relationship between national and international governance, the transnational projection of national economies took on new forms. In Britain, visions of mid-nineteenth century economic liberalism resurfaced in the policy discourse. However, the conception did not match the reality. Pressures on Britain’s balance of payments continued while support from overseas holders of sterling was increasingly in doubt as the trade of some economies in the sterling area, notably those of members in Asia and the Pacific, became reoriented towards dollar markets. As an alternative, British external economic policy in the 1960s attempted to carry out domestic adjustment and to prioritize relations with regions of economic growth in the developing world.

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In the model of one-world economic development, the free play of market forces would ensure the most profitable outlets for financial flows and the cheapest sources of supply, thus securing growth in the world economy and in national economies alike. Economic hegemons, such as Britain, were deemed essential for this path of development. According to the ideal, development in an open world economy did not require extraeconomic control. The ideal was, however, not available in the 1950s and 1960s. Britain’s external economic policy, its scope and feasibility, hinged on political factors. These were entwined with the realization of economic policy objectives regarding, among others, sustaining the level of sterling assets by overseas countries in Britain, regulating their transferability, and fostering confidence in the mechanisms of colonial loan finance. Nonetheless, sterling internationalists, like Rowan, still believed that in a future world economy, too, overseas economic activity would be geared towards centres in the West, notably Britain. However, there would be less reliance on overseas ties and political allegiance. In the early 1950s, Rowan insisted that Britain was in charge of policy because it was the domestic side of the economy that governed external relations. Britain could overcome sterling crises by improving its export performance.110 By the 1960s, however, the world’s economic geography had undergone a notable transformation. The politics of economic geography once again mattered. In this context, and unlike what Rowan had previously argued, there were indeed “bad” and “good” members in the sterling group and in its imperial segment from Britain’s perspective, rather than merely “weak” ones. Besides, there were areas of economic potential or simply irrelevant regions in the sterling area. In British policy, the model of universal liberalism ultimately became a mere hope for the future that first required falling back on adjustment by the nation for the nation. How Britain projected its economy into the world differed from the 1930s. Then, the design of global liberalism had been replaced by a liberal empire in a protectionist world. In the 1960s, however, going back on economic liberalization was not an option. Moreover, the economic geographies of the former empire were less geared towards Britain as a centre. The path of development that pointed to boosting British industry in Europe was not only in conflict with forces in the economic bureaucracy that emphasized the role of the financial sector in economic policy but also cut off by French policy in the EEC. France showed parallels with Britain to the extent to which it implemented domestic adjustment to liberalization as a last resort in the late 1950s, since the franc zone had not acquired the role that Bloch-Lainé had envisaged for it in his reform proposals at the beginning of the decade. However, France defined policy in the transnational economic space of the franc zone differently from Britain’s approaches to the sterling area. The domestic adjustment as part of macroeconomic management corresponded

Europe and economic liberalization 311 to the principles of the West’s economic governance to which France subscribed as a signatory of the Bretton Woods agreement. Like Britain, France needed to get its balance of payments under control, though, unlike Britain, it did not need to support an international currency. Nonetheless, economic reorganization in the franc zone premised on planning could contradict economic liberalization. In French planning, the economy was conceptualized as constituting the sum total of the specific complementarities between economic sectors in metropolitan France and in the colonies in terms of outlets or supplies for French businesses. The economies of metropolitan France and overseas France might both have benefitted from cheaper supplies in world markets. Yet disrupting established business links was bound to have a negative effect on the French economy in the short term because some French businesses would become uncompetitive or even go bankrupt. French policy faced the challenge to reconcile these incompatible positions. French transnational economic space was a halfway house. On the one hand, there was the long-established reality in which overseas support realms served less competitive French businesses – a fact which Moussa had criticized. On the other hand, planning aimed to create new complementarities that built on comparative advantages in business activities and ought to prevent overseas economies from competing with France. According to the reform ideas advanced by Moussa, the policy ultimately ought to enable the emergence of sustainable economies both in France and overseas. Both Moussa and Bloch-Lainé argued that economic redeployment for the benefit of France required finding a politicallynegotiated path to development in the franc zone. Portugal, meanwhile, attempted to maximize the capacity of overseas raw materials exploitation and agrarian production with the aim to boost its balance of payments and promote competitive industrial modernization. The Portuguese Economic Space of the 1960s continued an imperialcolonial model geared towards the centre’s economy. The escudo zone operated with strict regulations through the state’s economic bureaucracy as a means of allowing Portugal to adjust to the West’s economic liberalism. Foreign investment, however, flowed into the escudo zone, which served as an important raw material reservoir for Western economies. Unlike in France, the logic was not one of building on political cooperation overseas. Nor did the approach reflect concerns, as in the sterling area, regarding the political implications of relying on overseas subservience to Portuguese policy designs or indeed considerations of the possible costs of overseas development required to sustain the system. The search for liberal adjustments drew colonial currency zones within the purview of national economic redeployment. Reorganizing currency zones could run parallel to policy commitments in international economic governance, or even constitute a shield against its influence. Yet, as national economies in Europe became once again more exposed to an

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open world economy, nation-states also saw their role enhanced in delineating national economies in Europe from the developing world. The boundaries between metropolitan economies and overseas economies became contested as states in Europe tried to utilize overseas economic relationships or extricate themselves from them in the process of economic liberalization, and as overseas states sought alternative paths of development. The next chapter will explore how transnational economic agency and development was embedded in national politics. Here one sees wider social processes at work that accompanied periods of economic globalization, namely the reassertion of core identities in connection with national welfare. Only this time, unlike in the late nineteenth century and the interwar period, economic crisis management involved interrogating the benefits of colonial space for nation-states in Europe. The colonial route persisted solely in the case of Portugal in the 1960s, epitomized by the centralized regulation of the escudo zone monetary union.

Notes 1 Hubert Bonin, Histoire économique de la IVe République (Paris: Economica, 1987), chs.6–9; Frances M.B. Lynch, “Restoring France: The Road to Integration,” in Alan S. Milward, ed., The Frontier of National Sovereignty: History and Theory, 1945–1992 (London: Routledge, 1993), 59–87; also Lynch, France and the International Economy (London: Routledge, 1997), ch.9. 2 Fernando Rosas, História de Portugal: o Estado Novo (1926–1974) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1993), 429–501; António José Telo, Economia e império no Portugal contemporâneo (Lisbon: Cosmos, 1994), ch.V.4, and Adelino Torres, “Pacto colonial e industrialização de Angola (anos 60–70),” Análise Social 19, nos. 77-78-79 (1983), 1101–19. 3 See, respectively, B.W.E. Alford, British Economic Performance 1945–1975 (London: Macmillan, 1988); Bernard Elbaum and William Lazonick, eds., The Decline of the British Economy (Oxford: OUP, 1986); Allen P. Dobson, The Politics of the Anglo-American Economic Special Relationship, 1940–1987 (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1988); and Catherine R. Schenk, Britain and the Sterling Area (London: Routledge, 1994). 4 For an engagement with what became known as the “Milward thesis,” see Bernard Bruneteau, “The Construction of Europe and the Concept of the Nation-State,” Contemporary European History 9, no. 4 (2000), 245–60; also Alan S. Milward, Frances M.B. Lynch, Federico Romero, Ruggero Ranieri, and Vibeke Sørensen, The Frontier of National Sovereignty: History and Theory (London: Routledge 1993). 5 W.M. Scammell, The International Economy since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1983), ch.3. 6 Field Marshal Montgomery’s views are a case in point: see Ian Phimister, “Developing and Defending the Empire: Montgomery’s 1947 Tour of Africa,” Journal of Military History 79, no. 3 (2015), 745–66. 7 Martin Rudner, “Development Policies and Patterns of Agrarian Dominance in the Malaysian Rubber Export Economy,” Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 1 (1981), 83–105. 8 See chapter 9.

Europe and economic liberalization 313 9 For the argument, see Ben Jackson, “At the Origins of Neo-Liberalism: The Free Economy and the Strong State, 1930–1947,” Historical Journal 53, no. 1 (2010), esp. 135; also F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (London: Routledge, 1944), 14. 10 Susan Strange, States and Markets: An Introduction to International Political Economy (London: Francis Pinter, 1988). 11 For the domestic dimension, see David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010). 12 N.F.R. Crafts, “The Golden Age of Economic Growth in Western Europe, 1950–1973,” Economic History Review 48, no. 3 (1995), 429–47. 13 Eric Helleiner, States and the Reemergence of Global Finance: From Bretton Woods to the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), esp. chs.2 and 3. 14 Scammell, The International Economy, 123. 15 Gerold Krozewski, Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–1958 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Palgrave, 2001), 30. 16 C.C.S. Newton, “The 1947 Sterling Crisis and Britain’s Response to the Marshall Plan,” Economic History Review 37, no. 3 (1984), 391–408. 17 Krozewski, Money, 51. 18 Diane B. Kunz, “The Importance of Having Money: The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis,” in Wm. R. Louis and Roger Owen, eds., Suez 1956: The Causes and the Consequences (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 215–32. 19 Scott Newton, “The Two Sterling Crises of 1964, and the Decision Not to Devalue,” Economic History Review 62, no. 1 (2009), 73–98. 20 Benjamin J. Cohen, The Reform of Sterling (Princeton: Essays in International Finance 77, Princeton University, 1969), 35; Brian Tew, International Monetary Cooperation, 1945–70 (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1970), esp. ch.15: “Sterling After Convertibility,” 203–5, and ch.21: “The 1960s,” 261–5; also Catherine R. Schenk, The Decline of Sterling: Managing the Retreat of an International Currency, 1945–1992 (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2010), ch.8. 21 Lynch, “Restoring France,” 64. 22 Lynch, “Restoring France,” 65. 23 Lynch, “Restoring France,” 67. 24 Michael D. Bordo, Dominique Simard, and Eugene N. White, “France and the Bretton Woods International Monetary System 1960 to 1968,” in Jaime Reis, ed., International Monetary Systems in Historical Perspectives (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995), ch.7. 25 Telo, Economia e império, 258. 26 Fernanda Rollo, Portugal e o Plano Marshall: Da rejeição à solicitação da ajuda financeira norte-americana (1947–1952) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1994), part II. 27 Rosas, História, 473; and Pedro Laíns, “O Estado e a industrialização em Portugal, 1945–1990,” Análise Social 29, no. 128 (1994), 926. 28 Diamantino P. Machado, The Structure of Portuguese Society: The Failure of Fascism (New York: Praeger, 1991), 15–6. 29 Lutger Lindlar and Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, “Geography, Exchange Rates and Trade Structures: Germany’s Export Performance since the 1950s,” European Review of Economic History 1, no. 2 (1997), 218–9. 30 Lindlar and Holtfrerich, “Geography, Exchange Rates and Trade Structures,” 231. 31 Gerold Krozewski, “Sterling, the ‘Minor’ Territories and the End of Formal Empire, 1939–1958,” Economic History Review 46, no. 2 (1993), 245–6.

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32 B.R. Tomlinson, “‘The Weapons of the Weakened’: British Power, Sterling Balances, and the Origins of the Colombo Plan,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015). 33 Krozewski, Money, 36. 34 J.E.A. Manu, “Balance of Payments Constraint and Economic Development,” Economic Bulletin of Ghana 2, no. 4 (1972), 20. 35 Gerold Krozewski, “Britain and the Reordering of Overseas Aid, 1956–1964: From Overseas Development Finance to Assistance to Sovereign States,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015), 151–2. 36 Catherine R. Schenk, “Closing the Hong Kong Gap: the Hong Kong Free Dollar Market in the 1950s,” Economic History Review 47, no. 2 (1994), 335–53. 37 Steven G. Galpern, Money, Oil, and Empire in the Middle East: Sterling and Postwar Imperialism, 1944–1971 (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2013), 205. 38 Martin Chick, “The Marginalist Approach and the Making of Fuel Policy in France and Britain, 1945–1972,” Economic History Review 59, no. 1 (2006), 146. 39 Michael D. Bordo, Ronald MacDonald, and Michael J. Oliver, “Sterling in Crisis,” European Review of Economic History 13, no. 3 (2009), 437. 40 Bordo, MacDonald, Oliver, “Sterling in Crisis,” 448. 41 Lynch, “Restoring France,” 78. 42 Lynch, “Restoring France,” 74. 43 Lindlar and Holtfrerich, “Geography Exchange Rate, and Growth Structures,” 231. 44 Frances M.B. Lynch, “De Gaulle’s First Veto: France the Rueff Plan and the Free Trade Area,” Contemporary European History 9, no. 1 (2000), 112 and 123. 45 Lynch, “Restoring France,” 69. 46 Cf. the Corniglion-Molinier proposal of May 1954: Lynch, “Restoring France,” 70. 47 Frances M.B. Lynch, “France and European Integration: From the Schuman Plan to Economic and Monetary Union,” Contemporary European History 13, no. 1 (2004), 119. 48 Samuel Brittan, Steering the Economy: The Role of the Treasury (London: Secker & Warburg, 1964, revised edition 1969), 137–8. Brittan worked as a journalist for the Financial Times. See also Sidney Pollard, The Wasting of the British Economy (London: Croom Helm, 1982, Routledge reprint, 2011), ch.4. 49 For a summary, see David Reynolds, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the 20th Century (London: Longman, 1991), 217–22. 50 Machado, The Structure, 119. 51 Torres, “Pacto colonial,” and Rosas, História, 478–82. 52 Marcelino Passos, Der Niedergang des Faschismus in Portugal: zum Verhältnis von Ökonomie, Gesellschaft und Staat/Politik in einem europäischen Schwellenland (Marburg: Verlag Arbeiterbewegung und Gesellschaftswissenschaft, 1987), 112 and 118. 53 Rosas, História, 479–81. 54 Quantitative research on payments relations in the escudo zone has been conducted by Maria Eugénia Mata for the Bank of Portugal. See

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55 56 57 58

59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68

69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78

www.bportugal.pt/en/page/historical-archive (accessed 5 July 2022). See also Mata, The Portuguese Escudo Monetary Zone: Its Impact in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Machado, The Structure, 15–6. Nuno Valério and Maria Paula Fontoura, “A evolução económica de Angola durante o segundo período colonial – uma tentativa de síntese,” Análise Social 29, no. 129 (1994), 1202–3. Rosas, História, 478. From among a plethora of studies, see Geoffrey Ingham, Capitalism Divided? The City and Industry in British Social Development (New York: Schocken Books, 1984); S. Newton and D. Porter, Modernization Frustrated: the Politics of Industrial Decline in Britain since 1900 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988); Jim Tomlinson, “The British Productivity Problem in the 1960s,” Past & Present 175, no. 1 (2002), 188–210; and P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism (London: Longman, 2nd edition 2001), ch.13. For a near-contemporary account, see L.S. Pressnell, “The End of the Sterling Area,” Three Banks Review 121 (1979), 5–7. Mike Cowen, “Early Years of the Colonial Development Corporation: British State Enterprise Overseas during Late Colonialism,” African Affairs 83, no. 330 (1984), 67 and 68. M.P. Cowen and R.W. Shenton, Doctrines of Development (London: Routledge, 1996), ch.5; and R.M. Douglas, The Labour Party: Nationalism and Internationalism, 1939–1951 (London: Routledge, 2004), ch.6. Stafford Cripps, “‘Colonies’ Contribution to World Trade Stability,” Crown Colonist, January 1948, 7–8. Michael P. Cowen and Robert W. Shenton, “The Origin and Course of Fabian Colonialism in Africa,” Journal of Historical Sociology 4, no. 2 (1991), 143–74. Reynolds, Britannia Overruled, ch.8. Richard Toye, “The Labour Party’s External Economic Policy in the 1940s,” Historical Journal 43, no. 1 (2000), 189. David Owen, “The United Nations Expanded Program of Technical Assistance - A Multilateral Approach,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 323 (1959), 25. Krozewski, Money, 115–8. Hugues Tertrais, “Le rétablissement de la souveraineté financière de la France en Indochine,” in François Bloch-Lainé, fonctionnaire, financier, citoyen. Journée d’études tenue à Bercy le 25 février 2003, ed. Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France (Paris: Ministère de l’Économie, des Finances et de l’Industrie, 2005), 35. François Bloch-Lainé, “Pour une réforme de l’administration économique,” Revue économique 4, no. 6 (1962), 861–2. François Bloch-Lainé, “Etudes sur les zones monétaires,” Revue économique 4, no. 6 (1953), 857–8. Jean De Sailly, La zone sterling (Paris: Armand Colin, 1957), 113–9. Bloch-Lainé, “Etudes,” 855–6. Bloch-Lainé, “Etudes,” 857–8. Bloch-Lainé, “Etudes,” 856–7. Pierre Moussa, Les chances économiques de la communauté franco-africaine (Paris: Armand Colin, 1957), 139–41. Moussa, Les chances économiques, 143. Moussa, Les chances économiques, 173. Moussa, Les chances économiques, 154–5.

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79 René Hoffherr, “Une régionalisation du plan de modernisation outre-mer,” Politique étrangère 22, no. 5 (1957), 527–9. 80 Fernando Rosas, O Estado Novo nos anos trinta: elementos para o estudo da natureza económica e social do Salazarismo (1928–1938) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1986), 26. 81 Rosas, O Estado Novo, 35–8, with references to the book by Ferreira Dias, Linha de rumo (1945). 82 Rosas, O Estado Novo, 38. 83 Sir W. Arthur Lewis, “The Evolution of Foreign Aid,” The inaugural David Owen Memorial Lecture, 19 November 1971 (Cardiff: University College); also Robert L. Tignor, W. Arthur Lewis and the Birth of Development Economics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). 84 Joseph M. Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007), conclusions. 85 See, for example, Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 86 For the argument, see chapter 8. 87 Fernando Rosas and J.M. Brandão de Brito, eds., Dicionário de história do Estado Novo (Lisbon: Bertrand Editora, 1996), 757; and Rosas, História de Portugal, 486. 88 Malyn Newitt, Portugal in Africa, the Last Hundred Years (London: Longman, 1981), 199. 89 Passos, Der Niedergang, 107. 90 Rosas, História, 470; Passos, Der Niedergang, 212–3. 91 Telo, Economia e império, 265; and Rosas, História, 135. 92 Torres, “Pacto colonial,” 1102. 93 Valério and Fontoura, “A evolução económica,” 1200–1. 94 Lynch, “Restoring France,” 61. 95 Lynch, “Restoring France,” 62. 96 Louis Sicking, “A Colonial Echo: France and the Colonial Dimension of the European Economic Community,” French Colonial History 5 (2004), 217–8. The reference is to articles 231 and 238 of the treaty. 97 Rowan to Gilbert, “Sterling area balance of payments prospects,” 15 December 1954, TNA [The National Archives, Kew] T 236/4023. 98 Rowan, “The future of the sterling area,” 21 November 1951, TNA T 236/4611. 99 Rowan to Gilbert, “Colonial sterling balances,” 12 May 1953, TNA T 236/ 3352. 100 Internal Treasury note, Wragge Morley, 31 March 1953, TNA T 236/4253. 101 Rowan to Taylor, 25 January 1958, TNA T 236/4776. 102 A.K. Potter, Treasury, “Colonial sterling assets,” 24 May 1954, TNA T 236/3562. 103 Rowan, “Why convertibility?” (draft paper, redraft Hall), 18 May 1956, TNA T 236/3940. 104 Yoichi Kibata, “The Changing International Order in Asia and AngloJapanese Relations: From the Mid-1950s to the Early 1960s,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015), 229–44. 105 Rowan to Makins, “Unused resources,” 14 January 1957, TNA T 236/4318. 106 Glen O’Hara, “Towards a New Bradshaw? Economic Statistics and the British State in the 1950s and 1960s,” Economic History Review 60, no. 1 (2007), 11.

Europe and economic liberalization 317 107 Brittan, Steering the Economy, 137–8; Alec Cairncross asked relevant questions at the Radcliffe committee meeting. 108 Katsuhiko Yokoi, “The Colombo Plan and Industrialization in India: Technical Cooperation for the Indian Institutes of Technology,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015), 50–71. 109 See TNA FCO 8/782 and FCO 8/1187. 110 Rowan, “The future of the sterling area,” 21 November 1951, TNA T 236/4611.

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Cowen, M.P., and R.W. Shenton, Doctrines of Development (London: Routledge, 1996). Cowen, Mike, “The Origin and Course of Fabian Colonialism in Africa,” Journal of Historical Sociology 4, no. 2 (1991), 143–174. 10.1111/j.1467-6443.1991. tb00101.x Crafts, N.F.R., “The Golden Age of Economic Growth in Western Europe, 1950–1973,” Economic History Review 48, no. 3 (1995), 429–447. 10.1111/j.14680289.1995.tb01425.x Cripps, Stafford, “‘Colonies’ Contribution to World Trade Stability,” Crown Colonist 18, January 1948, 7–8. De Sailly, Jean, La zone sterling (Paris: Armand Colin, 1957). Dobson, Allen P., The Politics of the Anglo-American Economic Special Relationship, 1940–1987 (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1988). Douglas, R.M., The Labour Party: Nationalism and Internationalism, 1939–1951 (London: Routledge, 2004). Elbaum, Bernard and William Lazonick, eds., The Decline of the British Economy (Oxford: OUP, 1986). Escobar, Arturo, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). Galpern, Steven G., Money, Oil, and Empire in the Middle East: Sterling and Postwar Imperialism, 1944–1971 (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2013). Hayek, F.A., The Road to Serfdom (London: George Routledge, 1944). Helleiner, Eric, States and the Reemergence of Global Finance: From Bretton Woods to the 1990s (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994). Hodge, Joseph M., Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007). Hoffherr, René, “Une régionalisation du plan de modernisation outre-mer,” Politique étrangère 22, no. 5 (1957), 523–534. 10.3406/polit.1957.2473 Ingham, Geoffrey, Capitalism Divided? The City and Industry in British Social Development (New York: Schocken Books, 1984). Jackson, Ben, “At the Origins of Neo-Liberalism: The Free Economy and the Strong State, 1930–1947,” Historical Journal 53, no. 1 (2010), 129–151. 10.1017/ S0018246X09990392 Krozewski, Gerold, Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–1958 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Palgrave, 2001). Krozewski, Gerold, “Sterling, the ‘Minor’ Territories and the End of Formal Empire, 1939–1958,” Economic History Review 46, no. 2 (1993), 239–265. 10.23 07/2598016 Krozewski, Gerold, “Britain and the Reordering of Overseas Aid, 1956–1964: From Overseas Development Finance to Assistance to Sovereign States,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015), 143–158. Kunz, Diane B., “The Importance of Having Money: The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis,” in Wm. R. Louis and Roger Owen, eds., Suez 1956: The Causes and the Consequences (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), 215–232. Kynaston, David, Austerity Britain, 1945–1951 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010).

Europe and economic liberalization 319 Laíns, Pedro, “O Estado e a industrialização em Portugal, 1945–1990,” Análise Social 29, no. 128 (1994), 923–958. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41011194 Lewis, Sir W. Arthur, “The Evolution of Foreign Aid,” The inaugural David Owen Memorial Lecture, 19 November 1971 (Cardiff: University College). Lindlar, Lutger and Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, “Geography, Exchange Rates and Trade Structures: Germany’s Export Performance since the 1950s,” European Review of Economic History 1, no. 2 (1997), 217–246. 10.1017/S1361491 697000105 Lynch, Frances M.B., France and the International Economy (London: Routledge, 1997). Lynch, Frances M.B., “Restoring France: The Road to Integration,” in Alan S. Milward, ed., The Frontier of National Sovereignty: History and Theory, 1945–1992 (London: Routledge, 1993), 59–87. Lynch, Frances M.B., “De Gaulle’s First Veto: France the Rueff Plan and the Free Trade Area,” Contemporary European History 9, no. 1 (2000), 111–135. 10.1017/S0960777300001053 Lynch, Frances M.B., “France and European Integration: From the Schuman Plan to Economic and Monetary Union,” Contemporary European History 13, no. 1 (2004), 117–121. 10.1017/S0960777303001516 Machado, Diamantino P., The Structure of Portuguese Society: The Failure of Fascism (New York: Praeger, 1991). Manu, J.E.A., “Balance of Payments Constraint and Economic Development,” Economic Bulletin of Ghana 2, no. 4 (1972), 17–32. Mata, Maria Eugénia, The Portuguese Escudo Monetary Zone: Its Impact in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Milward, Alan S., Lynch, Frances M.B., Romero, Federico, Ranieri, Ruggero and Vibeke Sørensen, The Frontier of National Sovereignty: History and Theory (London: Routledge 1993). Moussa, Pierre, Les chances économiques de la communauté franco-africaine (Paris: Armand Colin, 1957). Newitt, Malyn, Portugal in Africa, the Last Hundred Years (London: Longman, 1981). Newton, C.C.S., “The 1947 Sterling Crisis and Britain’s Response to the Marshall Plan,” Economic History Review 37, no. 3 (1984), 391–408. 10.2307/2597288 Newton, C.C.S., “The Two Sterling Crises of 1964, and the Decision Not to Devalue,” Economic History Review 62, no. 1 (2009), 73–98. 10.1111/j.1468-0289. 2007.00431.x Newton, C.C.S. and D. Porter, Modernization Frustrated: the Politics of Industrial Decline in Britain since 1900 (London: Unwin Hyman, 1988). O’Hara, Glen, “Towards a New Bradshaw? Economic Statistics and the British State in the 1950s and 1960s,” Economic History Review 60, no. 1 (2007), 1–34. 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2006.00354.x Owen, David, “The United Nations Expanded Program of Technical Assistance A Multilateral Approach,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 323 (1959), 25–32. 10.1177/000271625932300105 Passos, Marcelino, Der Niedergang des Faschismus in Portugal: zum Verhältnis von Ökonomie, Gesellschaft und Staat/Politik in einem europäischen Schwellenland (Marburg: Verlag Arbeiterbewegung und Gesellschaftswissenschaft, 1987).

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Phimister, Ian, “Developing and Defending the Empire: Montgomery’s 1947 Tour of Africa,” Journal of Military History 79, no. 3 (2015), 745–766. Pollard, Sidney, The Wasting of the British Economy (London: Croom Helm, 1982, Routledge reprint, 2011). Pressnell, L.S., “The End of the Sterling Area,” Three Banks Review 121 (1979), 3–20. Reynolds, David, Britannia Overruled: British Policy and World Power in the 20th Century (London: Longman, 1991). Rollo, Fernanda, Portugal e o Plano Marshall: Da rejeição à solicitação da ajuda financeira norte-americana (1947–1952) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1994). Rosas, Fernando, O Estado Novo nos anos trinta: elementos para o estudo da natureza económica e social do Salazarismo (1928–1938) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1986). Rosas, Fernando, História de Portugal: o Estado Novo (1926–1974) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1993). Rosas, Fernando, and J.M. Brandão de Brito, eds., Dicionário de história do Estado Novo (Lisbon: Bertrand Editora, 1996). Rudner, Martin, “Development Policies and Patterns of Agrarian Dominance in the Malaysian Rubber Export Economy,” Modern Asian Studies 15, no. 1 (1981), 83–105. 10.1017/S0026749X0000679X Scammell, W.M., The International Economy since 1945 (London: Macmillan, 1983). Schenk, Catherine R., Britain and the Sterling Area (London: Routledge, 1994). Schenk, Catherine R., The Decline of Sterling: Managing the Retreat of an International Currency, 1945–1992 (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2010). Schenk, Catherine R., “Closing the Hong Kong Gap: the Hong Kong Free Dollar Market in the 1950s,” Economic History Review 47, no. 2 (1994), 335–353. 10.2307/2598085 Sicking, Louis, “A Colonial Echo: France and the Colonial Dimension of the European Economic Community,” French Colonial History 5 (2004), 207–228. 10.1353/fch.2004.0013 Strange, Susan, States and Markets: An Introduction to International Political Economy (London: Francis Pinter, 1988). Telo, António José, Economia e império no Portugal contemporâneo (Lisbon: Cosmos, 1994). Tertrais, Hugues “Le rétablissement de la souveraineté financière de la France en Indochine,” in François Bloch-Lainé, fonctionnaire, financier, citoyen. Journée d’études tenue à Bercy le 25 février 2003, ed. Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France (Paris: Ministère de l’Économie, des Finances et de l’Industrie, 2005), 35–50. Tew, Brian, International Monetary Cooperation, 1945–70 (London: Hutchinson University Library, 1970). Tignor, Robert L., W. Arthur Lewis and the Birth of Development Economics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006). Tomlinson, B.R., “‘The Weapons of the Weakened’: British Power, Sterling Balances, and the Origins of the Colombo Plan,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015), 34–49.

Europe and economic liberalization 321 Tomlinson, Jim, “The British Productivity Problem in the 1960s,” Past & Present 175, no. 1 (2002), 188–210. 10.1093/past/175.1.188 Torres, Adelino, “Pacto colonial e industrialização de Angola (anos 60–70),” Análise Social 19, nos. 77-78-79 (1983), 1101–1119. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/41010443 Toye, Richard, “The Labour Party’s External Economic Policy in the 1940s,” Historical Journal 43, no. 1 (2000), 189–215. Valério, Nuno and Maria Paula Fontoura, “A evolução económica de Angola durante o segundo período colonial – uma tentativa de síntese,” Análise Social 29, no. 129 (1994), 1193–1208. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41011069 Yokoi, Katsuhiko, “The Colombo Plan and Industrialization in India: Technical Cooperation for the Indian Institutes of Technology,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015), 50–71.

8

Empires to globalizing nationstates: (Post-)Colonies and national development in Europe, 1950s–1970s

Colonies occupied a special place in debates about the modernization of the economies of Britain, France, and Portugal, and in easing their transition towards a more open international economic order after the Second World War. The previous chapter has focused on the ways in which the overseas relationships of the relevant economies changed in terms of complementarities during the period of post-war reconstruction. Moreover, the analysis investigated how experts assessed changing requirements for national economies as raw material-based overseas economies became less relevant to Western Europe as the result of the progressive liberalization and integration of industrial economies. This chapter will explore how these evaluations affected the policy practices of states in Europe towards colonies, and how economic policies related to social and political approaches to national development.1 Experts in states re-evaluated the role of colonies in relation to metropolitan economies. Restrictive colonial economic policies and the political bond supported Britain’s discriminatory sterling management in the late 1940s. In France and Portugal, the expectation was that colonies (or post-colonies) ought to ease the transition towards economic liberalization and European integration. However, it often proved difficult to organize such support roles and reconcile established economic relationships in empires with economic redeployment in the imperial centres. As a consequence, in all the states under review, significant policy changes occurred. In Britain, the post-war doctrine of colonial development and development finance experienced a structural crisis in the mid-1950s. Moreover, the nexus between the state and the overseas private sector loosened in the 1960s. In the Portuguese empirestate of the 1960s, contradictions arose between overseas demands for economic development and Portugal’s attempt to use the escudo zone, through its raw material exports, to support Portugal’s industrial modernization and association with free trade in Europe. France was peculiar in the way in which the state planned policy in the franc zone with nominally independent countries in Africa and the help of French parastatals. DOI: 10.4324/9781003346425-12

Empires to globalizing nation-states 323 The ambivalence that characterized economic management between empire and post-empire also involved arguments about national welfare. Policies on immigration in Europe and on labour in the colonies and post-colonies reflected how states reassessed transnational approaches. When the uses or feasibility of controlling overseas economies were in doubt, policies shifted to delineating nations in Europe from the developing world. Or approaches were reformulated in view of a post-imperial modernity in world development and international governance. Overseas relationships became redefined, and adjustments in colonial relations occurred. The chapter begins with two sections analysing, in turn, references to colonies in debates about national economy building in Europe and emerging contradictions in reconciling imperial with national development during the 1950s. Subsequently, the argument will focus more specifically on the re-evaluation in these debates regarding the uses of colonies for national welfare and the reorganization of overseas relationships in the 1960s. The final two sections of the chapter tie the historical argument to a discussions about changes in control relations during the transition from territorial empires to post-imperial statehood in a liberalizing Western world. The relevant topics involve the question of state reform and of the rationality of economic modernization at the nexus between the imperial centre’s economic performance, on the one hand, and the purpose of colonies for Europe, on the other hand. Here the narrative links up with earlier debates on capitalism, empire, and colonies, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

National economies, state agency, and the colonial nexus in the 1950s The re-evaluation of colonial relationships in the 1950s was embedded in debates about the reconfiguration of West European states in the world economy. Depending on the case, colonial economies had the potential to assist imperial states in adjusting to the new economic liberalism or clashed with such an adjustment. The question was, moreover, whether or not colonial economies had a place in the new economic architecture of the Western world. In France, unlike in Britain, there was a public debate involving the state bureaucracy, businesses, and the popular press, about the risk of withdrawing from empire or, conversely, the costs of colonial rule. The following argument first traces the rapprochement of the imperial state and colonies in discriminatory currency management and the role of colonial control in the cases of Britain’s sterling area and the Portuguese escudo zone. Subsequently, the discussion will turn to the controversy in the French state regarding the purpose of the colonial empire. However, the colonial nexus was not only a matter of controversy due to the policy preferences of officials or politicians. As will be argued

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in the next section, structural incompatibilities also existed between the management of European economies in a liberalizing world economy and established mechanisms of colonial economic policy. Britain’s discriminatory management of the colonial segment of the sterling area, especially between the convertibility crisis in 1947 and the early 1950s, resembled arguments in the 1930s that emphasized the need for colonies for economies in continental Europe due to foreign currency shortages. Britain’s colonial economic policy was at least in part a conscious move to help stem the depletion of foreign currency reserves and support the balance of payments. In this attempt, political factors became relevant. Differences to the interwar period are also noteworthy, though. The policy positioned global Britain and the world’s principal trading currency sterling in relation to the emerging dollar. After 1945, the United States fostered the recovery of the economies of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) and Italy, in a process that occurred in domestic and regional settings. In the British empire, the main aim was “dollar earning” through the export of colonial raw materials to the dollar area rather than “dollar saving” in order to channel materials to the industrial sector. The episode has been discussed from various angles: in terms of colonial policies characterized as the “second colonial occupation,” the British Labour government’s advocacy of the empire as part of a new international order, or the politics of economic relations in the imperial sterling area.2 The evidence is now sufficiently varied to get away from interpretations of Labour’s policy solely in terms of its political ideology and statism or as the mere by-product of a conjuncture in the world economy during the Korean War. With the creation of an overarching economics ministry under Stafford Cripps in 1948, the British state coordinated policies aimed at improving Britain’s reserve position. One tangent of policy extended to the colonies. The Colonial Office endorsed the approach not only as part of a new development drive in Africa but also as a sign that Africa, at long last, had become an economically viable part of the British empire. British colonial administrators, though, were less enthusiastic about these policy designs, which entailed austerity policies for colonies at a time when some colonies showed a solid export performance. Colonies established discriminatory trade management and imposed import restrictions from the dollar area with so-called dollar ceilings. Meanwhile, colonial development was boosted with capital aid from the Colonial Development Corporation. In spite of booming export economies, however, orthodox colonial monetary policy with full currency cover remained largely in place. The aim was to maximize the colonies’ capacity for dollar pooling in the sterling area.3 However, economic performance was not spearheaded by the British Labour government’s state-sponsored colonial development schemes. In fact, colonial production schemes from groundnuts in Tanganyika to

Empires to globalizing nation-states 325 eggs in the Gambia suffered from multiple deficiencies that meant that they remained largely uncompetitive and were eventually phased out.4 The highest level of “dollar earning” accrued to territories in British West Africa, notably the Gold Coast, and to Malaya, due to smallholder production, respectively for cocoa and rubber. Tobacco production played a similar role for the settler state of Rhodesia.5 The rubber boom in Malaya was triggered by the Korean War. Discriminatory regulation ensured counter-cyclical austerity. British government departments in the late 1940s paid little attention to the rapid accumulation of colonial sterling assets in London due to these mechanisms. The discriminatory approach worked for a while because policy could be influenced in politically dependent colonies. Moreover, in the Gold Coast, among others, the size of urban populations with a penchant for imported consumer goods was still relatively small. However, at one point after the convertibility crisis in 1947, Britain relaxed the regulation for imported textiles faced with widespread demonstrations in Accra on the issue.6 Still, socioeconomic conditions facilitated regulative policies. In the settler colony Kenya, by contrast, restrictions on dollar imports, and consumer imports generally, proved less feasible.7 What is more, political constellations in the Gold Coast were favourable in the sense that elite politics prioritized the demand for internal self-government as a more pressing concern than the colony’s economic management. Ironically, the political radical Kwame Nkrumah was seen to be more accommodating to British sterling policy than his opponent, the businessman J.B. Danquah.8 Away from colonies in the strict sense, however, relationships in the sterling area changed. Anglo-Egyptian relations are a case in point. Restrictive sterling policies from 1947 onwards and Egypt’s role in the run on sterling led to an acrimonious dispute over whether Egypt was liberating itself from British sterling policy or needed to be reprimanded by Britain for failing to adhere to the sterling area’s unwritten rules.9 Frederick Leith-Ross, the governor of the Bank of Egypt in the late 1940s, who, in the 1930s, had been the British Treasury’s chief economic advisor, was involved in renegotiating the terms of an agreement with Egypt that loosened the ties with the area.10 In 1952, an anonymous note in the Bank’s official publication, issued by Nicolai Koestner, a former Estonian trade minister and “money doctor” for the League of Nations in the 1930s, mocked Britain’s layered regulations in sterling transferability as the pound in “Schachtian dress,” in a thinly veiled reference to Nazi Germany’s currency management.11 Incidentally, Hjalmar Schacht acted in the 1950s as financial adviser to a number of Asian and Arab countries, including Indonesia, Syria, and Egypt, though without the official backing of the West German state.12 There was little explicit discussion in British government departments about the politics of colonial sterling and hardly any wider public debate on the subject. Nonetheless, the official rhetoric was sometimes revealing.

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The British Colonial Office viewed colonial “dollar earning” as a contribution to the common imperial project of modernization and development. But the chief cashier of the Bank of England, Leslie O’Brien, when referring to the accumulation of colonial sterling assets in 1953, spoke of “Oriental solidarity,” for which Britain ought to be grateful.13 In fact, concerns were growing about the future prospects of this support. The imperial escudo zone of the late 1940s and early 1950s shows similarities with colonial sterling management at the time as well as continuities with escudo policies during the 1930s. The centre regulated colonial production and exports, notably in cotton, channelling them to the Portuguese textile sector, while also exporting minerals, such as Angolan diamonds in order to obtain foreign currency. As Portugal encountered balance of payments difficulties at the end of the 1940s, the country joined the US recovery programme, the colonial allocation of which was mainly used for the building of electric power stations and airports.14 This investment was in line with the goal to boost the performance of the colonial export sector. By contrast, France, after 1945, engaged in a long-lasting debate on whether colonies hindered or supported economic modernization. The question was whether the French economy still benefitted from colonies or got bogged down by the economic and monetary costs of colonial rule. The wars in Indochina in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and in Algeria during the second half of the 1950s, lent further urgency to these arguments. The modernization debate regarding the need to redefine the colonial bond occurred at a time when the French economy faced growing challenges in structural adjustment. Seen from this angle, the controversy related to concerns about the viability of French businesses and the adaptability of French business elites. However, the modernization debate also connected to arguments about the legacy of the French colonial empire since the nineteenth century. In the historical literature, the former has been interpreted in terms of overcoming resistance to modernization in the state, the latter as evidence of a deep-seated myth of the connection between colonial rule and French welfare.15 The immediate post-war years witnessed an apparent contradiction between a lack of interest in colonial affairs and the widespread public and political view in France that the colonial empire was essential for the country’s recovery. Empire underpinned the big power status of Greater France, la plus grande France, across the political spectrum from Charles de Gaulle to the Communists, with the exception of the Trotskyists. The generalized view in 1947 that the liberty and grandeur of France as a nation flowed from the empire has been attributed to the legacy of the war at a time of uncertainty during post-war reconstruction. Colonies played a role in the liberation of Free France, in terms of political solidarity, manpower, and financial support via so-called subscriptions, the coercive nature of which was rarely realized or acknowledged in France.16

Empires to globalizing nation-states 327 Economic policy debates continued to be cast in terms of the interwar theme of the need to develop the rational use of colonial resources. Planning for the modernization of overseas France was relaunched in 1946. Planners stressed the mutual benefits of closer trade and investment links, notably between France and French North Africa.17 The opposition to empire in overseas France was widely ignored in the centre at that time.18 However, some requests for political association, as those by Léopold Sédar Senghor in Senegal, centred on France. France, he argued, needed to rethink the nature of its imperial relations precisely with its own future rennaissance in mind.19 Meanwhile, from 1948–1949, the French Communists moved to an anti-colonial discourse influenced by the Soviet Union.20 By the mid- and late 1950s, the debate about colonies had shifted markedly both in terms of the political rhetoric and the formulation of expert opinion and its impact in the state. Some circles argued that a choice needed to be made between the colonial empire and the progress of “French capitalism.” Business representatives feared that the colonial bond would inhibit France’s competitiveness in the emerging world order. Pierre Moussa, the official in the overseas ministry whose views on development have been introduced in the previous chapter, termed this the “Dutch complex” (complexe hollandais). The need for investment in the colonies, he argued, risked to hinder the use of more profitable investment outlets, especially those beneficial for European integration. This factor together with inflated prices would hamper the competitiveness of French firms and thus France’s growth prospects compared to other European economies. Most French enterprises would be viable without the colonial empire, only a few depended on it, Moussa maintained.21 There was an even wider connection between these debates and economic theory. The transition from Dutch colonial rule in the East Indies to independent Indonesia was concomitant with a Dutch economy prioritizing trade within Europe. The episode informed the economist Jan Tinbergen’s influential gravity model in international trade and influenced the theory behind European economic integration.22 The model postulated that trade between similar economic entities in geographical proximity and intra-industrial regional trade would be especially conducive to economic growth. In the popular debate on the political right in France, meanwhile, colonies no longer figured as an asset, or even as a burden that France needed to shoulder. The journalist Raymond Cartier expressed this oft-quoted opinion in Paris Match in 1956, later called Cartierism. The Netherlands prospered. They no longer needed to be concerned about financing railways and power stations in Java and other “distant places.” The theme was couched in the familiar terms of a populist counter-narrative reacting against an ungrateful and burdensome empire which abound in the history of European colonial empires.

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For the political left, for which imperialism was synonymous with capitalist exploitation by large firms, anti-colonialism was ambiguous. Even if not always economically viable, a democratic empire might still constitute a counterpoise to US hegemony.23 In this sense, both the French and British left, temporarily, instrumentalized empire in designs of a world order that was congenial to their conception of the nationstate. From this angle of analysis, then, de Gaulle’s return to the presidency under the Fifth Republic not only united France after the Algerian War but also helped to heal the political sclerosis in the French state that tied both the left and right to empire, thus standing in the way of economic modernization.24 The aforementioned reasoning is persuasive as far as it goes, focusing on the colonies’ disruptive influence in “French capitalism” and de Gaulle’s role in overcoming this impediment. Nonetheless, the expert debate in the state calls for a more specific analysis of the shifting conceptions of modern colonial relations in France. Already during his Indochina experience in 1945, the ideas expressed by François BlochLainé, the influential economic civil servant, departed from the dominant interwar paradigm of colonies solely as providers of agricultural and raw material resources.25 He proposed an alternative logic of imperial governance. A degree of political autonomy ought to accompany the maintenance of France’s prerogative of imperial economic organization.26 The economic relationship between metropolitan and overseas France would be different from before. For instance, Saigon might be an appropriate location to establish synergetic industrial ventures. Bloch-Lainé asked the administration to discuss the matter with the director of the car manufacturer Renault in view of establishing an assembly plant in Indochina. A related matter was the need for a systematic assessment of rubber stocks and the potential of rubber production. In this matter, Bloch-Lainé took the French military to task for lacking a sense of urgency. In a similar vein, Moussa stated in 1957 that the reformed franc zone he proposed was in fact a modernized version of colonial economic management by France, even if he also stressed the need for political consultation and consensus between overseas territories and the centre.27 The modernization programme embraced a twin strategy: integrating France within an open world economy and actively promoting overseas development, especially in West Africa, rather than separating the two. This policy was based on two assumptions: firstly, that specific political conditions existed that would make planning feasible; and secondly, that a growth strategy in itself would reduce poverty, provided it was cushioned by temporary protective measures shielding overseas economies in the initial phase of their industrialization. In this thinking, therefore, there was no difference between strategies of growth and measures aimed at poverty reduction, contrary to World Bank doctrine in the 1950s.28

Empires to globalizing nation-states 329 A range of French intellectuals discussed Moussa’s ideas, including the sociologist Georges Balandier and the social-anthropologist Claude Meillassoux. Balandier took Moussa to task precisely for conflating strategies of growth with those of poverty eradication. He criticized Moussa for failing to take into account the new global division of labour, and added that Moussa’s state followed the model of Joseph Schumpeter’s rational entrepreneur.29 Similarly, Meillassoux, in reviewing proposals of developing the French Union as a successor to the colonial empire, claimed that Moussa sidestepped the social implication of the modernization programme in an attempt to create an upgraded capitalist version of Saint-Simonianism, thus merely arguing the case for a more humane version of the old colonial pact.30 These issues will be pursued further in the concluding section of the chapter on imperial and post-imperial statehood. In the course of the 1950s, among policy-makers in Britain and France doubts emerged regarding the feasibility and expediency to maintain colonial relationships in their established form. This assessment prompted the search to reform the imperial-colonial bond to secure its future role for the imperial state. In France, moreover, controversies were rife in a public debate regarding colonial rule as either an uneconomical undertaking or an exploitative one. Policy-making in Portugal in the early 1950s, meanwhile, appeared to be oblivious to such debates, striving to enhance the uses of imperial development via the state.

Tackling contradictions in imperial economic relations With regard to colonies, imperial states formulated policies in line with shifting conceptual approaches to modernization, as argued earlier. States in Europe also reproduced in political and social relations that involved overseas relationships, as will be argued further below. However, the discussion of these issues requires first to analyse the changing nature of colonial economic management. The latter shows up contradictions and reconfigurations during a period of economic liberalization. The case will be made, in turn, by examining the intersection between colonial monetary relations, colonial development finance, and post-colonial aid relations in the British case in the 1950s; by exploring France’s relations with the postcolonial franc zone in West Africa; and by discussing, more briefly, the Portuguese colonies in the context of liberal globalism in the 1960s. In the aftermath of the British Labour government’s initiatives on colonial development in imperial economic policy, Conservative governments in the 1950s faced problems in reconciling new objectives in external economy policy with established practices of colonial economic management. Considerations often involved arcane specifics of technical management, largely confined to an official and confidential debate, their considerable implications notwithstanding. The first instance, and the only one which experienced some public exposure, concerned the failure

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of colonial agricultural production schemes. This setback put pay to arguments about the growth potential for agricultural exports from British colonies and their role for a British imperial economy. The second area concerned the pros and cons of the accumulation of sterling assets in London by African colonies and Malaya and considerations about their “inflated” nature. The third problem area connected this debate to a twofold question related to the financing of colonial development: global investment propensities and the state’s role in supporting investment in colonies through managing colonial loans. In the light of these technical issues, the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan ordered a report on the costs and benefits of Britain’s colonial empire after the Suez crisis in 1956. In parallel, colonial financial and monetary policies were challenged within colonies, both by political activists and British administrators. Besides, there were instances in which the established practices of colonial production methods prompted social and political protest, such as in Kenya and Tanganyika. In principle, the creditor role of colonies for Britain was easing pressures on sterling. However, by 1953, the Bank of England and cosmopolitanminded officials in the Treasury, like Leslie Rowan, began to doubt the benefits of this trend, discussing the limits of colonial solidarity. The colonies’ support role for Britain, Rowan argued, was unlikely to last, given colonial requests for accelerated economic development, including industrialization. The balances were too high and, therefore, constituted claims on British resources in the medium term. The Colonial Office, though, did not share this view. It considered the level of balances to be evidence of colonial economic performance. Measures to reduce their level, moreover, might lead to political pressure that would undermine orthodox finance and stability. For these reasons, among others, the Bank and Treasury introduced fiduciary issues only very cautiously, and ultimately with little effect on the level of sterling balances.31 In the state’s quest for policy reform and rationalization under Macmillan after 1957, the matter was investigated at a time when pressures on the pound were expected to increase in relation to the move to dollar convertibility by European currencies, a key step in the implementation of Bretton Woods. By that time, the colonial (or post-colonial) sterling area was no longer seen to be able to play a role in British balance of payments management in the medium and long terms. Policy needed to rely mainly on the metropolitan economy. The rise of Middle Eastern balances as an alternative in the 1960s was unexpected. In 1957 and 1958, the holding of sterling balances in London was expected to hinge on political constellations, involving a scenario of prudent vs. imprudent policies at a time when demands in African colonies for internal self-government and independence increased. The British Treasury and Bank of England, wary of negative repercussions on money markets, confidentially investigated the matter on two occasions, focusing on a risk

Empires to globalizing nation-states 331 assessment of the feasibility, likelihood, and impact of withdrawals of colonial balances.32 The funding of balances, though, as done with the wartime balances of South Asia in the Colombo Plan, was dismissed. Such a move, it was feared, would destabilize financial markets at a critical time of economic liberalization. In the end, the investigation concluded that withdrawals would most probably be phased over a number of years and, therefore, could be absorbed by the British economy. Nonetheless, there were latent risks for the disruption of colonial development finance, even if only a single important holder of balances, notably Malaya, would embark on reducing its London assets. Regarding the financing of colonial development, it did not matter from the perspective of the British balance of payments whether colonies or newly independent states withdrew sterling assets or were allowed to float new loans on the London money market. However, fundamental contradictions in the mechanism of colonial development finance emerged exactly at the time when the London money market was supposed to take on the role as the main provider of capital for new development, especially in infrastructure, according to the old logic of British imperial financial management.33 From 1955 onwards, it proved increasingly difficult for colonies to borrow on the open market in London. To some extent, the market for colonial loans could be kept afloat due to the very fact that inter-territorial investment supported the loan market: funds from one colony flowed into loan issues of another colony. This characterized the manner in which the Crown Agents managed the market.34 From the mid-1950s, though, the Bank of England became increasingly critical of this management. In fact, after the independence of Malaya and the Gold Coast as Ghana in 1957, the political coherence that this management assumed was doubtful. Malaya held a particularly high percentage of inter-colonial investment. Had Malaya opted out of sterling area pooling, the market would have collapsed immediately. This did not happen at that time. Even though, the market for colonial loans dried up by in the late 1950s.35 More generally, the colonial trustee arrangements that legally obliged institutional investors, such as pension funds, to channel their investments into colonial and dominion stocks crumbled from 1957; and a trustee law allowing more diverse investment options came into force in 1961.36 The law was another reason why the colonial loan market suffered. But this change was much more significant. The move marked the very end of Britain organizing colonial investment as part of an imperial trading bloc which had formally started with the Trustee Act, 1900. In accordance with the quest for more open financial flows, the British state did not intervene to support the market. As the London money market for colonial loans faltered, the British state stepped in as a guarantor of loan finance and with grants. The purpose was to shield sterling relationships from the broader impact of the

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perception of market failure as well as to bridge the time until new aid arrangements for independent members of the Commonwealth became operational. Within the framework agreed at the Commonwealth Conference in 1958, borrowing from Britain took mainly the form of export credits organized by the state.37 Priority ought to be given to regions with potential for growth or where British aid might reduce social conflict or could play a role to stem Communist influence in the Cold War.38 Meanwhile, colonial monetary management proved to be increasingly controversial within British government departments, but also in colonies, notably in Malaya, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria. The subject also led to frictions between the Bank of England and the World Bank. On the one hand, this was a technical debate, tying in with the nature of colonial investment funds, the availability of loan finance locally, the potential role of central banks in development, and ultimately also the emergence of local money markets. On the other hand, debates had a political dimension involving different views on development doctrines and economic institution building in colonies, but also a politicized one prone to be distracting from economic issues.39 In both sets of debates British officials were concerned about the extent to which sterling area management might be affected. Officials fathomed possible incompatibilities between colonial development finance and British external financial policy in changes in monetary orthodoxy. The Bank of England, for instance, saw World Bank survey missions in the 1950s, notably in Malaya, with a critical eye to the extent to which these endorsed a role for central banks in stimulating local loan finance or considered the implications for monetary arrangements of the diversification of trade relations with the dollar area.40 The assumption was that Britain would remain the principal source of capital for its colonies and former colonies. This view still underpinned the British development approach in the framework of the Colombo Plan. From the early 1960s onwards, though, the principle became diluted as alternatives in multilateral or parallel bilateral lending arrangements were deemed necessary to ease the burden from overseas borrowing. Britain’s relationships with the Word Bank changed accordingly.41 But in the 1950s, the Bank of England was still wary of experts not schooled according to the Bank’s and sterling area’s tradition and potentially inclined towards dollar hegemony as an alternative to sterling.42 Even if the Bank of England itself sought ways to manage a gradual reduction of the level of short-term, “free” sterling holdings by colonies, officials still worried that debates about national banks in colonies might undermine orthodox sterling relationships or could lead to what the Bank of England called “irresponsible” policies in reducing sterling assets. Yet if national banks acted like currency boards rather than central banks, they might be useful symbols of the greater political autonomy of colonies. Relations with the Gold Coast in the early 1950s met these requirements.

Empires to globalizing nation-states 333 However, shortly before independence in 1957, Ghana’s high level of sterling assets prompted acrimonious debates to the extent that some officials in the Bank considered the pros and cons of the postponement of independence.43 Anglo-Malayan relations were deemed politically manageable from the sterling area perspective in spite of Malaya’s large assets in London and the drying up of loan finance. One reason was that Britain was credited by the elite in the emerging Malayan state for supporting rubber smallholder production after 1945, giving up the privileged relationship with expatriate rubber firms that had characterized the 1930s. However, the Anglo-Malayan currency negotiations of 1960 showed up the very fluidity of sterling relationships in a world in which global trade and finance were becoming realigned. The controversy over the partial diversification of Malaya’s currency reserves into dollars had no real consequences in the early 1960s. However, Britain’s reluctance and delay to agree to the relevant provisions prompted political distrust in Malaya. The political rift with economic repercussions followed in 1967, when Britain failed to inform Malaysia, which still held substantial balances in London, of the devaluation of the pound. At this point, Malaya eventually acted against sterling area orthodoxy and converted its assets, albeit at a loss, which was one factor leading to the Basle settlement and the end of the sterling area.44 Simply put, the diverse contradictions in imperial relationships that intensified in the mid-1950s influenced an overall policy assessment of the utility of colonial domination. In 1957, Macmillan’s so-called balance sheet of empire explicitly assessed contradictions in Britain’s imperial economic relationship at the confidential level of the government bureaucracy.45 This assessment was a part of the drive for a more purpose-oriented economic management and data gathering by the state.46 Prepared under the aegis of the Colonial Office, the report concluded that benefits and burdens resulted in roughly equal measure from Britain’s bond with empire. However, for the economic government departments, challenged by the effects of the Suez crisis, the specific elements of the report arguably pointed to the need for adjustment. Particular problems were the development push in some colonies at a time of mounting problems with development finance, and the question of managing the controlled reduction of colonial sterling assets at a time when overseas economies were increasingly out of tune with the economic consolidation of the Western world.47 Meanwhile, the manner in which the British state operated colonial production schemes in Africa in the late 1940s aggravated a different set of tensions in some colonies. Social conflict and protest occurred where colonial states actively intervened in production in relation to land, labour, and the ecological environment. The case was borne out most prominently by conflict and violence in Kenya, a symbol of colonial domination. The Mau Mau rebellion had many layers involving a civil

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conflict entangled with grievances about British colonialism both in urban and rural areas. However, problems of access to land were compounded by disputes over expert-led methods of agricultural production that meshed with concerns about ecological sustainability.48 Similarly, protests in some rural areas of Tanganyika in the second half of the 1950s gravitated towards grievances related to new methods of production and forestry exploitation. Both the agricultural corporation connected to the Overseas Food Corporation and the organizations exploiting forest resources became targets of anti-colonial protests. In Tanganyika, colonial officials saw these events in the light of a turn towards violence in the image of developments in Kenya earlier.49 The nexus of production, the imperial economy, and national politics, was differently defined elsewhere though. Cocoa producers in the Ashanti region of Ghana (until 1957 the Gold Coast colony) came into conflict with nationalist politics in controversies over marketing board funds and their potential uses for boosting national welfare.50 In the late 1950s and early 1960s, there was little economic potential for Britain in building on an African sterling area. What is more, established arrangements in colonial development finance had become dysfunctional by that time. And the legacy of Britain’s neomercantilist development schemes had ironically prompted state intervention of another kind, namely in the military campaign in Kenya. The need to deal with these different sets of tensions induced economic-political changes in Britain’s relationship with former colonies. The period witnessed a complete transformation from Britain’s management of an imperial economy to one in which British policy acted upon an extraneous entity of developing economies. Unlike in Britain, policy-makers in France in the 1950s, were preoccupied with reforming imperial relationships in order to make them more relevant to the French national economy, rather than with remedying the inconsistencies and backlash of past discriminatory trade relations in the empire. Overseas policy focused on a geographically confined area in West Africa after the large-scale wars in Indochina and Algeria whose exorbitant costs alone demanded reform at home. Officials tried to fathom the future potential of franc zone relations and how best to embed them in France’s attempt to open its economy towards Europe. Coincidental external factors, such as Britain’s European free trade initiative, required France to speed up domestic economic liberalization in order to secure its closer association with West Germany in the European common market. The overseas franc zone became part of French economic organization in a haphazard rather than planned manner. These relations bear out continuities of old imperial relationships as well as new entrepreneurial alliances, as epitomized by the case of Côte d’Ivoire in the 1960s. In 1957, Moussa reflected on the contradictions and possible policy choices pertaining to the relations between the franc zone and Europe.

Empires to globalizing nation-states 335 When he considered franc zone policy at the time of the Treaty of Rome and Macmillan’s European free trade initiative, he had very specific ideas of how overseas France ought to complement France’s role in Europe.51 In Moussa’s words, policy needed to avoid both a “divorce” and “bigamy.” The first would have meant giving up the idea of the integration of the economies of metropolitan and overseas France by prioritizing France’s relations in Europe. The second scenario would have required extensive regulation, contrary to the liberal economic spirit of the time, in order to overcome the essentially contradictory process of integrating advanced industrial economies with emerging ones. Moreover, opt-outs from liberalization in key areas would have become necessary, notably to protect “infant” industries.52 Moussa’s alternative, by contrast, proposed to tie the overseas franc zone in with the process of European integration. Temporarily, protective regulation would be inevitable, but benefits would also ensue. Europe ought to assist the franc zone by granting it trading preferences rather than doing so on a larger scale, for South America, for instance. And the franc zone would become a privileged area for public and not just for private investments from across Europe.53 French policy-planning in the late 1950s, though, initially was not done in this manner, and also did not consider the option of a future without a colonial empire.54 In fact, officials, such as Bloch-Lainé and Paul Reynaud, the head of the Parliamentary finance commission at the time, observed, with the benefit of hindsight, the paradox of France’s colonial relationship in the 1950s. The overseas franc zone did not help France to augment its dollar reserves, while France was also running a trade surplus with the colonies.55 Moreover, while French cotton textiles still found important outlets in the colonies during the first post-war decade, the volume of these exports was declining in the late 1950s.56 When de Gaulle returned as the first president of the Fifth Republic in 1958, he supervised a rapid move into the common market. In order to ensure closer economic cooperation with Germany, French businesses were obliged to restructure according to the neoliberal designs of de Gaulle’s economic policy adviser, Jacques Rueff.57 To some extent, the second half of the 1950s already foreshadowed changes in the parameters in which France’s Africa relations operated in the 1960s. The period between 1956 and 1958 witnessed sustained initiatives with regard to resource exploration by France, both public and private, in West Africa and North Africa. Discoveries included deposits of iron, manganese, and uranium, and particularly petroleum.58 The latter occurred in Algeria but also in the French Congo and in Gabon, which later became a major zone of exploitation for the powerful French parastatal petroleum firm Elf-ERAP established in 1966. Aid policies resembled those of post-imperial Britain in the early 1960s in the sense that, on the one hand, aid included budgetary support for small states and support to secure basic administrative functions. On the

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other hand, both cases show a shift towards privileging forms of technical assistance as a way to reduce rising demands for capital aid and as an attempt to tie aid to national technical standards and knowledge creation. This emphasis existed in cooperation agreements between France and newly-independent countries from the end of the 1950s, and was restated in the recommendations by the Jeanneney report in 1964.59 In Britain, the Overseas Development Ministry (ODM) regretted that British aid was geographically too scattered, whereas French aid had a specific geographical focus that made it more effective for the French economy. The French state made a massive effort to coordinate the provision of French experts, teachers, and aid workers for Francophone African countries, and public and private initiatives established educational institutions in new states, including for the training of statisticians.60 In the second half of the 1960s, and under direct control of the French presidency, the French ministry of cooperation also set out to organize franc zone relations by economic sectors and entrepreneurial groups. The derogation clause of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) on currency areas and trade discrimination as a step to fostering economic integration made these policies possible. In the quest to modernize the French economy by extricating it from old imperial relationships that shielded uncompetitive sectors like textiles, the African franc zone emerged in the 1960s as a means to reconcile France’s economic redeployment with its imperial legacy. The French textile sector eventually entered joint ventures with independent states for the production of varieties of cotton in the Côte d’Ivoire, channelled through the CFDT (Compagnie française pour le développement des fibres textiles) and financed with investment from the French Development Agency, the Caisse centrale de coopération économique. The CFDT had originally been established in 1946 to investigate and promote a more scientific approach to cotton production.61 For reasons that will be discussed further, Ivorian cotton production experienced massive growth in the independent franc zone of the 1960s maintaining close ties with the French textile sector. In some ways, moreover, the intended synergy between franc zone development and France’s integration in Europe became a reality. From 1958 onwards, France’s aid to the franc zone was complemented by finance from the European Development Fund (EDF). In the 1960s, the former French colonies in Africa were the main beneficiaries of the fund’s aid. Moreover, about 80 percent of contracts related to project aid benefitted French companies.62 In the context of economic liberalization, relations within Western Europe also overlapped with those between Portugal and its empire-state, while coexisting with trade regulation reminiscent of Britain’s discriminatory sterling area in the 1940s. In the 1960s, Portugal reconfigured imperial management, in which Angola’s economy occupied an important position.

Empires to globalizing nation-states 337 Abandoning the inconsistencies of economic autarky, the state embarked upon steering economic complementarities between the Portuguese and overseas economies as part of a more open corporatist finance capitalism, though one associated with a hierarchical organization of the economy by the state. Yet the attempt to rationalize the uses of empire for the Portuguese economy had the effect of accentuating the political and social contradictions of imperial rule. Nonetheless, while Portugal’s colonial wars lasted from 1961 through to the mid-1970s, economic contradictions within the empire-state’s economy only came to a head in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Meanwhile, the United Nations took initiatives against Portugal in the aftermath of the UN anti-colonialism resolution in 1960. These steps, however, focused on the anachronistic politics of Portugal’s coercive colonial occupation, including practices of labour coercion, rather than engaging with the intricacies of Portugal’s imperial economic policies.63 Under José Gonçalo Correia de Oliveira, who held various ministerial posts in trade and finance between the end of the 1950s and throughout the 1960s, a legal move towards imperial economic integration went along with centralization from Lisbon.64 Economic organization was intended to boost colonial exports for foreign currency to support the Portuguese economy as the centre of the imperial escudo zone monetary union. In addition, the overseas provinces ought to be self-sufficient in their budget, serve as an outlet for migrants, and conduct their trade on Portuguese vessels.65 The colonial pact was incorporated into the Portuguese constitution in 1951. In 1957, free trade within the entire escudo empire was a stated objective. And in 1961, the Portuguese empire organized as one economic bloc in the Portuguese economic space. The ensuing plans made massive use of Portuguese and foreign investment. Firms diversified into the commercial sector and banking, and moved from the exploitation of coffee and diamonds to that of iron ore and petroleum.66 The Portuguese case acquired its own identity in the manner in which functional state management remained entwined with the organization of imperial control in the state. The development of the empire in Africa, notably colonial Angola, in the 1960s was a part of the manner in which Portugal adapted the escudo zone to global liberalism and to the country’s gradual integration with Europe in a revised version of the colonial pact.67 There was a two-tier hierarchy in the construction of Portugal’s imperial economic space. Incomes from the overseas escudo zone’s export surpluses with foreign countries were geared, through the control over financial flows in the currency zone, towards bolstering the creation of an advanced economy in Portugal.68 These relationships ought to help liberalization in Europe, for which the European Free Trade Area (EFTA) constituted a congenial framework.69 The medium- and long-term vision of Portuguese officials for a modern Portugal resembled the ideas of Bloch-Lainé and Moussa in France

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regarding forms of overseas industrialization conducive to the metropolitan economy. Correia de Oliveira argued in 1962 that one day the entire Portuguese cotton textile industry would operate from the colonies.70 In the course of the 1960s and early 1970s, the role of intermediate industries in Angola, in order of importance, ranged from food processing, textiles, drinks, and chemicals, to the processing of metals and tobacco.71 Primarily, however, overseas Portugal was a realm for resource extraction, and increasingly an outlet for investment in intermediate industries and technologies and a means to attract foreign capital. More so than the franc zone, Portugal’s economic space fulfilled a function in the renewal of Europe’s and the West’s entrepreneurial capitalism by securing proceeds from investments by US, British, Belgian, and West German multinationals.72 Yet from the mid-1960s onwards, the arrangements of the escudo zone monetary union encountered increasing difficulties as the balance of payments deficits of Angola and Mozambique vis-à-vis metropolitan Portugal worsened and Portugal struggled to meet rising demands from overseas members for transfer payments and resorted to austerity to cope with the problem.73 By the early 1970s, moreover, it became apparent that Portugal could not provide the capital goods required by Angola to a sufficient extent. What followed was a new protectionist phase shielding Angolan industrialization.74 In essence, the fork widened between a liberalizing metropolitan economy and colonies that attempted to build their own national economies reluctant to operate according to regulation from the imperial centre. All the cases discussed earlier share the historical contingency of the post-war reordering of Western economies towards economic liberalism. However, the case of Portugal in the 1960s was a specific form of a corporatist state adjusting to liberalization, opening up spaces for private enterprise and multinationals in post-empire elsewhere. The latter was germane to global economic organization after empire, where the big firm returned. This was also the case in former British territories, such as Kenya, Rhodesia, and Zambia. In the cases of post-imperial Britain, the state withdrew as a developing agent, though. Importantly, however, all the states under review adopted more active roles as nation-states in economic redeployment by managing colonial economic relations and their legacies.

Re-delineating national welfare Europe’s overseas relationships involved not only economic technicalities but also national politics of welfare, social relations, and identity. The definition of these bonds differed markedly in Britain, France, and Portugal. The three cases represent variants in overseas relationships, though all were affected by the economic reorganization that occurred in the Western world in the 1950s and 1960s. The argument in this section

Empires to globalizing nation-states 339 will identify changing conceptions of national welfare and social relations in Europe during the transition to post-empire by focusing on immigration, labour, and the boundaries of development. The subsequent section will then contrast these perspectives from Europe on transnational relations with an analysis of selected cases in Africa. Two main processes characterized the manner in which imperial states debated national welfare and progress during the emergence of a world order that abandoned the previous links between progressive modernity, empire, and colonial economies. In view of the integration of Western economies, a countervailing trend to empire gained momentum that first emphasized a control dimension with regard to immigration and relations with the defined core nation. The second process accompanied the search for economic redeployment in imperial states. Imperial economies, which had combined industrialized and agrarian economies, were gradually replaced by liberal industrial economies and viewed as the opposites of overseas agrarian or industrializing economies. In a global economic space after empire, experts searched for new techniques to promote national progress. In the 1960s, moreover, social movements emerged that emphasized global responsibility for development, environmental protection, humanitarianism, and a more egalitarian and inclusive conception of welfare. Immediately after the war, the British state had fostered a distinct imagery of development that tied Africa to British welfare, even if this development was at best tangential to relaunching Britain’s cosmopolitanism. As inconsistencies in the economic management of empire manifested themselves, a backlash occurred. Once cracks in controlling colonial relations occurred, as for instance during India’s transition to independence and the sterling balances negotiations, British officials viewed empire increasingly again, as in the mid-nineteenth century, in terms of either valuable or burdensome regions. For France, the wars in Indochina and even more so in Algeria proved disruptive, since they involved close economic and social webs that tied France to its overseas territories. Until the mid-1950s, there existed, however, a widespread expectation that a move away from empire would be detrimental to national welfare. Then sceptics emerged in Cartierism. Yet after 1960, the African franc zone emerged as the alternative to the old empire and established entrepreneurial relationships in a reconfigured setting of overseas nation-states. In the Portuguese empire-state of the 1960s, by contrast, closer imperial integration, despite colonial war, temporarily built on entrepreneurial and settler links aimed at supporting metropolitan Portugal economically. Between the 1950s and 1960s, approaches by states to immigration changed. The shift in policy responded to considerations of economic organization but was also due to growing concerns that, after empire, largescale migration would occur from former colonies. In turn, economic

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liberalization would heighten competition on national labour markets. In the first instance, immigration policies reflected the need in economies for both unskilled and skilled labour. In West Germany, for instance, the economic boom prompted specific agreements for the hiring of guest workers, mainly from Southern Europe from 1955 and subsequently from Turkey. A similar trend was visible in France, importantly with regard to migrant workers from Portugal. However, in both French and British industries, the need for unskilled workers was quickly saturated.75 In France, the debate about migrants from the 1950s onwards focused importantly on the labour market and on the possibility of stemming population decrease through immigration. These issues again involved arguments about “optimum population levels” which had been discussed by economists and demographers from J.M. Keynes to Corrado Gini since the 1930s.76 The British debate during the 1950s shied away from discussing Commonwealth immigration in these terms. The Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1948, in principle, allowed all citizens of Commonwealth countries to migrate to Britain and symbolized Britain’s continued global role.77 In France, too, there were no formal restrictions on migrants from Algeria before 1964. In the 1960s, however, debates about migration in both countries shifted progressively to a discourse of “race relations.”78 Eventually, legislation, even if not explicitly based on racial categories, assessed immigrant communities in relation to the defined core group of the nation. The objective was also to keep the potential influence of overseas migrants in the politics of former imperial centres at bay. In that respect the debates, and in the French case the relevant jurisdiction show continuities with the 1920s and 1930s.79 Post-empire, though, differed from empire regarding population movements. Empires by their nature had allowed checking migration from the South to the North. In the 1950s, after the independence of India and Pakistan, migration was indirectly checked at the source by a number of measures: negative public relations regarding the suitability of Britain for South Asian migrants, passport fees, skills, and language requirements, at a time when nationalists in India sought to pre-empt the negative image that might be projected abroad by the subcontinent’s unskilled emigrants.80 The West African franc zone did not raise concerns in the 1950s and 1960s because the decolonization process helped France to stem immigration in association with national elites in newly independent countries. With regard to Algerian migrants, however, a discriminatory dimension based on notions of ethnicity and race was visible already in the late 1950s as these immigrants competed with workers from European countries, mainly Italy and Portugal. In this connection, France eventually introduced immigration quotas in 1964.81 In Britain, the Conservative government saw the need to appease its electorate concerning the hiring of unskilled migrant labour from South

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Asia and the Caribbean. Long before the Conservative opposition backbencher Enoch Powell warned Britons in his inflammatory speech in 1968 of the violence the settlement of “alien races” would spell for Britain’s future, the Macmillan government argued that immigration legislation was needed to reduce social tensions. In a way, the demons of the violence of South Asian decolonization and of the failure of retaining India for the British empire, of which Powell had been a strong advocate, echoed in the immigration debate. The exclusion of migrants and approaches to South Asian labour by trade unions was the corollary of earlier attitudes of control in the empire.83 The Commonwealth Immigration Act of 1961 was a consensus of sorts that avoided legislating on essentialized racial grounds but permitted restricting immigration with quotas based on skills, effectively keeping migrants from South Asia and the West Indies to a minimum.84 The latter, though, were recruited selectively into British public transport in the 1960s, one of the few areas in which Britain still required unskilled labour. At the same time, West Indian industrialization ought to stem migration flows. At a time of growing unemployment in Britain, the Macmillan government delineated the former empire in new ways within Britain while Macmillan himself announced the successful completion of Britain’s modernizing mission, “pointing the way,” among others, to the “wind of change” in Africa.85 Meanwhile, in France and Francophone Africa, conceptions of nationstates involved changes in labour relations and labour activism. During the war in Algeria, for instance, workers at the car manufacturer RenaultBillancourt first protested jointly or in parallel against the war. Subsequently, however, a growing division occurred between workers of Algerian origin and those with privileged relations to the French state.86 In French West Africa, disputes between different trade unions steered from metropolitan France could eventually be diverted by political elites into territorial nationalism, notably in Côte d’Ivoire, as epitomized by the strike on the French West African railways in 1948–1949.87 In the Portuguese case in the 1960s, the delineation of the national core happened in the colonies rather than in Portugal or at the boundaries of independent African states. From the 1950s, Portugal initiated projects for Portuguese settlers aimed at fostering the homeland overseas and its ideas of economic development, notably in Angola and Mozambique, not least as a measure to counter anti-colonial activities.88 In the 1960s, the Portuguese state hoped to achieve prosperity through the economic reorganization of the empire and win colonial wars by extending the realm of the core nation overseas. The number of white settlers in Portuguese colonies increased twofold during the decade.89 National politics and propaganda operated with the notion of an empire-state in the making, a project on which Portuguese elites in the centre and overseas allegedly saw eye to eye. In reality, however, the migration movement to the colonies remained limited compared to other migration

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outlets. Young men often emigrated elsewhere, among others, in order to avoid the compulsory four-year military service in the colonial wars. In the 1960s, moreover, about 10 percent of Portugal’s population worked as migrant labourers in Europe, primarily in France and West Germany. These flows detracted labour and skills from the Portuguese economy but via remittances lent support to the real economy. Here, too, a long-term continuity existed, even if the destination of migrants changed importantly from South America to Western Europe. Meanwhile, “exporting” black labour to South Africa (according to the phrasing used by a contemporary South African study) was still a part of colonial economic policy, though was now one that served Portugal’s gradual integration with a liberal world economy.90 Yet especially in the 1960s, arguments about national and global welfare related to more fundamental changes in the boundaries of development. In Britain, in the aftermath of empire, a heterogeneous blend of social forces conceived of modernization and overseas nation building as a responsibility. Social relations in post-imperial nation-states in Europe became redefined in ways that distinguished an overseas domain from a national one yet at the same time showed affinities with a conception of one world. Charity work with a global reach and agenda assumed a more important secular dimension, as did a growing number of humanitarian nongovernmental organizations. These included Oxfam and Amnesty International. Meanwhile, the unprecedented nuclear threat in the intensifying Cold War and environmental issues raised political consciousness among the post-war and post-empire generation. These problems were borderless and led to the questioning of the validity of national confines in policy-making. Economic development was just one of the issues tackled as global concerns. In shaping social and political consciousness at the time, the doctrine of “development” related to poverty and inequality and was not synonymous with that of “modernization”; the latter was conceived of as the secular evolution of economic progress under US leadership. The social activism of the 1960s operated with the emerging notion of the developing “Third World.” Nuclear armament and the Cold War confrontation galvanized anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist protest because the struggle for economic independence, and in the Portuguese colonies for political independence, was not yet complete. Evidence for the case was the exploitative oppression by private multinationals mirrored in the liberalization struggles in the Congo, Portuguese Africa, and Rhodesia after its unilateral declaration of independence in 1965. Further evidence was the explicit advocacy by the Johnson administration in the United States of a new Africa policy as a way to counter Communist influence through US modernization.91 In France, the Parti socialiste unifié was formed in reaction to the Communists’ and Socialists’ lack of opposition to the war in Algeria, and influenced by the student revolts of May 1968. Post-empire France was a society shaped by overseas migrants in its midst, but also one

Empires to globalizing nation-states 343 deeply divided along notions of race underpinned by concerns about the future course of French politics and culture used as justification for social exclusion. The different de facto, and even legal treatment of Muslim harki and non-Muslim pieds-noirs settler returnees from Algeria, who both had sided with metropolitan France in the Algerian war, is one example.92 In Britain, the Hola massacre in Kenya in 1958 led to new debates about race and colonial violence, questioning the colonial road to progress and its underlying racial binary adhered to in the past.93 It also showed the new influence in Britain of the Movement for Colonial Freedom (MCF), with Fenner Brockway, Barbara Castle, and Tony Benn, as its key proponents.94 Their conceptions had some bearing on approaches to overseas development in line with post-imperial modernity in the 1960s. In the British polity, the novel social protest of the global West, moreover, related to a newly institutionalized international governance instigated by the norms of the West. The multilateral development expertise and governance that took shape in the 1950s and 1960s, initially overlapped with social and political protest movements in Western countries. There was fluidity in terms of personnel, such as between research institutions and the World Bank and between political activists in the MCF and the new Overseas Development Ministry (ODM) under Labour from 1964. The first director of the Overseas Development Institute in London, William Clark later became a vice-president of the World Bank.95 The first minister for Overseas Development, Barbara Castle, had been active in the MCF and became famous for her criticism of colonialism in Parliament after the killings at Hola. The post-empire generation of officials and experts saw their lobbying for more efficient overseas development as the logical extension to their campaign to give new countries their rightful place in the world. From this angle, development became a principled technique judged and implemented according to norms determined by experts. The growth target of 5 percent for developing countries set by the UN for its second development decade, the 1970s, was one of them. The objective of raising aid of donor countries to the level of 1 percent of GDP was another.96 Education and technical assistance from experts to teachers and health workers, temporarily tied in with social activism in former imperial centres. These ideas, however, also rapidly became discredited as the tools of technocratic capitalist modernity and neo-colonial means of control by Westerndominated institutions such as the World Bank. It is worth observing, too, that in 1964, Barbara Castle’s ideals of development in the ODM were based on a fairly “bourgeois” understanding of nationalism, where educated nationalist leaders, like Kaunda, Nyerere, and Kenyatta, in the “new” countries Zambia, Tanzania, and Kenya, promoted their nations’ welfare. Friends like Kenneth, Julius, and Jomo, were, therefore, the natural allies of progressive forces in the West, albeit occasionally misled by Communist ideas.97 Chinese experts in Africa, though still thin on the

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ground, by contrast, became an irritation as the harbingers of an alternative path to development.98 Meanwhile, novel conceptions of international development and governance also became a part of the adaptation of nation-states to the period after empire. Advocates of a return to cosmopolitan Britain now conceived of the overseas world in terms of promoting and researching the conditions of growth in developing economies. For instance, Leslie Rowan, the former head of the British Treasury’s Overseas Finance Division, critical of Colonial Office approaches to British colonial development, became the first chairman of the Overseas Development Institute in London.99 Arguments about aid and specifically the focus on technical assistance bear out the connection between ideas of universal development and the management of Western nation-states. Technical assistance was a part of a generalized conception of remedying “underdevelopment.” But in Britain, it was also a means of cost-cutting after the disintegration of the colonial loans market in the late 1950s and ought to ensure a link to British exports and British-led knowledge creation in these countries. In the 1950s, David Owen, in charge of technical assistance at the UN, needed to be inventive in designing a principled programme of development because donor countries made contributions only available in their national currencies.100 Similarly, in the early 1960s, Britain’s emphasis on technical assistance meshed with considerations of national priorities in economic policy. The post-imperial policies of former imperial states, couched in terms of aid, responded to the wide-ranging concerns of nation-states, from the balance of payments to public relations objectives and electioneering in the context of Cold War politics. Debates about welfare in Britain in the late 1950s and 1960s hinged on a role of transnational development that continued to herald British modernity but more clearly separated the British nation from economies overseas. In the late 1940s, during Labour’s drive for empire, Cripps and Ernest Bevin, as economics and foreign minister respectively, had stressed the common imperial cause. However, cinema newsreels conveyed separate images on economic policy requirements and the colonies to the British public. On the one hand, there was the British house where citizens needed to act responsibly to achieve national welfare. Britons ought not to be wasteful with resources. “Colonial month,” on the other hand, celebrated increasing colonial raw material outputs and exports as a developmental achievement rather than a contribution to British welfare.101 And in the late 1950s, British officials tied a move from capital aid to technical assistance in the Colombo Plan to the promotion of the Commonwealth as a hub of technical modernity under British guidance.102 In the national conceptualization of Britain’s global relations in the mid1960s, the dissociation from empire was but the last of the rejections by the “non-Western” world of Britain’s civilizing mission attributed to culture shocks of modernity, from the Indian “mutiny” in 1857 to Mau Mau in the

Empires to globalizing nation-states 345 1950s. Alternatively, the overseas world fulfilled a role for a new philanthropy, as a political and social cause endorsing the emancipation of oppressed overseas populations. The latter occurred not only in Britain, but also in Germany, Italy, and in the smaller Northern European countries. This was solidarity with an underprivileged part of the world where coercion by the imperialistic state had been replaced by blatant capitalist exploitation or neglect. In the main, the 1960s show reconfigurations in the boundaries of welfare, labour, and migration, as nation-states repositioned themselves in relation to the outside world. For state officials, securing welfare generally meant new forms of delineations for the nation, or alternative ways of steering cooperation as in business planning in the franc zone. In Britain and France, arguments in favour of empire as a necessity for employment at home were replaced by selective policies towards the hiring of foreign labour. The old empires came back in approaches to immigration with racial undertones. And Portugal’s persistent empire promoted Portuguese migration to the colonies.

Reconfiguring empire overseas in the 1960s As nation-states in Europe changed, social and political relations in the British and French overseas empires and post-empires became recast. The example of Côte d’Ivoire shows how economic relations in the franc zone hinged on political constellations in the newly-independent state, in ways reminiscent of Bloch-Lainé’s reasoning in the early 1950s that managing the franc zone necessitated the availability of germane political conditions. In Kenya, Britain’s old link with the settler state became redefined in favour of the nationalist African business elite heralded by officials as a post-imperial departure. Angola, meanwhile, provides evidence for the manner in which Portugal’s entrepreneurial elite operated at the imperial level of the state. Moreover, the case shows how the elite of Portuguese overseas settlers ultimately opposed such management, while African Angolans were marginalized caught up in the colonial war. Both France’s cooperation agreements in the independent franc zone and economic policy in Côte d’Ivoire in the 1960s have been the focus of much debate regarding their rationale: in terms of aggregate economic performance and the costs of aid, or in terms of the emergence of an indigenous elite of agro-entrepreneurs. However, it will be argued in the following that, rather than corresponding to an overarching logic in terms of state, class, or economy, these relations bear out policy changes at the time of France’s turn towards Europe and the transition to independent states overseas. To some extent, privileged political ties allowed France to phase, and in some respects delay adjustments in its ailing textile sector. Before the implementation of wider market openings for the European Economic Community (EEC) in the Yaoundé conventions between 1964 and 1975, French

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textiles enjoyed a privileged market position in the franc zone supported by a quota system where special licenses kept out foreign competition. Cotton production received Ivorian subsidies, but France and the EEC also provided aid to support cotton production in Côte d’Ivoire.103 There was thus a degree of continuity with the colonial period but one merging into European economic integration. Nonetheless, the political onus of production changed. Colonial cotton schemes deemed to improve the quality and yields of crops consistent with conceptions of scientific agricultural techniques of the time were marred by producer protests. In the French colonial empire after 1945, as elsewhere in colonies, such protest was tinged with an air of anti-colonialism. In independent Côte d’Ivoire, by contrast, the disciplining of producers was thrust upon the new state’s political authorities and redefined in terms of Ivorian national progress rather than the continuing allegiance to imperial France. Keeping labour defiance in check became interlocked with the very independence of an African nation-state for whose creation earlier protests against colonial production methods had lent their voice. Ivorian state boards now marketed for the former colonial firms.104 In some instances in the early 1960s, cotton smallholders were physically removed from production when they opposed the CFDT’s schemes and only allowed to return once they had agreed to implement the new methods.105 Gradually, coercion became transformed into informal dialogue, where the state and its leader Félix Houphouët-Boigny organized labour relations.106 Besides, textiles were now produced in Côte d’Ivoire. However, this industrialization corresponded to designs of Franco-Ivorian mutual economic planning rather than import-substitution involving local, potentially cheaper producers. Monopolistic organization ensured that local producers were in fact linked to French textiles firms. In essence, arrangements secured the competitiveness of French firms and kept at bay areas where local producers might have had a competitive advantage.107 The quid pro quo was attracting French investment to specific agricultural sectors, which involved local businessmen who were often also officials of the Ivorian state. Allegedly, at times France made concessions on price in purchasing Ivorian crops, including from the Ivorian president’s own cocoa plantations. It is relevant here that since 1954, there had been a tacit agreement on producer price stabilization with French businesses mediated by Houphouët for the benefit of the plantation interests of some Ivorian nationalists.108 This transformation eased the transition in France’s political alliance from an association with the chefferie to one with local planters, which shows similarities with other regions of Francophone Africa at the time.109 Both in West Africa and France, then, particularistic, clientelist networks were in operation. In France, Jacques Foccart in the Ministry of Cooperation linked to the French presidency organized trade and licensing policies for a secretive French business network at a time when France faced challenges in liberalizing its economy.110 In Côte d’Ivoire,

Empires to globalizing nation-states 347 Houphouët negotiated exports, prices, and cartels with France, in his own name and for his allies in the state and its associated business circles.111 Especially during the 1960s, the strong influence of African planters in Côte d’Ivoire, and Houphouët’s personal interests in the growing of cocoa, coffee, cocoanuts, and palm trees for oil, account for the state’s support for commercial agriculture rather than industry and the negotiation of relatively high producer prices.112 The Kenyan case demonstrates how social interaction between Britain and one overseas territory shifted as the result of economic diversification away from settler interests and their relationship to the colonial state. The factor that determined Britain’s relationship with white settlers in Kenya, and which also underpinned Britain’s military operation against the Mau Mau rebellion, was the settlers’ privileged position as farmers in the “White Highlands” based on exclusive land rights. However, in the course of the 1950s, settlers left the Kenyan Highlands moving their economic activities from agriculture into intermediate industries. A major transformation thus became possible in which the British state could associate itself in the early 1960s with an African entrepreneurial elite that took over the colonial state. Britain abandoned its political alliances with local chiefs and its longstanding bias against Africans as entrepreneurs.113 Land in the Highlands was redistributed in the million acre scheme to Kikuyu businessmen with connections to the independent state under its first president Jomo Kenyatta. Purchases were carried out with the help of World Bank loans and partly financed by the export boom for Kenyan coffee at the time.114 The transition, however, was not a resuscitation of earlier commodity relationships. Rather, the episode marked the juncture at which foreign capital and multinationals moved more actively into resource exploitation and eventually towards new forms of agro-businesses in independent Africa from the 1960s onwards. The Portuguese empire, by contrast, built on compatible overseas relationships during the 1960s that resulted from the gradual diversification of the socioeconomic forces in the Portuguese state and empire. Here, the empire-state and private multinationals became allies. Unlike in the franc zone, however, alliances with the private sector occurred in opposition to African political and entrepreneurial groups at a time when investment and resource exploitation were an aspect of colonial warfare embedded in the Cold War. The economic diversification that underpinned the boom in the Angolan economy in the 1960s involved established Portuguese and imperial firms in new ventures in intermediate industry, services, and banking. As in Ivorian relations with France, the form and ownership of industries complemented Portuguese industry rather than competing with it. Banking often operated in association with foreign investors. Foreign investment in Portugal was not new; it occurred in the interwar period.115 However, in the 1960s, overseas Portugal was open to foreign investors on a much larger scale and for a wide range of activities. Foreign capital

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was important mainly in the Espírito Santo firm, in association with the New York–based City Bank, and in the Burnay firm, in association with the Belgian Société générale.116 In Angola, the CUF bank, Banco Totta, cooperated with the South African Standard Bank from 1966.117 At the same time, Diamang provided credits to the Angolan state. Within this setting, the Portuguese state transformed itself as a social relation connected to the economic elites and their commercial activities similar in organizational terms to multinational corporations. The social web that underpinned family firms was entwined with the state. Mobility between the big enterprises and key posts in the state ensured commonalities of interest reflected in economic policies. The career of members of elite families, in the social and economic sense, led from universities to state employment and from there back to the firms.118 In the 1960s, this new generation of entrepreneurs had its parallel in a new generation of modern technocrats that underpinned a larger and deeper state and its imperial project. This process replaced the interwar corporatist ideal in which consultative bodies (grémios), representing a range of economic interest groups, ensured influence for diverse social groups and economic activities without basing the state on democratic representation.119 In fact, the influence of social networks rather meant that the state represented an empire-wide clientelism. It has been argued that this policy supported an inter-territorial financial system that sustained the metropolitan elite rather than a cosmopolitan one serving big enterprise as such.120 By the beginning of the 1970s, however, overseas Portuguese businesses increasingly came into conflict with metropolitan economic policies, among others because the Angolan industrialization process had stalled. It has been argued that the fact that the system did not allow the emergence of import-substituting industries but privileged those complementary to metropolitan development prompted requests for greater economic autonomy by Portuguese settlers in Angola.121 The project of the free flow of capital within the escudo zone monetary union was not sustainable and its constituent economies drifted apart. The impediments to business activities prompted by the colonial war worsened. As a result, the Portuguese empire-state crumbled. Multinationals firms, too, eventually searched for alternative political allies. Though the cases of Côte d’Ivoire, Kenya, and Angola differed in many ways, they all demonstrate the reconfiguration of relationships between an imperial or post-empire state, on the one hand, and forming states overseas, on the other hand, under changing policy assumptions.

Control relations, dependent territory, and European states after empire From the late 1950s, Europe’s imperial states acquired new characteristics and eventually became what one could call globalizing nation-states.

Empires to globalizing nation-states 349 Britain’s economic transition to post-empire happened as an almost inadvertent adjustment that concealed the increasing incompatibility between British and colonial economic management and the diminishing relevance of the remaining colonies for the British economy. However, until the late 1960s, British capital exports sustained a sterling based currency zone, and London as a financial centre represented global Britain in the world economy beyond that time. In the 1960s, France’s attempts to coopt the remaining African empire in a centralized reorganization gave way to fragmented relations with independent states, though under the umbrella of planned coordination in the franc zone. In Portugal in the mid1970s, multinational enterprises and their regional alliance building in Southern Africa eventually undermined the Portuguese corporatist state’s power.122 In all three cases, states extricated themselves from overseas economic engagement by withdrawing from a territorial empire and by loosening ties with the private sector. As complementarities between overseas and metropolitan economies became less obvious and the feasibility to control colonial polities weakened, the forms of transnational control changed and nation-states in Europe delineated relevant boundaries in new ways. The metamorphosis of imperial states to a post-empire modernity will be discussed with reference to expert doctrines on states and international governance, labour relations, and the assumptions regarding the purpose of colonial territory. In the 1960s, states in Europe were no longer preoccupied with relating an overseas agrarian and raw materials base to an industrial national economy in a single organizational entity. Moreover, as domestic and industrial markets increasingly drove economic growth, it became more important to monitor the feasibility of economic integration. The concept of the developing world put pay to imperial economy building as the harbinger of the joint path to progress and welfare, privileging instead selective business ties and aid relations. The trend of opening up agrarian production, where it persisted, now followed the initiatives of agro-businesses and often occurred in association with growth promotion in view of the creation of viable national economies in new states, as in India in the 1960s and 1970s.123 States in Europe, meanwhile, negotiated with private firms or operated state firms to ensure resource exploitation in strategic domains, notably petroleum, as shown by France’s accords with Algeria in the 1960s.124 Otherwise, states shied away from organizing raw materials supplies. One of the side effects of the shift to the West’s globalizing nation-state in the 1960s was the return of the big firm in Africa. Questions regarding the new characteristics of post-imperial capitalism in relation to private enterprise have been discussed some time ago, but will not be pursued here.125 Suffice to say that in the setting of the 1960s and 1970s, maverick businessmen regained influence, such as Lonrho’s Tiny Rowland in central Africa, reminiscent of late nineteenth-century entrepreneurial adventurers

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in the phase of speculative booms on the London and Johannesburg stock exchanges.126 The transformation of statehood is also visible in the transition in Britain from colonial development finance to aid. The state adopted a role as a creditor, but not in order to regulate or support the colonial and overseas loans market. In fact, the Bank of England criticized state intervention in the market and adjusted policies that had distorted the market.127 State-organized lending became part of export-credit arrangements for members of the Commonwealth.128 Aid was managed from the exogenous viewpoint of the British economy and no longer from that of an imperial economy as had been the case with financial arrangements for colonial development. Relations in the franc zone exhibited a similar logic of change, though the case differs in some respects. What mattered for state officials like Foccart was negotiating concessions for French companies and compatible business connections in the new states in Africa. One aim was the ownership of overseas textile manufacturing for the beleaguered French textile industry and the securing of raw cotton resources that allowed reducing production costs and secured leverage in business decisions for the parent company. Previously, albeit rarely with success, the state itself had been involved in organizing production as part of the mise-en-valeur of colonial economies. Now this organization was selectively geared towards key areas of economic decision-making. Lack of political authority overseas hampered regulation. But for France, control became easier to the extent to which policies chimed with the economic emancipation of elites in the new states. Economic policies entwined state models in France and West Africa in a politically organized web of cooperation similar to Moussa’s ideas. Moussa’s conception of a reorganized empire, however, hardly led to the outcome he had projected. The French textile industry did not modernize urged on by competition from industrializing post-colonies. The period witnessed the reconfiguration and reconceptualization of the state’s relationships with territory in economic governance. However, this happened mainly within the framework of competing nation-states. Economic liberalization under the Bretton Woods regime in the 1950s meant that regulating colonial trade became less feasible. Exceptionally, currency areas could operate preferential trade regimes. However, involving agrarian and industrial economies in a currency area of a single political entity was prone to political tensions, when policies favoured the metropolitan economy or were perceived to do so. The debates about independent monetary policy in the main British colonies in the 1950s are pertinent examples.129 The Portuguese empire of the 1960s differed because the metropolitan state retained the political prerogative to organize key economic areas of colonial economic policy within the framework of a currency area. Bloch-Lainé, the French official and economic reformer, was

Empires to globalizing nation-states 351 right: economic management in a currency area required congenial political conditions.130 But in contrast to the conflict-free convergence he had idealized in the early 1950s, Portugal’s empire of the 1960s tried to enforce these conditions with legal means and maintain them during war. Meanwhile, ordering the relations of advanced industrial economies in the West with the world economy in the 1960s also reasserted the role of national economies. Keynesian macroeconomic management, for instance, required monitoring interest rates and exchange rates, thus deepening the European nation-state’s legacy of territorial money.131 At the international level, the major currencies, notably the pound sterling and the US dollar, competed as trade and reserve currencies.132 There were limits to moving away from territory and national governance. In the 1960s, the creation of drawing rights by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) marked some de-territorialization, in a hybrid form between national and global governance. Yet these were still hierarchically structured schemes that hinged on the world’s major national economies. Steps towards the global pooling of currency reserves, for instance, were proposed but not taken.133 More successful at the time, though, was the gradual decrease in tariffs in the framework of the EEC and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), which weakened the borders of territorially-defined economies. But again this happened across advanced economies according to quite territorial assumptions about nations with liberal economies as opposed to those that had not yet become part of this club. Nation-states also retained a particular hold in the regulation of labour markets. Post-1945 multilateralism largely ignored the liberalization of labour markets. Later in the twentieth century, neoliberals would argue that the liberalization of trade and especially financial flows would make labour migration between developing and advanced economies redundant, as Paul Leroy-Beaulieu had suggested already in the late nineteenth century. In reality, however, this did not happen. States continued to play a role in the delineation of labour markets. Globalizing nation-states, however, delineated labour frontiers differently from imperial states. In colonial empires, states regularly organized labour transnationally to support imperial economies. This happened overseas between colonies, as in indentured labour in the British empire. Or complementarities with overseas economies served political mobilization at home by stressing the benefits of colonies for British workers, as in Joseph Chamberlain’s and Leo Amery’s imperial unionism. Only rarely was colonial labour considered in terms of the development of colonial economies as national ones disconnected from an empire logic, as in the views of experts like René Hoffherr under the French Popular Front in the mid-1930s.134 Nor had imperial states encouraged colonial labour to join the labour markets of the West. Yet after empire, as Western European nation-states strove to manage labour markets as a part of macroeconomic policies, the idea persisted that external labour resources could be tapped selectively in an

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economic boom but also be shed as excess labour during a recession, as had previously been the case in the regulation of labour reservoirs between colonies.135 The reorganization of economies not only raised the question of territory in governance and the role of nation-states but, more specifically, prompted reconsiderations regarding dependent colonial territory. This happened in two main ways. Dependent territory could matter as land, as in the classical agrarian plantation production. Or production zones ought to allow imperial states to set parameters of economic policymaking, regulating trade flows and production priorities. This corresponded to Schacht’s ideas of colonies as a means to save foreign currency in interwar Germany and to British policies aimed at dollar earning after the Second World War. In the context of open trade relations, however, securing access to raw materials was less problematic than it had been for some countries during the interwar period, except in the case of rare strategic minerals. Granting political independence to colonies across the board by Britain and France, as it happened in the late 1950s and early 1960s in Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean, was ultimately a political choice. In the 1960s, the major European states delineated national development according to new variables of international governance rather than attempting to regulate overseas economies in support of European nation-states. In all the cases under review, policy-makers consciously tried to redefine external economic policies, with various degrees of success. Yet there was no planned policy that phased in independent statehood overseas and constructed a post-imperial state in the centre. The political forces that had requested that dependent territory ought to serve the national economy now emphasized that such links risked obstructing the reaffirmation of the national core. The consequence was a turn in conservatism from empire to the nation-state. This was apparent in Gaullism in France after 1955 and in Macmillan’s strand of thought that shaped the British Conservative Party after 1956. By shedding backward uneconomic territory, the globalizing nation-states that replaced imperial states could claim to fulfil a protective role for their nations in a form concomitant with economic modernization in an open world economy. The universalization of the model of the nation-state also allowed to return to a state model more in line with the national foundation myths of nineteenth-century Europe.136 At the same time, progressive states could reinvent themselves through their role in universal governance and one-world development after empire. Other norms for development could tie in with the politically conservative protection of the nation after the control over empire was lost. In both agendas, the notion of the nation persisted “at home,” while a different world of emerging nation-states in a different underdeveloped “non-West” renewed the vision of the West’s mission to globalize economic liberalism.

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Analysing the global reproduction of states: A synthesis The foregoing argument about the West’s new globalizing nation-state posited statehood as ensuing from incrementally shifting policies in politically structured economic relationships. The concluding synthesis takes the form of a think piece setting the historical record against academic arguments about the costs and benefits of empire, the compatibility between a liberal global economy and colonial rule, and the changing nature of rational modernity. The latter leads back to the classical critiques of colonial empires by Richard Cobden and of imperialism by Joseph Schumpeter. Further contemporary research by Schumpeter serves to discuss relations between statehood and capitalism. In near contemporary academia, discussions on the end of the French empire took the form of a normative rather than quantitative balance sheet of colonialism in terms of economic growth. In 1969, Gaston Leduc, a liberal economist, offered general reflections on the value of empire with the benefit of hindsight.137 In the 1950s, Leduc had reportedly influenced Cartier’s lobbying that aimed to liberate France from a burdensome colonial empire. Leduc argued that the economies of the Netherlands and Belgium benefitted from withdrawing from their colonial empires, as had France by using the Algerian labour force in the domestic economy rather than channelling resources into the development of Algeria. However, Leduc also stressed the modernizing role of colonialism, its positive effects on population growth and economic growth, even if he acknowledged that imperial powers inhibited colonial industrialization. Nonetheless, Leduc was sceptical of the feasibility of drawing up aggregate economic balance sheets due to the countless variables required to quantify aggregate benefits and losses both in material and human terms. In this connection, he offered an aside on Corrado Gini, who had done just that when alleging the overall economic losses that had ensued for “old Europe” by allowing its people to emigrate overseas. Other economic studies later focused on the reform of the French economy, asking whether or not empire had made “economic sense.”138 Reforming France’s imperial economic ties involved engaging with the state’s contradictory economic management, where the privileging of imperial commerce in fact burdened France’s balance of payments. Colonies did not import from the cheapest supplier and French consumers often paid more for imports of colonial commodities than they would have paid for imports from alternative sources. What is more, the practice did little to stimulate the competitiveness of businesses.139 Related research extended to arguments about the economic performance of colonies as compared to independent states.140 One might read the evidence as corroborating the views that gained ground in the 1950s among experts and officials in Britain and France that colonies were an outmoded and uneconomic model of state organization.

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Here, parallels with debates in the 1950s and 1960s exist regarding a critique of the imperial state’s inability to modernize overseas economies. Moussa’s aim was to set free what he saw as the energy of the Schumpeterian entrepreneur in colonies. In his view, colonialism had led to a duality in colonial economies between a traditional and a modern sector that needed to be overcome. The argument resembled the analysis of William Arthur Lewis in Britain at the time.141 Some of the theoretical factors of the predicament of overseas developing economies identified by W.A. Lewis connect with an argument about the decreasing relevance of these agrarian economies for Europe, as does Tinbergen’s gravity model. Official France considered the economic benefits or drains on metropolitan France and assessed how best to stimulate modern development overseas, while British officials drew up an imperial “balance sheet” and discussed the viability of small colonies.142 Yet, for an analysis of the transformation of statehood, overarching arguments about economic performance are problematic not because these concerns did not enter policy debates, but rather because objectivizing economic relationships does not elucidate policy decisions and their underlying assumptions. The transition from empire to post-empire between the 1940s and 1970s was not about theoretical principles but about specific economic relationships and agency. The historical analysis of agency showed how policies adjusted according to the different structural conditions of countries. These conditions diminished the economic relevance of empire at a time when managing colonial economies in a support role for an imperial economy became politically less feasible. In the world economy of the late nineteenth century, prominent liberal economists had argued that for some European states formal empire did make sense. In the world economy of the 1950s, liberal theorists argued that it did not. The era during which European states had a stake in the rapid expansion of territory for agricultural production for their own economies was drawing to a close in the interwar years. The corollary was that overseas producers found it increasingly difficult to compete with their produce on European markets.143 While questions regarding “economic sense” show affinities with those raised by contemporary officials, state officials did not necessarily use the same analytical parameters as academics in predicting future economic relationships. For instance, the argument that overseas population growth ushered in the end of colonial empires bears no relation with the thrust of decision making in states at the time.144 Economic change within colonies, however, points to important lines of enquiry regarding the constitution of colonial economies as national economies because it relates to the underlying question of the empire’s political feasibility. Considerations regarding the building of national economies for post-colonies opened the Pandora’s Box. Economic issues had mobilizing potential for self-determination from grassroots protests

Empires to globalizing nation-states 355 to the lobbying by indigenous businesses with connections to national political movements. The question was how a national economy was defined as opposed to an imperial one or a colonial one, who defined it, and whose needs and interests it was meant to serve. Such debates often involved a critique of the imperial economy that left a legacy in the postcolonial period.145 But exceptions also occurred, as was the case with the Sudan that extricated its national economy from that of Egypt in the course of the 1950s and adhered to ties with the sterling area.146 The Ivorian elite also explicitly sought a continuation of economic relations with the old imperial power. On the other hand, in the 1960s and 1970s, some settler states in Africa attempted to embed their national economies in the West’s liberal world economy yet outside the old imperial bond. Rhodesia set out to redefine its economy in a regional setting in cooperation with Portuguese colonies, importantly in concurrence with a booming South African economy.147 The question of empire and transnational economic relations has often been discussed in abstract terms by contrasting economic liberalism with protectionism. According to Cobden’s classical normative view, the former did not require colonies, whereas the latter epitomized colonial rule. However, as argued in chapters 2 and 3, in the late nineteenth century, states in Europe conceived of colonies as a means to implement economic liberalism. These ideas subsequently meshed with arguments about the need for protection. The reasoning of liberal imperialists undermined Cobden’s assumption of global free trade without territorial domination. The equation shifted to the uses of the political bond to steer economies, as in Britain’s sterling-based imperial economy in particular. In the mid-twentieth century, too, a Cobdenite view might be tempting at first sight, namely arguing that colonies made little sense in a world in which goods were freely available on a world market. But then, as just argued, the binary that sets economic liberalism against formal empire does not hold. The end of empires was not the rerun of the famous Cobdenite controversy. Again the question is not one of principle but of concrete economic relationships and the implications of past practices and mechanisms of imperial and international governance. In Britain, these specificities, among others, related to the legacy of the past creditor role of colonies and the future prospects of colonial development finance, and, more generally, to diminishing economic complementarities in the empire. The franc zone, on the other hand, allowed France to navigate between the former empire in Africa and European integration, and sustain forms of governance with the help of political arrangements that suited the French economy. Put in an even broader frame of reference, the argument about colonies and empire leads back to the characteristics of statehood in relation to the changing role of capitalism, widely discussed during the constitution of empires in the early twentieth century. Different strands of Schumpeter’s

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thinking will be used to weave thoughts on the reconceptualization of statehood between the early and mid-twentieth century in with the historical record. The first focus is on Schumpeter’s critique of militaristic imperialism as opposed to mature capitalism; the second concerns his advocacy of developmental agency; and the third relates to his outlook on statehood and capitalism in the mid-twentieth century. On the face of it, the three decades following the Second World War show examples of atavistic state behaviour in line with Schumpeter’s reasoning after the First World War. Anthony Eden’s Suez policy epitomized imperialistic aggression intended to correct Egypt’s challenge to Britain’s economic hegemony. In reality, however, the policy had the opposite effect due to pressures on the pound sterling in international markets as holders of sterling assets interpreted Britain’s invasion as evidence of its diminishing structural power.148 Seen through this lens, Prime Minister Macmillan would then emerge as the rationalizer who realigned the state with a virtuous capitalist course in the Schumpeterian sense, moving away from war, and eventually from territorial empire as well. France’s retreat from Indochina and Algeria might be interpreted in a similar fashion. President de Gaulle and experts like Bloch-Lainé and in the late 1950s Rueff would emerge as agents of adjustment. Yet in both cases, the problem with such an argument is that policies were incoherent and driven by erratic crisis management in the attempt to achieve economic liberalization. Ultimately adjustment occurred, but it was no consciously adopted reform impelled by the progressive agents of capitalism. From Schumpeter’s perspective of a critique of imperialism, one might also take the Congo crisis and the wars in Portuguese Africa in the 1960s as evidence for the special case of monopolistic conglomerates, which he saw as possibly benefitting from war, undermining capitalism’s innovative capacity sustained by small and medium-size enterprises. Concerns about strategic minerals prompted states to collude with big firms, and in Portugal’s imperial organization to some extent represented them.149 Yet the collusion during the period was hardly an aberration but reflected the West’s attempt to associate overseas relations with a post-imperial economic liberalism under conditions of the Cold War. Meanwhile, Schumpeter’s idea of the progressive entrepreneur as an economic agent had many followers among officials proposing reforms in imperial economic governance. Moussa in France and advocates of a new cosmopolitanism in Britain saw a role for entrepreneurs as modernizers able to reconstitute the state in capitalism, according to Schumpeter’s early vision of a non-imperialistic capitalism. Yet the historical evidence shows that Moussa’s vision did not materialize. The planning of complementary business activities in the franc zone failed to reinvigorate uncompetitive French industry for the redeployment of the French economy. Rather, economic and political steering in the franc zone

Empires to globalizing nation-states 357 played a support role for a slowly liberalizing French economy in a sort of revised form of the colonial pact, as Meillassoux had argued. Regarding the functional characteristics of statehood, meanwhile, Schumpeter’s thinking changed in the mid-twentieth century. His 1942 work on capitalism and democracy was pessimistic for a believer in the developmental role of the self-interested capitalist entrepreneur. In the imperialism essay, Schumpeter had expressed his hope for the emergence of capitalist relations sustained by rational state agency.150 From the 1940s onwards, however, he argued that capitalism would crumble under the weight of the state.151 Capitalism would assimilate to states and states would oppose some of capitalism’s earlier manifestations. Here the rational state became, inadvertently, one of capitalism’s grave diggers.152 This line of reasoning contrasted with those of neoliberals like Friedrich Hayek who hailed that ever more successful capitalist relations would make the state redundant. It seems that, by the 1940s, Schumpeter had realized that states acted unavoidably short-term since the innovation drive in capitalism, which he saw as the main economic impulse, also brought inevitable disruption rather than the harmony postulated by neoliberals. Therefore, Schumpeter seems to have corrected his earlier assumption that it was possible to bridge the political hiatus between the state’s “false” and “genuine” self-interests and their realization as material benefits through economic adjustment.153 Now he believed that the nation-state’s role would be detrimental to economic efficiency and overwhelmed by political lobbying. The second half of the twentieth century would bring capitalism’s demise or the diluted, “fettered” form of state-led or “mixed” economies. The very success of capitalist institutions would undermine them in terms of burdens via taxation and people turning against entrepreneurship.154 To be sure, unlike in his essay on imperialism and capitalism, Schumpeter’s focus here is on state functions and norms rather than on the historical transnational relations of types of states. In functional terms, there is indeed evidence for a regulative and intrusive state in the decades after 1945, though also one deemed to play a greater role for the welfare of citizens defined as individuals. The latter, to some degree, involved a critique of capitalism. Nonetheless, in the Western world, these processes hardly amounted to capitalism’s decline sacrificing economic rationality for the sake of socialism. Consumption became a more important issue for states as the role of domestic markets grew in national economies. Compromises in policy-making were unavoidable in order to reconcile demands from the polity. Bloch-Lainé pointed out that in order to be able to tackle economic problems, French civil servants avoided positioning themselves in terms of doctrine as monetarists or Keynesians.155 Yet, more importantly, European statehood in the mid-twentieth century shows the continuing relevance of transnational relationships to state making, though the forms in which states reproduced changed.

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The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century crises of economic globalism had prompted the main European states to act as developers, whether upon the request and in cooperation with businesses or in opposition to cosmopolitan entrepreneurship.156 Control over colonial territory was part of a process in which states reformed in the attempt to regulate globalization. The mid-twentieth century witnessed the reversal of the drive for colonial economic space and also the move away from the state’s custodianship of the private sector. The steering of economies and polities in the wider world, however, was one of the tools used by European imperial polities to re-engage with liberal capitalism. Globalizing nationstates after empire also reproduce transnationally and in a manner that interlocked economic and political relationships, a hallmark of the European nation-state model of the nineteenth century. This intersection was indeed Schumpeter’s dilemma, from which he first tried to escape by constructing a neat binary between a rational economic agency and irrational political one. Later, he attributed the elusive nature of capitalist development to the state’s encroachment on it. However, the dilemma might simply be resolved by accepting the need to incorporate both politics and irrationality in an analysis of economic agency and the state, abandoning a positivism that invariable views economic agency in relation to prescriptive norms. State agency was highly contextual. The histories of these contexts help to elucidate how states formed through interacting with economic conditions, and in epistemologically different ways from the norm-setting of economic management. States tried to steer external economies towards a national core also after the period of colonial empires that defined European statehood between the late nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Quasi-imperial control relations and conceptualizations of policy re-emerged periodically after empire. The concluding chapter will explore the possibilities of viewing the overseas relations of states in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries through a historical lens, and also address some of its pitfalls.

Notes 1 The diverse relevant literature will be introduced at the appropriate points in the chapter. 2 See, respectively, John Lonsdale and David A. Low, “Introduction: Towards the New Order 1945–1963,” in D.A. Low and A. Smith, eds., History of East Africa, vol.III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976); M.P. Cowen and R.W. Shenton, “The Origin and Course of Fabian Colonialism in Africa,” Journal of Historical Sociology 4, no. 2 (1991), 143–74; and John Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War, 1944–1949 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993). 3 Gerold Krozewski, Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–1958 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Palgrave, 2001), ch.4.

Empires to globalizing nation-states 359 4 Mike Cowen, “Early Years of the Colonial Development Corporation: British State Enterprise Overseas during Late Colonialism,” African Affairs 83, no. 330 (1984), 63–76; also Nicholas Westcott, Imperialism & Development: The East African Groundnuts Scheme and its Legacy (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2020). 5 See Sibanengi Ncube, “‘Southern Rhodesia is Anxious to Give Africans a Cash Crop’? Accounting for the Colony’s 1952 African Turkish Tobacco Policy,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 54, no. 2 (2021), 175–91. 6 Krozewski, Money, 90. 7 Krozewski, Money, 86. 8 Krozewski. Money, 97. 9 Anonymous, “The Sterling Area,” National Bank of Egypt. Economic Bulletin I, no. 4 (1948), 167–71. 10 For the latter, see “Financial agreement,” Journal official du gouvernement égyptien, 1 February 1948, Economic Policy Committee, “Economic Policy towards Egypt,” Memorandum by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, E.P.C. (48)88, 28 October 1948, TNA [The National Archives, Kew] CAB 134/216/34. 11 Anonymous [Nicolai Koestner], Notes and Comments: “Sterling in Schachtian Dress,” National Bank of Egypt. Economic Bulletin (published in Arabic and English by the Research Department of the Bank) V, no. 1 (1952), 21. On Koestner, see the obituary in the Economic Bulletin (1959). 12 Robert Wistrich, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (London: Routledge, 1995), 221. On Syria see also Der Spiegel, 20 July 1953, 16–7; on Indonesia, Der Spiegel, 16 January 1952, 22. 13 Krozewski. Money, 120. 14 Fernanda Rollo, Portugal e o Plano Marshall: Da rejeição à solicitação da ajuda financeira norte-americana (1947–1952) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1994); and Fernando Rosas, História de Portugal: o Estado Novo (1926–1974) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1993), 491. 15 For instance, see Jacques Marseille, “Colonisation, décolonisation et capitalisme (1880–1960),” Vingtième Siècle 4 (1984), 39–48; and Charles-Robert Ageron, “La survivance d’un mythe: la puissance par l’empire colonial (1944–1947),” Revue française d’histoire d’outre-mer 72, no. 269 (1985), 387–403. 16 Ageron, “La survivance,” 389–91 and 394. 17 Ageron, “La survivance,” 399. 18 Ageron, “La survivance,” 395. 19 Ageron, “La survivance,” 393. 20 Ageron, “La survivance,” 400. 21 Jacques Marseille, “La gauche et la droite et le fait colonial en France. Des années 1880 aux années 1960,” Vingtième Siècle 24 (1989), 25; and Marseille, “Colonisation, décolonisation,” 47. 22 I am grateful to G. Balachandran for bringing this point to my attention. 23 Marseille, “La gauche et la droite,” 26. 24 Marseille, “La gauche et la droite,” 27–8. 25 On Bloch-Lainé, see chapter 7. 26 Hugues Tertrais, “Le rétablissement de la souveraineté financière de la France en Indochine,” in François Bloch-Lainé, fonctionnaire, financier, citoyen. Journée d’études tenue à Bercy le 25 février 2003, ed. Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France (Paris: Ministère de l’Économie, des Finances et de l’Industrie, 2005), 40. 27 Pierre Moussa, Les chances économiques de la communauté franco-africaine (Paris: Armand Colin, 1957), 173–4.

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28 Michele Alacevich, “The World Bank and the Politics of Productivity: The Debate on Economic Growth, Poverty, and Living Standards in the 1950s,” Journal of Global History 6, no. 1 (2011), 53–74. 29 Review of Moussa, Les nations prolétaires (Paris: PUF, 1959), Revue politique de science politique 10, no. 2 (1960). 30 Review of Moussa, Les chances, Annales 13, no. 3 (1958). 31 Krozewski, Money, 114–5. 32 For a summary of the assessment, see Krozewski, Money, 166–7 and 187. 33 Gerold Krozewski, “Britain and the Reordering of Overseas Aid, 1956–64: From Colonial Development Finance to Assistance to Sovereign States,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski, and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015), 143–58. 34 David Sunderland, Managing British Colonial and Post-Colonial Development: The Crown Agents, 1914–1974 (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2007), 34. 35 Krozewski, “Britain and the Reordering of Overseas Aid.” 36 United Kingdom, Trustee Investments Act (London: HMSO, 1961). 37 Ministerial Committee on the Commonwealth Trade and Economic Conference, 25 August 1958, TNA CAB 130/149. 38 “A review of the British aid programme,” 27 May 1965, TNA OD 36/7. 39 C.R. Schenk, “The Origins of the Central Bank of Malaya and the Transition to Independence, 1954–59,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 21, no. 2 (1993), 409–31. 40 Frank H.H. King, “Notes on Malayan Monetary Problems,” Malayan Economic Review 3, no. 1 (1958), 30–41. 41 Aldwin Roes, “World Bank Survey Missions and the Politics of Decolonization in British East Africa, 1957–1963,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 42, no. 1 (2009), 1–28. 42 Krozewski, “Britain and the Reordering of Overseas Aid;” and Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO), Mr. Humphrey’s Visit, 20 August 1958, TNA DO 35/9892. 43 See a range of Bank of England correspondence, notably Parsons (Chief Cashier, BoE) to Governors (BoE), “Ghana,” 27 November 1957; and Loynes (BoE) to Parsons (BoE), “Ghana,” 27 November 1957, BoE Archives, OV 69/ 5/2766/3. 44 Catherine R. Schenk, The Decline of Sterling: Managing the Retreat of an International Currency, 1945–1992 (Cambridge, U.K.: CUP, 2010), ch.8. 45 A.G. Hopkins, “Macmillan’s Audit of Empire, 1957,” in Peter Clarke and Clive Trebilcock, eds., Understanding Declines; Perceptions and Realities: Essays in Honour of Barry Supple (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1997), 234–60. 46 Glen O’Hara, “Towards a New Bradshaw? Economic Statistics and the British State in the 1950s and 1960s,” Economic History Review 60, no. 1 (2007), 1–34. 47 See, for instance, J.R. Sargent, “European Free Trade: The Choice for Britain,” Oxford Economic Papers 10, no. 3 (1958), 265–76; and Jean Lempérière, “Le recul des pays non industriels dans les échanges internationaux,” Politique étrangère 26, no. 3 (1961), 239–61. 48 Michael Cowen, “The British State and Agrarian Accumulation in Kenya,” in M. Fransman, ed., Industry and Accumulation in Africa (London: Heinemann, 1982), 142–69; Robert H. Bates, “Agrarian Origins of Mau Mau: A Structural Account,” Agricultural History 61, no. 1 (1987), 1–28; David W. Throup, The Economic & Social Origins of Mau Mau (London: Currey, 1987); and David Anderson, Histories of the Hanged: Britain’s Dirty

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49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69

70 71 72 73 74 75

War in Kenya and the End of Empire (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2005), ch.4. Thaddeus Sunseri, “‘Every African a Nationalist’: Scientific Forestry and Forest Nationalism in Colonial Tanzania,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 4 (2007), 883–913. J.E.A. Manu, “Balance of Payments Constraint and Economic Development,” Economic Bulletin of Ghana 2, no. 4 (1972), 17–32. Pierre Moussa, “L’intégration des territoires d’outre-mer et le marché commun,” Politique étrangère 22, no. 1 (1957), 39–50. Moussa, “L’intégration,” 41–2. Moussa, “L’intégration,” 43–6. Hubert Bonin, Histoire économique de la IVe République (Paris: Economica, 1987), ch.12: “L’Empire ou l’Europe,” 359–61. Bonin, Histoire économique, 372–3 and 382. Bonin, Histoire économique, 363–4. Frances M.B. Lynch, “De Gaulle’s First Veto: France the Rueff Plan and the Free Trade Area,” Contemporary European History 9, no. 1 (2000), 111–35; also Bonin, Histoire économique, 383. Bonin, Histoire économique, 383. Gérard Bossuat, “French Development Aid and Co-Operation under de Gaulle,” Contemporary European History 12, no. 4 (2003), 449. Bossuat, “French Development Aid,” 447. Thomas J. Bassett, “The Development of Cotton in Northern Ivory Coast, 1910–1965,” Journal of African History 29, no. 2 (1988), 267–8. Bossuat, “French Development Aid,” 438–9. Philippe Comte, “Problèmes économiques dans les provinces portugaises d’Afrique continentale (Angola, Guinée, Mozambique),” Tiers-Monde 5, no. 18 (1964), 166. Comte, “Problèmes économiques,” 171. Comte, “Problèmes économiques,” 170 and 172. Adelino Torres, “Pacto colonial e industrialização de Angola (anos 60–70),” Análise Social 19, nos. 77–78–79 (1983), 1102–7. Torres, “Pacto colonial,” 1117–8; and Nuno Valério and Maria Paula Fontoura, “A evolução económica de Angola durante o segundo período colonial – uma tentativa de síntese,” Análise Social 29, no. 129 (1994), 1202–6. For summary statistics based on official sources, see Rosas, História, 480–1, and Comte, “Problèmes économiques,” 178. Maria Eugénia Mata, “Reorganizing the Escudo Zone: Portuguese Monetary Policy and Empire-Union in Africa in the 1960s,” in Gerold Krozewski and Tinashe Nyamunda, eds., Transnational Money and the Formation of Economies and States in Africa, 1860s–1960s, Forum Issue, African Studies Review (2023 forthcoming); also: Maria Eugénia Mata, The Portuguese Escudo Monetary Zone: Its Impact in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Comte, ‘Problèmes économiques’, 184. Valério and Fontoura, ‘A evolução’, 1203. Marcelino Passos, Der Niedergang des Faschismus in Portugal: zum Verhältnis von Ökonomie, Gesellschaft und Staat/Politik in einem europäischen Schwellenland (Marburg, Verlag Arbeiterbewegung und Gesellschaftswissenschaft, 1987), 196. Mata, “Reorganizing the Escudo Zone.” Valério and Fontoura, “A evolução,” 1206. Dennis Dean, “The Conservative Government and the 1961 Commonwealth Immigration Act: The Inside Story,” Race & Class 35, no. 2 (1993), 67; and

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78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85

86 87 88

89 90 91 92 93 94 95

The liberal reordering of statehood Imke Sturm, “Mental Arithmetic and Juggling with Figures: Statistics in French and British Policy towards Colonial Policy in the 1950s,” European Review of History 3, no. 2 (1996), 207. William Petersen, “John Meynard Keynes’s Theories of Population and the Concept of ‘Optimum,’” Population Studies 8, no. 3 (1955); and Corrado Gini, “A Coordination of the Different Population Theories,” Revue de l’Institut international de statistique 11, nos. 1–2 (1943), esp. 64–6. See also chapter 5. Sturm, “Mental arithmetic,” 209; and Shompa Lahiri, “South Asians in Post-Imperial Britain: Decolonisation and Imperial Legacy,” in Stuart Ward, ed., British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 205. Dean, “The Conservative Government,” 57–8; and Sturm, “Mental Arithmetic,” 202. Daniel A. Gordon, “The Back Door of the Nation State: Expulsions of Foreigners and Continuity in Twentieth Century France,” Past & Present 186, no. 1 (2005), 214. Lahiri, “South Asians,” 206. Sturm, “Mental arithmetic,” 203. Dean, “The Conservative Government,” 64; Lahiri, “South Asians,” 208; and Sturm, “Mental Arithmetic,” 205. Lahiri, “South Asians,” for instance, 200 and 205. Dean, “The Conservative Government,” 68–9. The reference is to Prime Minister Macmillan’s so-called “wind of change” speech before the South African Parliament in Cape Town in January 1960 during his Africa tour; cf. also the title of the second volume of his autobiography: Pointing the Way 1959–1961 (London: Macmillan, 1972). Laure Pitti, “‘La forteresse ouvrière’ à l’épreuve de la guerre d’Algérie,” Vingtième Siècle 83 (2004), 131–43. Frederick Cooper, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1996), 241–7. Miguel Bandeira Jerônimo and António Costa Pinto, “A Modernizing Empire? Politics, Culture, and Economy, in Portuguese Late Colonialism,” in Miguel Bandeira Jerônimo and António Costa Pinto, eds., The Ends of European Colonial Empires: Cases and Comparisons (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). Malyn Newitt, Portugal in Africa, the Last Hundred Years (London: Longman, 1981), 240. C.F. Spence, The Portuguese Colony of Mozambique: An Economic Survey (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1951) listed labour migrants from Mozambique to South Africa under “exports:” Comte, “Problèmes économiques,” 199. The White House, “President’s Foreign Aid Message,” 14 January 1965, TNA OD36/20. Christoph Kalter and Martin Rempe, “La République décolonisée. Wie die Dekolonisierung Frankreich verändert hat,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 37, no. 2 (2011), 193–4. See the following House of Commons Debates: hansard.millbanksystems.com/ commons/1959/jun/04/hola-camp; and hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/ 1959/jul/27/hola-camp-kenya-report. Stephen Howe, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire (Oxford: OUP, 1993). Overseas Development Institute, Twenty Five Years in Development (London: ODI, 1985), 8.

Empires to globalizing nation-states 363 96 Among others, in the mid-1960s the Overseas Development Ministry promoted the target: Andrew Cohen (OD) to Barbara Castle, 20 January 1965, TNA OD36/3. 97 Barbara Castle, The Castle Diaries, 1964–70 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1984). See, for instance, 29, 42, and 45. 98 Gerold Krozewski, “Global Britain and the Post-Colonial World: The British Approach to Aid Policies at the 1964 Juncture,” Contemporary British History 29, no. 2 (2015), 233. 99 Overseas Development Institute, Twenty Five Years, 8. 100 David Owen, “The United Nations Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance - A Multilateral Approach,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science no. 323 (May 1959), 31. 101 See “King Opens Colonial Month (1949),” and “Export or Die,” 6 August 1946, British Pathé newsreel: respectively at www.britishpathe.com/video/king-openscolonial-month/query/king+opens+colonial+month and www.britishpathe. com/video/export-or-die/query/export+or+die (accessed 5 July 2022). 102 Junko Tomaru, “The Colombo Plan and British Publicity Policies towards Southeast Asia,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015), 159–73. 103 Bonnie Campbell, “Neocolonialism, Economic Dependence and Political Change: A Case Study of Cotton and Textile Production in the Ivory Coast 1960 to 1970,” Review of African Political Economy 2 (1975), 43. For the wider perspective of French and European aid policies, see Véronique Dimier, The Invention of a European Development Aid Bureaucracy: Recycling Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 104 Campbell, “Neocolonialism,” 38. 105 Bassett, “The Development of Cotton in Northern Ivory Coast,” 282. 106 Jennifer A. Widner, “The Origins of Agricultural Policy in Ivory Coast 1960–86,” Journal of Development Studies 29, no. 4 (1993), 28. 107 Cf. Campbell, “Neocolonialism,” 51. 108 Widner, ‘The Origins of Agricultural Policy,” 42. 109 Elikia M’Bokolo, “Forces sociales et idéologies dans la décolonisation de l’A.E.F.,” Journal of African History 22, no. 3 (1981), 393–407. 110 Klaus Schlichte, “Françafrique – postkolonialer Habitus und Klientelismus in der französischen Afrikapolitik,” Zeitschrift für internationale Beziehungen 5, no. 2 (1998), 333–4. 111 Widner, “The Origins of Agricultural Policy,” 49. 112 Widner, “The Origins of Agricultural Policy,” 43. 113 Robert L. Tignor, Capitalism and Nationalism at the End of Empire: State and Business in Decolonizing Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, 1945–1963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), part 3. 114 David Hyde, “‘Paying for the Emergency by Displacing the Settlers’: Global Coffee and Rural Restructuring in Late Colonial Kenya,” Journal of Global History 4, no. 1 (2009), 81–103; also Gary Wasserman, “The Independence Bargain: Kenya Europeans and the Land Issue 1960–1962,” Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies 11, no. 2 (1973), 99–120. 115 Rosas, História, 122. 116 Rosas, História, 470. 117 Torres, “Pacto colonial,” 1109. 118 Passos, Der Niedergang, 107. 119 Passos, Der Niedergang, 107–8. 120 Torres, “Pacto colonial,” 1116.

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121 Torres, “Pacto colonial,” 1114; and Valério and Fontoura, “A evolução económica de Angola,” 1204–6. 122 William Gervase Clarence-Smith, The Third Portuguese Empire, 1825–1975 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985), ch.7, esp. 208. 123 B.H. Farmer, “Perspectives on the ‘Green Revolution’ in South Asia,” Modern Asian Studies 20, no. 1 (1986), 175–99. 124 Giuseppe Pennisi and Gerald Würker, “The Franco-Algerian Agreement on Oil and Industrial Development: a Special Partnership,” Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa 22, no. 4 (1967), 373–405. 125 See David Becker and Richard L. Sklar, Postimperialism: International Capitalism and Development in the Late Twentieth Century (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1987), chs.1, 2, and 10. 126 Andrew Cohen, “Lonrho and the Limits of Corporate Power in Africa, c. 1961–1973,” South African Historical Journal 68, no. 1 (2016), 31–49. 127 L.K. O’Brien (Chief Cashier, BoE) to Compton (T), “Colonial borrowing in London,” 22 October 1956, TNA T 233/1245. 128 A scheme of so-called Commonwealth assistance loans was introduced at the Commonwealth conference in Montreal in 1958: Ministerial Committee on the Commonwealth Trade and Economic Conference, 25 August 1958, CAB 130/149. 129 See, for instance, S.E. Stockwell, “Instilling the ‘Sterling Tradition’: Decolonization and the Creation of a Central Bank in Ghana,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 26, no. 2 (1998), 100–19. 130 For which see chapter 7. 131 Benjamin J. Cohen, The Geography of Money (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 43, and ch.5. 132 The classic study is: Susan Strange, Sterling and British Policy: A Study of an International Currency in Decline (Oxford: OUP, 1971). 133 I.G. Patel, “The Link between the Creation of International Liquidity and the Provision of Development Finance,” Report of the Committee on Invisibles and Financing Related to Trade: Further Considerations of the Report of the Expert Group on International Monetary Issues (Geneva: UNCTAD, 1967). 134 For which see chapter 5. 135 See, for example, Catherine Puzzo, “Instruments of British and French Immigration Policy in the 1970s: A Comparative Analysis,” Contemporary European History 12, no. 1 (2003), 71–92. 136 Note Macmillan’s “wind of change” speech. A similar contemporary academic view is Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation: The Rise of the SelfAssertion of African and Asian Peoples (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963). 137 Gaston G. Leduc, “The Economic Balance Sheet of Colonialism,” Journal of Contemporary History 4, no. 1 (1969), 37–50. 138 Edward Peter Fitzgerald, “Did France’s Colonial Empire Make Economic Sense? A Perspective from the Postwar Decade, 1946–1956,” Journal of Economic History 48, no. 2 (1988), 373–85. 139 Fitzgerald, “Did France’s Colonial Empire Make Economic Sense?” 384–5. 140 M.S. Alam, “Colonialism, Decolonisation and Growth Rates: Theory and Empirical Evidence,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 18, no. 3 (1994), 235–57; also Kevin Sylwester, “Decolonization and Economic Growth: The Case of Africa,” Journal of Economic Development 30, no. 2 (2005), 87–101. 141 Leduc, “The Economic Balance Sheet,” 46, 45, and 48. On Lewis, see Kofi Tetteh, “Arthur Lewis and West African Development,” Social & Economic Studies 29, no. 4 (1980), 202–27.

Empires to globalizing nation-states 365 142 David McIntyre, “The Admission of Small States to the Commonwealth,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 24, no. 2 (1996), 244–77. 143 Edward B. Barbier, Scarcity and Frontiers: How Economies Have Developed through Natural Resource Exploitation (Cambridge, U.K.: CUP, 2011), chs.8 and 9; and William Arthur Lewis, The Evolution of the International Economic Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). 144 An attempt to establish such a link is Herschel I. Grossman and Murat F. Iyigun, “Population Increase and the End of Colonialism,” Economica 64, no. 255 (1997), 483–93. 145 Manu Goswami, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). 146 See Alden H. Young, Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2017). 147 For these relationships, see Tinashe Nyamunda, Finance, Settlers, and Empire: Money, Sanctions, and War Economy in Colonial Zimbabwe (London: Routledge, 2023 forthcoming); and Nyamunda, “In Defence of White Rule in Central and Southern Africa: Portuguese - Rhodesian Economic Relations to 1974,” South African Historical Journal 71, no. 3 (2019), 394–422. 148 Diane B. Kunz, The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). 149 David N. Gibbs, The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). For a critique of official US history, see David N. Gibbs, “Review Article. Misrepresenting the Congo Crisis,” African Affairs 95, no. 380 (1996), 453–9. 150 For the argument, see chapter 5. 151 David Simpson, “Schumpeter and Capitalism in an Era of Transition,” in David Reisman, ed., Economic Thought and Political Theory (Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 147–170, and Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942). 152 Simpson, “Schumpeter,” 151–2. 153 See chapter 5. 154 Simpson, “Schumpeter,” 149. 155 François Bloch-Lainé and Jean Bouvier, La France restaurée 1944–1954. Dialogue sur les choix d’une modernisation (Paris: Fayard, 1986), 178. 156 See chapter 3.

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Empires to globalizing nation-states 367 Cooper, Frederick, Decolonization and African Society: The Labor Question in French and British Africa (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1996). Cowen, Michael, “The British State and Agrarian Accumulation in Kenya,” in M. Fransman, ed., Industry and Accumulation in Africa (London: Heinemann, 1982), 142–169. Cowen, Michael, “Early Years of the Colonial Development Corporation: British State Enterprise Overseas during Late Colonialism,” African Affairs 83, no. 330 (1984), 63–76. Cowen, Michael, and R.W. Shenton, “The Origin and Course of Fabian Colonialism in Africa,” Journal of Historical Sociology 4, no. 2 (1991), 143–174. 10.1111/j.1467-6443.1991.tb00101.x Dean, Dennis, “The Conservative Government and the 1961 Commonwealth Immigration Act: The Inside Story,” Race & Class 35, no. 2 (1993), 57–74. 10.1177/030639689303500204 Dimier, Véronique, The Invention of a European Development Aid Bureaucracy: Recycling Empire (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Emerson, Rupert, From Empire to Nation: The Rise of the Self-Assertion of African and Asian Peoples (Boston: Beacon Press, 1963). Farmer, B.H., “Perspectives on the ‘Green Revolution’ in South Asia,” Modern Asian Studies 20, no. 1 (1986), 175–199. 10.1017/S0026749X00013627 Fitzgerald, Edward Peter, “Did France’s Colonial Empire Make Economic Sense? A Perspective from the Postwar Decade, 1946–1956,” Journal of Economic History 48, no. 2 (1988), 373–385. 10.1017/S0022050700004976 Gibbs, David N., The Political Economy of Third World Intervention: Mines, Money, and U.S. Policy in the Congo Crisis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Gibbs, David N., “Review Article. Misrepresenting the Congo Crisis,” African Affairs 95, no. 380 (1996), 453–459. 10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a007743 Gini, Corrado, “A Coordination of the Different Population Theories,” Revue de l’Institut international de statistique 11, nos. 1–2 (1943), 35–67. 10.2307/1400787 Gordon, Daniel A., “The Back Door of the Nation State: Expulsions of Foreigners and Continuity in Twentieth Century France,” Past & Present 186, no. 1 (2005), 201–232. 10.1093/pastj/gti004 Goswami, Manu, Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Grossman, Herschel I. and Murat F. Iyigun, “Population Increase and the End of Colonialism,” Economica 64, no. 255 (1997), 483–493. 10.1111/1468-0335.00092 Hopkins, A.G., “Macmillan’s Audit of Empire, 1957,” in Peter Clarke and Clive Trebilcock, eds., Understanding Declines; Perceptions and Realities: Essays in Honour of Barry Supple (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1997), 234–260. Howe, Stephen, Anticolonialism in British Politics: The Left and the End of Empire (Oxford: OUP, 1993). Hyde, David, “‘Paying for the Emergency by Displacing the Settlers’: Global Coffee and Rural Restructuring in Late Colonial Kenya,” Journal of Global History 4, no. 1 (2009), 81–103. 10.1017/S1740022809002964 Kalter, Christoph and Martin Rempe, “La République décolonisée. Wie die Dekolonisierung Frankreich verändert hat,” Geschichte und Gesellschaft 37, no. 2 (2011), 157–197. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23030303

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Kent, John, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of the Cold War, 1944–1949 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993). King, Frank H.H., “Notes on Malayan Monetary Problems,” Malayan Economic Review 3, no. 1 (1958), 30–41. Krozewski, Gerold, Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–1958 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Palgrave, 2001). Krozewski, Gerold, “Britain and the Reordering of Overseas Aid, 1956–64: From Colonial Development Finance to Assistance to Sovereign States,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski, and Shoichi Watanabe, eds., The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan, (London: Routledge, 2015), 143–158. Krozewski, Gerold, “Global Britain and the Post-Colonial World: The British Approach to Aid Policies at the 1964 Juncture,” Contemporary British History 29, no. 2 (2015), 222–240. 10.1080/13619462.2014.964512 Kunz, Diane B., The Economic Diplomacy of the Suez Crisis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). Lahiri, Shompa, “South Asians in Post-Imperial Britain: Decolonisation and Imperial Legacy,” in Stuart Ward, ed., British Culture and the End of Empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), 200–216. Leduc, Gaston G., “The Economic Balance Sheet of Colonialism,” Journal of Contemporary History 4, no. 1 (1969), 37–50. 10.1177/002200946900400103 Lempérière, Jean, “Le recul des pays non industriels dans les échanges internationaux,” Politique étrangère 26, no. 3 (1961), 239–261. 10.3406/polit.1961.2373 Lewis, William Arthur, The Evolution of the International Economic Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977). Lonsdale, John and David A. Low, “Introduction: Towards the New Order 1945–1963,” in D.A. Low and A. Smith, eds., History of East Africa, vol.III (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), 1–64. Lynch, Frances M.B., “De Gaulle’s First Veto: France the Rueff Plan and the Free Trade Area,” Contemporary European History 9, no. 1 (2000), 111–135. 10.1017/S0960777300001053 Macmillan, Harold, Pointing the Way 1959–1961 (London: Macmillan, 1972). Manu, J.E.A., “Balance of Payments Constraint and Economic Development,” Economic Bulletin of Ghana 2, no. 4 (1972), 17–32. Marseille, Jacques, “Colonisation, décolonisation et capitalisme (1880–1960),” Vingtième Siècle 4 (1984), 39–48. 10.2307/3769485 Marseille, Jacques, “La gauche et la droite et le fait colonial en France. Des années 1880 aux années 1960,” Vingtième Siècle 24 (1989), 17–28. 10.3406/xxs. 1989.2182 Mata, Maria Eugénia, The Portuguese Escudo Monetary Zone: Its Impact in Colonial and Post-Colonial Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Mata, Maria Eugėnia, “Reorganizing the Escudo Zone: Portuguese Monetary Policy and Empire-Union in Africa in the 1960s,” in Gerold Krozewski and Tinashe Nyamunda, eds., Transnational Money and the Formation of Economies and States in Africa, 1860s–1960s, Forum Issue, African Studies Review (2023 forthcoming). M’Bokolo, Elikia, “Forces sociales et idéologies dans la décolonisation de l’A.E.F.,” Journal of African History 22, no. 3 (1981), 393–407. 10.1017/S0021 853700019599

Empires to globalizing nation-states 369 McIntyre, David, “The Admission of Small States to the Commonwealth,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 24, no. 2 (1996), 244–277. 10.1 080/03086539608582978 Moussa, Pierre, Les chances économiques de la communauté franco-africaine (Paris: Armand Colin, 1957). Moussa, Pierre, Les nations prolétaires (Paris: PUF, 1959). Moussa, Pierre, “L’intégration des territoires d’outre-mer et le marché commun,” Politique étrangère 22, no. 1 (1957), 39–50. 10.3406/polit.1957.2502 Ncube, Sibanengi, “‘Southern Rhodesia is Anxious to Give Africans a Cash Crop’? Accounting for the Colony’s 1952 African Turkish Tobacco Policy,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 54, no. 2 (2021), 175–191. Newitt, Malyn, Portugal in Africa, the Last Hundred Years (London: Longman, 1981). Nyamunda, Tinashe, Finance, Settlers, and Empire: Money, Sanctions, and War Economy in Colonial Zimbabwe (London: Routledge, 2023 forthcoming). Nyamunda, Tinashe, “In Defence of White Rule in Central and Southern Africa: Portuguese - Rhodesian Economic Relations to 1974,” South African Historical Journal 71, no. 3 (2019), 394–422. 10.1080/02582473.2019.1610902 O’Hara, Glen, “Towards a New Bradshaw? Economic Statistics and the British State in the 1950s and 1960s,” Economic History Review 60, no. 1 (2007), 1–34. 10.1111/j.1468-0289.2006.00354.x Overseas Development Institute, Twenty Five Years in Development (London: ODI, 1985). Owen, David, “The United Nations Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance A Multilateral Approach,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science no. 323 (May 1959), 25–32. 10.1177/000271625932300105 Passos, Marcelino, Der Niedergang des Faschismus in Portugal: zum Verhältnis von Ökonomie, Gesellschaft und Staat/Politik in einem europäischen Schwellenland (Marburg, Verlag Arbeiterbewegung und Gesellschaftswissenschaft, 1987). Patel, I.G., “The Link between the Creation of International Liquidity and the Provision of Development Finance,” Report of the Committee on Invisibles and Financing Related to Trade: Further Considerations of the Report of the Expert Group on International Monetary Issues (Geneva: UNCTAD, 1967), UN Document No. TD/B/115/Add.2. Pennisi, Giuseppe and Gerald Würker, “The Franco-Algerian Agreement on Oil and Industrial Development: a Special Partnership,” Africa: Rivista trimestrale di studi e documentazione dell’Istituto italiano per l’Africa 22, no. 4 (1967), 373–405. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41852509 Petersen, William, “John Meynard Keynes’s Theories of Population and the Concept of ‘Optimum,’” Population Studies 8, no. 3 (1955), 228–246. 10.1080/ 00324728.1955.10415569 Pitti, Laure, “‘La forteresse ouvrière’ à l’épreuve de la guerre d’Algérie,” Vingtième Siècle 83 (2004), 131–143. 10.2307/3771649 Puzzo, Catherine, “Instruments of British and French Immigration Policy in the 1970s: A Comparative Analysis,” Contemporary European History 12, no. 1 (2003), 71–92. 10.1017/S0960777303001048 Roes, Aldwin, “World Bank Survey Missions and the Politics of Decolonization in British East Africa, 1957–1963,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 42, no. 1 (2009), 1–28. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40282428

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Rollo, Fernanda, Portugal e o Plano Marshall: Da rejeição à solicitação da ajuda financeira norte-americana (1947–1952) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1994). Rosas, Fernando, História de Portugal: o Estado Novo (1926–1974) (Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1993). Sargent, J.R., “European Free Trade: The Choice for Britain,” Oxford Economic Papers 10, no. 3 (1958), 265–276. 10.1093/oxfordjournals.oep.a040805 Schenk, Catherine R., The Decline of Sterling: Managing the Retreat of an International Currency, 1945–1992 (Cambridge, U.K.: CUP, 2010). Schenk, Catherine R., “The Origins of the Central Bank of Malaya and the Transition to Independence, 1954–59,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 21, no. 2 (1993), 409–431. 10.1080/03086539308582897 Schlichte, Klaus, “Françafrique – postkolonialer Habitus und Klientelismus in der französischen Afrikapolitik,” Zeitschrift für internationale Beziehungen 5, no. 2 (1998), 273–308. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40843832 Schumpeter, Joseph A., Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper & Brothers 1942). Simpson, David, “Schumpeter and Capitalism in an Era of Transition,” in David Reisman, ed., Economic Thought and Political Theory (Norwell, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994), 147–170. Spence, C.F., The Portuguese Colony of Mozambique: An Economic Survey (Cape Town: A.A. Balkema, 1951). Stockwell, S.E., “Instilling the ‘Sterling Tradition’: Decolonization and the Creation of a Central Bank in Ghana,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 26, no. 2 (1998), 100–119. 10.1080/03086539808583027 Sturm, Imke, “Mental Arithmetic and Juggling with Figures: Statistics in French and British Policy towards Colonial Policy in the 1950s,” European Review of History 3, no. 2 (1996), 199–212. 10.1080/13507489608568163 Sunderland, David, Managing British Colonial and Post-Colonial Development: The Crown Agents, 1914–1974 (Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2007). Sunseri, Thaddeus, “‘Every African a Nationalist’: Scientific Forestry and Forest Nationalism in Colonial Tanzania,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49, no. 4 (2007), 883–913. 10.1017/S0010417507000795 Sylwester, Kevin, “Decolonization and Economic Growth: The Case of Africa,” Journal of Economic Development 30, no. 2 (2005), 87–101. Tertrais, Hugues, “Le rétablissement de la souveraineté financière de la France en Indochine,” in François Bloch-Lainé, fonctionnaire, financier, citoyen. Journée d’études tenue à Bercy le 25 février 2003, ed. Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France (Paris: Ministère de l’Économie, des Finances et de l’Industrie, 2005), 35–50. Tetteh, Kofi, “Arthur Lewis and West African Development,” Social & Economic Studies 29, no. 4 (1980), 202–227. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27861916 Throup, David W., The Economic & Social Origins of Mau Mau (London: Currey, 1987). Tignor, Robert L., Capitalism and Nationalism at the End of Empire: State and Business in Decolonizing Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya, 1945–1963 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998). Tomaru, Junko, “The Colombo Plan and British Publicity Policies towards Southeast Asia,” in Shigeru Akita, Gerold Krozewski and Shoichi Watanabe, eds.,

Empires to globalizing nation-states 371 The Transformation of the International Order of Asia: Decolonization, the Cold War, and the Colombo Plan (London: Routledge, 2015), 159–173. Torres, Adelino, “Pacto colonial e industrialização de Angola (anos 60–70),” Análise Social 19, nos. 77-78-79 (1983), 1101–1119. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/41010443 Valério, Nuno and Maria Paula Fontoura, “A evolução económica de Angola durante o segundo período colonial – uma tentativa de síntese,” Análise Social 29, no. 129 (1994), 1193–1208. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41011069 Wasserman, Gary, “The Independence Bargain: Kenya Europeans and the Land Issue 1960–1962,” Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies 11, no. 2 (1973), 99–120. 10.1080/14662047308447181 Westcott, Nicholas, Imperialism & Development: The East African Groundnuts Scheme and its Legacy (Woodbridge: James Currey, 2020). Widner, Jennifer A., “The Origins of Agricultural Policy in Ivory Coast 1960–86,” Journal of Development Studies 29, no. 4 (1993), 25–59. 10.1080/0022 0389308422294 Wistrich, Robert, Who’s Who in Nazi Germany (London: Routledge, 1995). Young, Alden H., Transforming Sudan: Decolonization, Economic Development, and State Formation (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2017).

Part 5

Conclusion, retrospection, outlook

9

Globalization and the European nation-state: Retrospection and legacy

Returning to the threads of research By querying the interplay between economic structure and agency, this book has argued that tropical overseas regions played a role in European state formation between the late nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century.1 The general thrust of the argument was twofold. Firstly, modern European states became managers and developers of nations at a time of economic globalization and differentiation yet in processes that involved transnational control relations and empire. Secondly, these processes influenced the building of national economies and nation-states in Europe, with long-lasting effects for the world order, its regimes of governance, and the model of the modern state. In the late nineteenth century, relationships between Europe and the overseas world shifted away from economic relationships between European and overseas regions impelled by regional private sectors. Gradually, these relations became associated with national projects of development in Europe and the construction of overseas empires. This happened, in part, as a consequence of the dislocation of a liberalizing and increasingly interconnected world economy in ways not anticipated by policy-makers. The definition and characteristics of the crises of globalization for Europe varied, ranging from the generalized agrarian slump due to an upsurge in world trade in food and industrialization, and the so-called cotton famine prompted by the American civil war, to the world financial crisis at the beginning of the 1890s. These crises have received attention in terms of their impact on economic growth, negative effect on international market integration, and social repercussions. However, what mattered for the enquiry in this volume were the implications of these crises for conceptions of national governance during globalizing economic relations. The cases of Britain, France, and Germany showed how overseas resource regions became part of new ways in which economies were managed as national economies in the course of competitive industrialization in Europe. The result was a conscious search for economic complementarities with the overseas world and eventually the emergence of a specific form of DOI: 10.4324/9781003346425-14

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transnational, and markedly asymmetrical, economic governance. The shift first occurred within economic liberalism and only later fused with the move from free trade to economic protection. Classical liberal economic theory in the nineteenth century, and neoliberal globalists later, held that mature capitalist economies, spearheaded by the British economy and, after 1945, by the United States, were the hegemons that would usher in self-sustaining economic growth and prosperity worldwide. Globalization theorists then identified the degree of price convergence across economies, arguing about differences between the Western and “non-Western” world.2 Yet the historical analysis of state agency in this book focused on a different story, one in which the overseas world was a part of the redeployment of states and economies in Europe and one in which European states struggled with economic modernity. The crises of economic liberalism revealed contradictions in arguments about the automaticity of one-world development without state regulation. The formation of economies, economic institutions, and policy orthodoxies occurred across countries as an intrinsically political process. More often than not, economic liberalism was not easily reconcilable with the ambitions and designs of national development for mass societies. The discussion of these tensions affected policy approaches to the overseas world, including those by economic liberals.3 However, the book’s analysis of these episodes had no ambition to offer an assessment of the norms of economic liberalism. Liberal views of the state and economic doctrine became redefined in contexts. A twofold story ensued. On the one hand, economies across the world reconstituted themselves from the mid-nineteenth century onwards as one-world liberalism faltered. As a consequence, the state saw its transnational role enhanced. Boundaries between domestic and external economic relationships in states sharpened. Contemporary experts increasingly endorsed an active role for states not only in managing economies but in promoting national development.4 Experts and state officials questioned the viability of the assumptions of self-regulating economies. Crises in the West, whether triggered by stock markets or imbalances in national balances of payments, called for state intervention as short-term crisis management. On the other hand, assumptions of the dichotomy between modern Europe and overseas regions as a vast untapped economic reservoir gradually meshed with national conceptions of economic policies in Europe. Policy-makers, however, continued to adhere to the view that economic specialization building on comparative advantage across the world was necessary, assuming that raw material economies would constitute support realms for the industrial economies of Europe. The bifurcation in policy conceptions between modern Europe and a pre-modern Asia and Africa solidified as universal development became elusive and policy-makers in Europe pursued objectives of national development.

Globalization, empire, nation-states 377 Considerations regarding new forms of governance first implicated tropical economies in a general argument about raw materials and later in more selective support roles. Expert-practitioners in the major European states grappled with the politics of economic progress. States changed by increments under specific circumstances rather than as the result of grand strategies of formal empire or informal hegemony. European states sought to associate tropical economies with national economy building in the aftermath of the crises of late mid-nineteenth century liberalism. This was initially an attempt to complete economic globalization but gradually turned into more specific crisis management. Between the 1920s and 1950s, controlling economic policy in colonies became closely connected to ideas of currency management and attempts to settle the balances of payments of European imperial states. In its historical focus, the book’s analysis tried to distinguish itself from other academic approaches relating economies to statehood. Research in political economy has suggested that money became increasingly territorial in European nation-states at the time.5 The important nexus between colonial economies and national, metropolitan economies has been interpreted in terms of the aim to reduce transaction costs in trade. The argument is appealing in linking a general logic of political economy to colonies and European nation-states.6 Nonetheless, accounting for the formation of agency in nation-states requires a greater degree of historical specificity. Besides, policy designs and policy practice were rarely congruent. Economic redeployment and modernization in Europe involved the tropics selectively during economic and social crises. The model of advanced European states attributed a specific function to the overseas world, namely to support national development by outsourcing control and coercion to colonial agents and agencies. An allegedly backward overseas world could become a component for economic problemsolving in Europe because it was assumed to be malleable. Viewed through this lens, pre-modern and pre-capitalist economies overseas also needed to be reformed because they inhibited the progression to universal modernity. However, here too, a historical analysis suggests that aligning overseas economies with those in Europe was a negotiated political process that differed from the assumptions of both imperial designs and economic theory.7 All cases under review show commonalities in the sense that national economies and states formed in transnational settings, whether defined by economic relationships, designs of the world order, or arguments about welfare. The history of Europe’s relations with the tropics as providers of raw materials and as part of colonial currency zones constituted a particular dimension of state formation. Attempts to gear external economies towards the home economy ranged from monetary techniques to strategies to mobilize political support for empire and economic autarky. The latter occurred in Fascist Italy and in Nazi Germany in the late

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1930s, where the fork between economic rationality and economic policy practice was particularly wide. Differences in national and imperial histories, notably in Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, reflected the diversity of the processes that entwined economy formation, globalization, political cultures, and ideas of statehood. France’s global economic reach and imperial conquests did not simply ensue from the Republic’s strive for modernity, epitomized by Saint-Simonian doctrine and large-scale projects in engineering, or later by the lobbying for colonial expansion in Parliament and the search for prestige, important as these factors were.8 Rather, the French national economy formed gradually within the world economy, as had been widely debated among experts from the 1870s onwards. The search for overseas and tropical resources and investment outlets first ensued from regional economic organization, involving industrial banking in France’s textile regions.9 Only subsequently, a more integrated national economy formed. In this process, overseas colonial regions supported the French economy mainly as an extension of the home market for cotton textiles.10 The overseas nexus involved the state as a global marketer and developer for economic actors in France. The imperial cotton connection cast a long shadow in the transnational organization of France’s national economy, well into the 1960s in relations with the African franc zone. Meanwhile, positioning the French economy on a world scale and attuning colonial to national development was a continuous theme in debates about national welfare and state building. Enhancing the economic purpose of the colonies for France underpinned the logic of the mise-envaleur in the 1920s. There were repeated attempts by the state bureaucracy in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1950s, to reorganize trade in imperial raw materials to support the French balance of payments.11 And in the 1950s and 1960s, the objective of making the franc zone conducive to France’s adjustment to economic liberalism blended into the project of European economic cooperation and integration. As the German nation-state formed in 1871, overseas relations hardly mattered for the emerging national economy. Compared to France, the German economy was far less entwined with the world economy, though Germany’s agrarian producers suffered from the inflow of grain from North America. Global commercial activities in Northern Germany were the exception. This trade intensified as new technologies allowed to accelerate and expand the world’s transport infrastructure. Until the mid1880s, the Northern region of Germany was not integrated in national economic organization; it had not been a part of the pre-unification Zollverein.12 Unlike in France at that time, overseas relations were not defined by a national economy that competed with rivals in the world economy. Instead, the path of national progress presented itself as a vision of two possible futures. One was defined in terms of an ambitious project to boost manufacturing and industrial investment in competition

Globalization, empire, nation-states 379 with Britain and France. The other was the project of an economy geared towards open world trade and services. When Deutsche Bank was created as an overseas investment bank, it was not clear with which project the bank and the new German state would become associated. Yet as Germany’s industrialization gathered pace in the 1890s, the saturation of home markets rapidly increased the role of the entire world as a potential outlet for German manufacturing.13 From then onwards, policy-makers defined the German economy with reference to the globe. In Germany, this constellation gave rise to techniques of transnational economic management more so than in France, where the colonial empire was sustained by business networks and the state’s role as an entrepreneur. What is more, by the 1900s, colonies were deemed to play a role in ordering the modern German economy in line with the liberal ideal of a progressively integrating world economy. In the long run, colonies would do more than enlarge national markets. The topic of colonial space entered the debate about national welfare not merely as the reflection of an industrial state in search of raw materials and markets. Rather, colonies were assumed to matter at the intersection of the national economy with the world economy in order to help settling the balance of payments, shield currency reserves, and influence trade flows between currency areas. This was particularly obvious in the 1930s, ironically at times of cheap raw material prices, as export markets for Germany collapsed in the depression and overseas raw materials were considered in terms of their foreign currency costs. In this connection, arguments about the alleged need for German colonies temporarily catapulted the project of a nationalistic and self-reliant Germany onto the world stage as Nazi propaganda reinterpreted economic crisis management as a visionary development policy designed to meet national welfare needs. With regard to the British economy of the second half of the nineteenth century, meanwhile, prima facie a cosmopolitan perspective of analysis imposes itself. Comparing Britain and the Northern Italian region of Lombardy presented two contrasting examples of economies as a tool of analysis. The British economy formed on a near-global scale. By the late nineteenth century, overseas portfolio investment and trading services had acquired an importance that both conveyed power to this economic sector in the British state and required policy to pay attention to the international position of the pound sterling. Indeed, globalization required the state to act as a manager with a global outlook.14 Lombardy, one of the main growth regions of the unified Italy, by contrast, built its industrial economy on domestic technical innovation and initially on the Italian market. Lombardy’s industrial bourgeoisie considered overseas connections only insofar as these were expected to enhance the knowledge potential for industrial research and possibly help create market outlets in the future.15

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There is, however, the risk of neglecting a national perspective in the historical analysis of the state in Britain, whereas in the continental European cases, the opposite holds true. With its endorsement of free trade, Britain became the advocate of what contemporaries understood to be the first truly universal development doctrine. This modernity postulated the progressive and harmonious incorporation of new regions of the world into liberal spheres of economic management. Britain became the model of a modern economy and of the modern state by definition. Yet in reality, there was no smooth transition to a one-world economy under British leadership. Late nineteenth-century Britain showed a tendency towards the functional involvement of the state in de facto global governance but it did so with the national economy in mind, especially from the 1890s. A world of multiple potentially similar economic centres enhanced the need for economic management for the core nation, in which, for many economic liberals, too, colonial relationships acquired particular significance. Moreover, Britain’s overseas relationships were multiform. Niches in resource domains and markets tied overseas regions to certain British sectors, as exemplified by the palm oil trade and cotton textiles. Unlike elsewhere, however, in Britain, these sectors existed alongside a prospering service sector economy, or were becoming associated with it. Therefore, economic complementarities between overseas economies and the national economy mattered not only in terms of what liberals saw as the virtuous cycle of trade and investment in a service economy sustained by the London money market. But overseas relations involved managing competing designs of economic hegemony and doctrines of development. As Britain, increasingly adopted a nation-state approach, liberal imperialism and constructivist imperial development by an envisaged white empire-state showed parallels in the objective to protect the nation and also shared some intellectual origins.16 The national perspective was pronounced in overseas monetary management during various episodes, notably with regard to India, and in the discriminatory management of the sterling currency zone throughout the 1940s.17 Italy differed. The significance of external economic space for the Italian economy was minimal, and growth was regionally generated, often by small businesses, even if the nexus between heavy industry and shipping was also a contributing factor.18 From the perspective of the 1880s and 1890s, the liberal path to growth fuelled by international trade and investment was little more than a utopia. In the 1890s, some economic sectors tried to emulate international trends in the overseas exploration of resources and the creation of transport infrastructure. But these attempts remained limited. Meanwhile, Italy’s overseas banking largely shadowed the migration flows of Italians in the region of the Mediterranean. Not least, a national economy was slow to emerge. Attention to regional economies, therefore, matters especially for the period before 1900.

Globalization, empire, nation-states 381 In the 1900s, however, the modernizing boom of the textile sector of Lombardy, which had initially been confined to the region and markets in its proximity, came to resemble the pattern of the textile sectors in France and Britain. Now the emerging Italian national economy, too, sought complementarities overseas, and the state, in both Rome and Milan, viewed colonial regions as an extension of the home market for textiles. Before 1900, the nexus between overseas relationship, the Italian economy, and the state was not mainly defined in terms of economic functions. Nationalists fathomed Italy’s path to modernity as one that required fostering the national society first and foremost, including via imperial expansion; economic growth would ultimately flow from this national-social coherence. But then, Italy was also the industrializing state in Europe, where, from the 1890s onwards, even liberal economists began to question the universal validity of the classical model of welfare-enhancing free trade, including with reference to Britain in debates about the need to revise approaches to external economic relations. While the Italian economy’s external economic linkages were limited before 1914, debates about future prospects and strategies for Italy’s industrialization and path to modernity were building on the dilemmas which the Italian economy faced in the wider world. This story continued in the acrimonious discourses in the fascist state about raw materials, colonies, and the Italian people’s welfare in the 1920s and 1930s. The world’s tropical regions played a role in policy doctrines in Europe primarily in the attempt to help national economies cope with economic exposure. France, Germany, Italy, and Britain, and in some ways Poland in the 1930s and Portugal especially in the 1960s, all show similarities in designs to associate overseas economic space with national development. But all these cases also exhibited significant variations in the manner in which transnational relationships informed economic policy, due to differences in economic structure and state doctrine. This book tried to capture the role of overseas relations for European statehood by investigating policy processes. Measuring aggregate patterns of trade or the aggregate assessment of the profitability of investment in colonial empires is no substitute for the analysis of how agency formed. Quantitative research on policy outcomes requires a link to an argument about policy formation and its assumptions.19 After 1945, overseas relationships became redefined in the context of the liberalization of Western European economies fostered by the United States. However, the attempt to liberalize imperial economies had unforeseen consequences. In Britain, contradictions became apparent in sterling area relationships and questions of colonial development finance, among others. At this point, one-world liberalism sought to protect itself from what was now termed the “developing world.” By the 1960s and 1970s, the view that had prevailed in imperial powers for almost a century,

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namely that European economies required tropical economies as support, or that these could even help anchor and spread liberalism, vanished into thin air. The politics of economic rationality became inverted compared to the late nineteenth century. The new normalization adopted by economic liberals stressed the need to immunize developed economies from the economic policies of newly independent states that risked undermining the West’s international economic governance.20 Economic and social boundaries were no longer drawn through Europe’s involvement overseas but rather by a delineation from the “Third World.” Shielding economic liberalism from crisis now suggested extricating it from the colonial economic relationships of the past. These relationships were anyway stretched. Aspirations for economic development in colonies fitted uneasily with the economic integration of Western industrial economies. Activists in colonies lobbied for political emancipation and the Western world redefined its political relations with the South. The politics of emancipation has become the subject of an ongoing debate about colonial legacies in independent states after empire posited in the postcolonial research paradigm.21 Arguments about social change, meanwhile, fused with research on the global Cold War.22 Using external realms of control in national economy building did not end with the phasing out of the empire model of statehood, though, even if mechanisms and strategies differed in a more open world economy and during the Cold War. In fact, a national conception of international governance was integral to the state model of economies with a global reach. The remaining sections of the chapter will set the historical argument about transnational statehood advanced in this book in relation to developments in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The next section identifies relevant similarities and differences between the historical argument and the period of the Cold War and the 1990s. The third section argues about parallels in the early twenty-first century with regard to trade in raw materials and national economy building. The final section of the book offers an outlook on connections between transnational regimes, control relations, and the model of statehood in the twenty-first century.

Parallels with empire: From the Cold War to the 1990s The historical argument helps to illuminate differences and continuities in approaches by states in Western Europe to national development in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The period between the 1960s and 1980s witnessed the West’s hegemonic delineation from the developing world. Economic governance in Europe became reconfigured as complementarities between the West and the overseas world faded. According to neoliberal logic, national economies across the world would progressively integrate due to a gradual decrease in tariffs and the free flow of capital in a growth-oriented world economy.

Globalization, empire, nation-states 383 During the period, most officials and politicians in West European nation-states equated the opposition between developed and underdeveloped countries with that between liberal and illiberal economic policies. Such views got amplified in the Cold War, when the number of new states in the general assembly of the United Nations grew massively after the independence of most European colonies in the 1960s. Visions of the underdeveloped South and of the Cold War blurred the historical analysis of how forms of governance changed in relation to the legacy of colonial empires. The major Western European states reinvented their relations with overseas economies as aid givers, instead of developers. Developing countries became the object of a universal doctrine of economic liberalism, which differed from their past role as inferior, though necessary, parts of imperial economies. Prioritizing the role of multinational firms as agents of economic growth chimed with this new orthodoxy. Nonetheless, arguments about economic progress were defined in terms of world regions according to a notion of territoriality that fused with liberal doctrine in the well-known narrative of international economic organization of the 1970s and 1980s. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) sought to shield advanced economies from being drawn into the vicissitudes of economic planning in post-colonial states. In the 1970s, Britain was also wary of over-commitments, following the end of empire and the phasing out of the sterling area. Policy-makers searched ways to build on multilateralism, for instance via the World Bank, as a means of burden sharing. Here, too, multilateralism was circumscribed by a liberalism anchored in Western states. Official development aid played a role in supporting national private sectors in an environment of competitive donor relations, including in allocations channelled through multilateral bodies. Conceptions of economic policy that transcended the boundaries of national economies as the building blocks of the world economy, and of the West as aid givers, were not pursued and rarely considered. For instance, attempts to increase global liquidity advanced by India in United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in the mid-1960s aimed to reform the international economic and financial architecture were not pursued by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).23 Western economic liberalism went hand in hand with a defensive refocusing on the nation-state as Europe faced a post-colonial developing world – ironically one that had been created as an alternative vision to Europe’s defunct colonial empires. The petroleum crisis of 1973–1974 was a shock not only in its repercussions in terms of rising prices and impediments to trade. Policy-makers in the West also interpreted it as a warning that the West’s liberal economic project might become dislocated.24 Consequently, the arguments about national prosperity became embedded in ideas of hegemonic Western modernity. At the same time, the West tried to ensure compatible international governance and hegemonic economic management. The association agreements

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between the European Economic Community, since its creation and through its various stages into the twenty-first century, were testimony to the ambivalence between delineation and the search for complementary growth areas. Access to European markets were conditional on the liberalization of overseas economies. And in the 1980s, the structural adjustment and monetary stabilization policies of the IMF and World Bank were geared towards promoting export-oriented growth of primary producers, mainly associated with multinational firms. The Cold War intensified policy approaches selectively oriented towards the United States as a hegemon. The view among governing elites in Western states that the rivalry between the liberal West and the Communist East was spreading globally, worsened fears that the Western world order was under threat. These fears were magnified by the social critique of radicalized youths within Western countries critical of imperial legacies. Nonetheless, it would be mistaken to assume that the Cold War was merely a political-ideological confrontation projected into the “Third World.” Rather, both the legacies of imperial-colonial rule and the Cold War together influenced policy, where hierarchies of organization, notably in the IMF, continued to define the world economic order. Unlike in the period of colonial empires, however, the role of raw materials for growth in the West’s industrial and service sector economies had decreased. Export markets and global services now mattered more. However, empire left a legacy in many post-colonies in the ways in which raw material exports governed choices in economic policy-making. In the Cold War, authoritarian post-colonial states were propped up by a post-imperial West struggling with the legacy of its enforced imperial development and intent on maintaining a degree of hegemony in its wake rather than by a misconceived United Nations’ system of states.25 The franc zone suited France as a vehicle to help redeploy its national economy, where, moreover, pride in the Francophonie could live on after the end of empire. The 1990s have been contrasted with the Cold War and compared in historical research with the late nineteenth century as similar periods of globalization. The two periods experienced a high degree of integration on financial markets. In the 1990s, innovations in electronics boosted communications with implications on financial transactions and trade.26 Viewed from the standpoint of the expert debate in the late nineteenth century, globalization had a technical, developmental, and organizational dimension. Technological change ushered in a world in which universal economic progress became possible since the world economy could become genuinely integrated. Consequently, overseas investment acquired a new meaning. Such conceptions of the history of the world in a stage of modernity had underpinned the thinking of analysts from J.S. Mill in Britain to Paul Leroy-Beaulieu in France, Vilfredo Pareto in Italy, and Karl Helfferich in Germany.27 Overseas investment, or “capital colonization,” as Beaulieu called it, had been posited as a constitutive component of

Globalization, empire, nation-states 385 emerging national economies in Europe and of the modern world economy. Freeing capital flows would ultimately make migration redundant. The doctrine of universal development had first been advocated by British free traders. For J.S. Mill and for Beaulieu, though, colonial rule supported this economic trajectory. The state would act as a facilitator for innovative entrepreneurs across the world. From the 1900s onwards, states gradually took on roles as managers of national economies. Such technocratic steering of national economies was deemed to further economic progress worldwide and was thus considered to differ from state intervention. Yet at the same time, the state was solicited to remedy the crises of globalization. The latter had prompted the realization that universal modernity needed to be made workable. Empire became a constitutive means in this quest. As the need for national regimes of governance increased, and related calls for national welfare intensified, so did the need for an international regime. Conceptually, colonies as subservient territorial economies were both an extension to national economies in Europe and a way to circumvent the inescapable controversies that hindered reconciling economic policies between countries in Europe. After the end of the Cold War, in the 1990s, experts charting the future of the West conflated vanguard statehood with harmonious economic growth in a world economy driven by technological innovation in ways similar to mid-nineteenth century Europe. Governance was needed to steer and ease the transition to globalization from the national stage. On the face of it, then, the economic management by states in the 1990s seems to have evolved in opposite directions from that of the late nineteenth century, though the point will be made in a moment that this interpretation would be mistaken. In the 1890s and 1900s, national and territorial control, extending into colonial empires as a means to hasten the process, became central attributes of modern states. In the 1990s, by contrast, neoliberals claimed that the nation-state and its territory had become irrelevant to economies. Influenced by Hayek’s neoliberal school, Walter B. Wriston, a banker and one time adviser of US President Ronald Reagan, argued that the new technological transformation of the world was leading to its deterritorialization.28 Accordingly, state agency was bound to operate at a world scale in order to complete the process of economic convergence and integration. The corollary of this thinking was a comprehensive package of policy norms, consciously harking back to nineteenth century thinking, and, similarly, invoking the duty of hegemons to promote world civilization. From the 1980s onwards, neo-conservative politicians like Margaret Thatcher in Britain and Ronald Reagan in the United States invoked nineteenth-century conceptions of the state, namely those advanced by Herbert Spencer. Spencer combined an emphasis on the state’s role to establish law and order with evolutionism.29 The highest stage of civilization

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would be characterized by universal peace due to technological and industrial progress under free commercial exchange with a trustee role for the progressive state. Corresponding arguments in the 1990s held that the United States would fulfil a vanguard role in world development. The premise was that national and global agency converged in the United States which embodied progressive hegemony for humanity. Universal progress meant aligning overseas economies to that of the United States through principles of global governance with emphasis on financial deregulation. State sovereignty had been an obstacle to universal economic, social, and political progress, neo-conservatives maintained. Stephen Krasner, for instance, a political scientist and adviser of the US government, became known beyond academic circles for arguing that state sovereignty had always been “organized hypocrisy.”30 What he meant, though, was that, once the conceptual burden of sovereignty had been eliminated, the way was open to return to the nineteenth century vision of a world of open markets conducive to humanitarianism and democracy. By implication, this meant that the principles of international, inter-state law ought to be shed in favour of norms stipulated by the United States. From this angle, then, the story has a familiar ring to it, when returning to the historical comparison. The contradiction between the late nineteenth century and the 1990s as one of a move to territorial empire versus one of an economic hyperspace resolves itself in the notion of control of national, hegemonic, and global governance. Ultimately, in the late nineteenth century, too, the role of overseas relations for European nation-states was primarily about the control and form of an economic regime, and about territory mainly in this connection. Differences between the late nineteenth century and the 1990s with regard to territoriality, however, are also noteworthy. In the 1990s, economic geography was less relevant than in the historical examples, as industrial production became globally fragmented. Sweatshop labour spread across all worlds, “developed” and “underdeveloped.” There was a much greater diversification of migration flows, notably as migration occurred from the South to the North, in part due to the end of colonial empires. Labour markets globalized to a greater extent and disconnected locations of residence and citizenship.31 Migrants moved frequently between different locations and operated in a global space unlike before.32 Nonetheless, what persisted was that the new globalization, like the old one, was marred by crises that impacted policy. As neoliberal doctrine gained momentum in the early 1990s, the problem of reconciling national economy building with one-world liberalism posed itself again, though in a transformed political geography compared to the late nineteenth century. As a consequence, governance was adjusted, even at a time when the rhetoric of the end of history and of the withering away of the state were in full swing. The difference in the approach to territory in the two historical periods should not divert attention from the fact that the rhetoric

Globalization, empire, nation-states 387 in both cases oscillated between boosting hegemony for the world and serving the hegemonic nation. As financial crises occurred in South America and Asia in the 1990s in the aftermath of the liberalization of global capital markets, initiated by the so-called Washington consensus of neoliberal economists, the representatives of the main Western economies slowed down this process, even if they failed to agree on the regulation of financial markets. Informal group diplomacy complemented and almost replaced the progression of institutional multilateralism. US policy also became sceptical of one of its main previous institutional tools in boosting economic liberalization, the IMF, as the latter began to question the monopoly of the dollar as the world’s international currency and as alternative currencies emerged.33 As in the historical examples, how the world economy operated was not merely coincidentally uneven and asymmetrical, but involved organizational structuring that had a political logic. Ambiguities between one-world strategies of international economic policy and hegemonic or national ones intensified in the early twenty-first century. At the same time, state officials and politicians became more ambivalent when addressing the relevant issues. At the turn of the millennium, the world economic order was stranded in no man’s land, where currency governance, among others, was neither national nor had it fully transcended connections with nation-states.34

Tropical resource frontiers and transnational nation-states: Old and new The early twenty-first century topicalized debates about transnational economic relations and their control as trade in raw materials became again a major component of world trade due to the soaring demand for raw materials by industrializing China. From the 2000s, advanced economies in the West and in the Far East exhibited a growing appetite for vegetable fats and oils, from palm oil to soya-bean, prompted by the growing demand for cooking oils by fast food chains and in the cosmetics sector. The topic has been covered in the world media in relation to alternative conceptions of globalization bearing in mind ecological limits and opinions expressed by civil society in the Global South.35 As in the historical narrative, these debates involved arguments about tropical economies as resource frontiers.36 Comparing the manner in which the tropics were associated with advanced economies is instructive with regard to transnational knowledge creation, the developmental conceptions of states, and the role of territory in raw materials trade. The historical record shows how, from the 1890s onwards, tropical regions became closely associated with science and innovation in Europe. European states created research facilities on the spot and engaged in a competitive search for knowledge to promote or adapt tropical natural

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resources. State-sponsored innovation assisted entrepreneurs to exploit resources for the nation, ranging from textile fibres to minerals, and also had the objective to make the tropics liveable for Europeans with the help of medical research on the disease environment.37 The resource-oriented use of nature and technology had the wider objective to give national economies in Europe a competitive edge. Two main linkages involved arguments about governance and statehood: firstly, expertise on crops became related to the control of production. Given that science was able to engineer agrarian production to some extent, it made economic sense to “open up” allegedly undeveloped economic spaces and occupy overseas territory. Secondly, the argument about tropical production connected to the industrial world of modern national economies, where food was increasingly imported or processed rather than grown locally. Securing supplies of tropical vegetable fats tied in with arguments about nutrition, and with the politics of national welfare at a time when the production of fats in Europe was in decline. In some cases, the notion of food security turned into claims that food autarky was needed to sustain ethnically defined populations in a worldwide competition over resources.38 In the early twenty-first century, as in the historical examples, connections are manifest between knowledge, territory, and regimes of agency, with regard to the demand for tropical resources. These parallels, however, need to be qualified. Knowledge creation regarding tropical biology and resources, aiming to establish genetic inventories, show continuities in the scientific quest to control nature. This search goes back to the objective of classifying the world’s plants since the eighteenth century, conducted in Britain and across the world.39 From the 1990s, however, knowledge about tropical plants that served multinational chemical and pharmaceutical industries became a part of an international legal regime that hinged on intellectual property rights.40 In that respect, governance related to knowledge creation and production began to transcend nation-states. As nature is becoming patented, not only can the produce of nature be owned and traded as property, but nature itself ceases to be a public good. Genetically modified patented foods potentially redefine the nexus between national economies in the North and tropical ones. Food resources for the planet’s population are no longer related to geographical location, as in the past; instead, scientized production feeds “the world.” Between the late nineteenth and the twenty-first centuries, the link between industrial economies and the providers of raw materials and food changed. In the late nineteenth century, overseas colonial economies ought to supply natural raw materials and foodstuffs to imperial centres while the overseas world served as a protected market. Doctrines of national development mirrored these assumptions. Between the 1960s and 1980s, however, when aid policy took the place of imperial-colonial

Globalization, empire, nation-states 389 development, problems to feed growing populations occurred in a developing world and disconnected from Europe’s demand for food. The tropics now needed to “catch up” with advanced economies, which Western science would help to achieve. In some visions of the early twenty-first century, however, these conceptions, too, appear to be outdated. As biological science might allow to create food at will, nature itself might become a scientific creation, in line with a conception of development after the end of history. The world’s economic geography no longer matters. In the 1870s, Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, the advocate of France’s imperial expansion, had envisaged a similar future, when he predicted the transition from the stage of agriculture to that of industry. The latter included the manufacturing of food solely as a chemical process by the year 2000.41 Yet even in a utopian scenario of engineered and manufactured food, economic geography still has some significance that involved states, power, and control. States in the tropics sell their resources as knowledge to multinational firms sanctioned by patents in international law. These arrangements embed raw material producing states in a neoliberal and deterritorialized world of information flows on a world market that drives universal economic growth. In a less utopian setting, however, states still matter in securing access to land. There are parallels here with historical examples in the ways in which states facilitate access to specific resources and play a role in carving out land for production. In the free trading mid-nineteenth century already, military squadrons sometimes accompanied European traders who sought access to palm oil or wild rubber resources in Africa. In the late nineteenth century, industrializing states in Europe were involved in aligning overseas resource domains with their forming national economies. They did so through imperial agency and the organization of colonial quasi-states by building overseas export economies and influencing their production.42 In the 1990s, multinationals in Africa at times hired mercenaries and private security firms in similar roles, and in some cases built on warlord entrepreneurs as middlemen to access diamond or bitumen resources. Forms of private states and company states in the tropics mirrored this resource exploitation, whether in the late nineteenth century in the Congo and Southern Africa, or in warlord states in West Africa in the 1990s and 2000s.43 The historical narrative in this book has emphasized conscious attempts by European powers to gear external economic control to domestic economic management, especially during economic crises. From the 2000s onwards, there are parallels with historical cases in hegemony building as well as in the organization of support for deficiencies in the home economy. Instructive are comparisons between Europe in the 1900s, especially the German Industriestaat, and industrializing China in the 2000s, though comparative analysis needs to proceed with caution.

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In late nineteenth-century Europe, colonies emerged as one of the means to optimize the liberal world economic order. Liberal economists turned constructive developers, including in Britain. In Germany, in the 1900s and in the interwar period, controversies intensified in relation to arguments about raw materials. The objective by economic modernizers to establish a global German economy fused with ethno-nationalistic mobilization. Ultimately, debates became defensive, and, after the First World War, focused on problems of access to particular raw materials and the currency for which they could be obtained. The economic discourse of the 1930s also emphasized the importance of food autonomy for the nation. In the 2000s, China’s “going out” plan (zou chuqu 走出去) initiated in 2001 aimed to organize the use of external economies and tropical raw materials for national development.44 Unlike in pre-1914 Germany, this planning did not stem from a frustrated attempt to emulate economic liberalism. However, the policy, too, had its origins in problems of domestic economic management, on the one hand, and in the ambition to establish a hegemonic power in the world economy, on the other hand. China faced a shortage in agricultural land that coincided with an increase in urban population and the migration from rural to urban areas. “Going out” ought to help ease pressures on diminishing agricultural production at a time of economic growth driven by heavy industry. The central tenet of the policy was, therefore, the search for measures to secure sources of vegetable fats and food as well as energy sources to meet the soaring demand of industry. In short, the strategy entwined food security with arguments about population growth and national prowess with the aim to sustain a rapidly growing and transforming economy. China’s attempt to steer external economies to support its development, though, was not due to the country’s inability to obtain foreign exchange or the risks of the depletion of foreign currency reserves, unlike in the emerging economies of interwar Europe. China held sufficient assets abroad, especially in the United States, notably due to the price competitiveness of its low-tech manufacturing exports to Western economies. Yet, policy-makers searched for means that would allow promoting the home economy without drawing on these reserves and without depending on the production of Western multinationals in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The state purposefully organized complementarities between overseas economies and the Chinese economy. Initiatives to obtain agrarian production areas, minerals, and petroleum focused on conflict or post-conflict regions outside the areas where China faced competition from well-established Western multinationals. Important examples included Angola (agricultural production, petroleum), Sierra Leone and Liberia (agriculture, rubber), the South Sudan (petroleum), and the Congo (bitumen mines). In South America, Chinese firms invested in the expansion of soya-bean production.45

Globalization, empire, nation-states 391 The aforementioned scenario has similarities with early twentiethcentury policies in Europe geared towards resource exploitation in allegedly idle overseas regions. These policies were not only about economic complementarities but also hinged on the view that overseas development could be guided and controlled. For instance, leading advocates of the German Industriestaat of the 1900s, like Helfferich, designed a colonial economic strategy for Africa as part of Weltpolitik from this perspective. The continent ought to assist the self-proclaimed latecomer in industrialization, Germany, to catch up with Britain. Africa was expected to serve as an alternative to South America because of the possibility to organize the production of agrarian resources with less competition from British and US firms and within a national currency zone. Such a policy assumed that Germany would ultimately be able to influence world commodity markets. For German liberals and national-liberals, regulating these complementarities was crucial to boost Germany’s role in the world economy. For them, managing overseas economic relations was more important than acquiring “living-space” in Europe. For the advocates of Groβdeutschland, though, ethno-nationalistic arguments about autarky and “living-space” were intertwined in political mobilization.46 To be sure, the feasibility to exert influence overseas differed in the cases of Germany in the 1900s and China in the 2000s. The available means of control in dependent colonies and in sovereign states were not the same. In the cases of Kenya and Zimbabwe, for instance, China’s “going out” was mirrored by an explicit economic policy of “looking east.” Nonetheless, as in the historical examples, extra-economic factors and political constellations mattered for economic policy. In conflict and post-conflict states personal deals compensated for the volatility or absence of state institutions, as shown by the practices used by Chinese officials in the Congo and Zimbabwe, among others.47 In post-conflict Angola, representatives of China were also present in official state committees that formulated economic policy.48 Similarities also existed in the ways in which export-oriented economies and their states sustained themselves in global competition. Influencing and shaping economies outside the confines of the national economy had played a role in the consolidation of Britain’s liberal economy in the nineteenth century. Although setting out from a Communist command economy, China’s international economic policy acquired a curious similarity with strategies of economic liberalism not only with the objective to enable the country to be internationally competitive, but also with the goal to influence the international economic architecture. As Germany before 1914, China in the 2000s was both keen to retain the means to protect its economy from outside exposure and wary of the obstacles that might restrict its external economic expansion, which risked to be narrowing in the 2010s.49 Building worldwide infrastructure for the nation became a part of China’s economic growth strategy. Supporting the reproducing of the

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national economy with the help of worldwide infrastructure and engineering, and science generally, had historical precedents in Saint Simonian and Republican ideas of development in France, continued in the colonial mise-en-valeur. China’s objective was to establish itself in a similar way as a cutting-edge scientific hub. Economic reproduction, moreover, involved overseas lending and financial services as in the global British economy in the late nineteenth century. For China, too, entering the world economy meant establishing itself as an overseas lender.50 In fact, lending became one of the principal tools that allowed China to compete with Western investors and state donors by focusing on projects Western donors would not finance and by offering loans for more favourable conditions.51 China also provided an alternative to IMF lending to countries suffering from balance of payments crises, such as Argentina.52 These investments served as points of entry into export markets and attempted to enhance Chinese capital markets. In the 2010s, carving out areas of commercial exchange also played a role in establishing the renminbi/yuan as an international currency, complementing China’s policies towards international institutions like the IMF and the World Trade Organization. A number of African countries began to hold part of their foreign currency reserves in the Chinese currency.53 Thus, as was the case with Britain and later with the United States, China progressively attempted to become a factor in shaping international governance from a national perspective. Nonetheless, the relationship between the state and the private sector in the case of China differed from the historical examples. In late nineteenth-century globalization, European overseas and imperial firms were initially the main economic agents. States subsequently acquired a role in supporting firms but also in regulating national economies. Here imperial economic policies constituted themselves in noticeably different ways from the prerogatives of private overseas firms, as argued for the cases of Britain and Germany. In China, by contrast, firms differentiated themselves only gradually from the state, acquiring a degree of identity separate from the management of the national economy by the state. However, in the neoliberal world economy of the 1990s and 2000s, states took a backseat in relation to big firms, including with regard to food production and related knowledge. In this world, Chinese firms, too, had to adjust and began resembling Western multinational agro-businesses in the tropics.54

The nation-state and the globe: Past and present Overseas Economic Relations and Statehood in Europe has explored the histories of the peculiar role played by overseas relations in the designs, conceptions, and practices of forming European-nation states. Economic crises prompted the continuous reorganization of transnational economic

Globalization, empire, nation-states 393 relations, reconfigured the economic and social reproduction of nationstates, and heightened the importance of arguments about the link between international and national governance. Overseas relations became relevant to national economic doctrines due to the incongruities of one-world development. States built economies influenced by their political cultures but also by searching for complementarities and setting boundaries in the wider world. The world’s political and economic geography shaped the European model of the modern nation-state as it emerged in the late nineteenth century and reconstituted itself in the midtwentieth century. Similarities with this process and its legacies are still visible in the Western state model of the early twenty-first century. The book’s introduction has argued that historians researching economic relationships, whether influenced by liberalism or Marxism, have given insufficient attention to state agency, while cultural research paradigms largely developed as a critique of economic analyses.55 The chosen analytical angle of this book also differs from some influential studies of European state formation in historical sociology. This research viewed the state as an ordering factor where bureaucracies organized economies for the purpose of raising taxes and waging war.56 Other studies focused on the socioeconomic aspects of institution building. Here historical states became types associated with periods of history, such as liberal, mercantilist, capitalist, militaryfiscal, imperial, and welfarist, among others. Similar to policy-makers in states, academics, too, expressed normative views on statehood: the state as an intruder in economies, as coercive and violent, or as the instrument of class domination.57 States are, however, multidimensional in their functions and elude simple categorization. The present study deliberately did not identify self-contained types and norms of statehood projected into historical periods but analysed the contextual nature of statehood on the basis of state practice and expert reasoning. In the paradigm of ideas and culture, meanwhile, the modern Western state has been analysed as the manifestation of social power in a disciplining role.58 Researchers have emphasized the pervasiveness of colonialism in cultural representations.59 Authors have also pointed out instances in which the experiences gained in colonial empires affected bureaucratic practices in European states. The influences of techniques of intelligence and policing in the British empire based on assumptions of race and class have been well researched.60 Local histories in continental Europe, moreover, have shown how the colonial experiences of individuals on occasions influenced the modus operandi of civil servants.61 Unlike these research categories, however, the present study has argued that state formation was closely related to economic relationships and doctrines in an international context. In many ways, however, this argument intersects with the research of political cultures and ideas. Conceptually, changes in statehood have been addressed in political science debates about the “global state” and the “transnational state.”62

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The global state has been persuasively characterized in terms of tensions between the state and society arising from global interaction. This conceptualization, however, emphasized the features of statehood rather than the historical processes in which states formed during economic globalization. Historical evidence suggests, moreover, the need to give greater attention to how states organized transnationally to address domestic social tensions. The theory of the transnational state of the 1990s, by contrast, privileged a view on political economy. According to this argument, statehood changed in a period of more integrated capital relations, the formation of global elites, and transnational class relations. While the significance of these processes is not in doubt, they were hardly new in kind in the late twentieth century but only in degree. Moreover, this idea of the transnational state underestimates the degree to which states and economic policy formed defensively to alleviate the effects of exposure to the outside world rather than promoting integration with it. Countless historical episodes point to the disruption of cosmopolitan economic and social relations in contexts of real or perceived crises of globalization, affecting transnational state formation and economy building. From the analytical perspective adopted in this book, a sketch of modern European statehood during the period under review looks as follows. In the last two decades of the nineteenth century, the model of the progressive modern state took the form of overseas co-opting statehood. In this model, overseas economies complemented certain sectors of national economies, which included territorial domination overseas. The process entwined globalizing regional entrepreneurship in Europe with states that were building identities as nations. However, at this juncture, the state entered the frame merely as an, often reluctant agent for private interest groups, which, in turn, acquired state functions overseas. Around 1900, however, the co-opting mode of the state shifted to imperial statehood. At that time, functional and developmental state management came into its own. States addressed the tensions between national economy building and the world economy. Overseas domination became an integral part of the form of governance that epitomized advanced modern states. From about 1900 through to the early 1950s, national approaches to development presented advanced statehood as imperial statehood associated with assumptions of modern rationality, though the latter’s manifestations ranged from liberal nationalism to biological constructs of ethno-nationalism and communitarian fascism. The challenges faced by emerging economies in an interconnected world gave rise to a differentiated statehood beyond the interplay of economic interest groups and social forces. A transnational historical analysis can complement theoretical debates about state autonomy and differentiation. In the modernity of imperial statehood, making overseas economies conducive to the nation’s welfare hinged on the dichotomy between the national and the

Globalization, empire, nation-states 395 external sphere. Disrupted trade flows in the depression of the 1930s and the inability or failure of some economies to sustain foreign currency reserves prompted searches for external control and normalized the modern state as an imperial one. This trend manifested itself, among others, in the demand for overseas raw materials zones, the regulation of trade flows in imperial-colonial currency areas, and coercive colonial labour regimes. The state’s social and cultural reproduction, too, was cast in an imperial duality. In the mid-twentieth century, a shift away from imperial statehood occurred. The US-led strive to liberalize economies in the Western world challenged European states. As Western industrial economies became more integrated, the relevance of complementarities with tropical and subtropical raw material producing economies diminished. Policy approaches became ambiguous. Overseas economies might help European states to adjust to economic liberalism while a largely agrarian-based periphery was also difficult to reconcile with the objective to integrate economies in Europe, as mechanized European food production rivalled overseas agrarian suppliers. At that point, the characteristics of transnational relationships changed, and so did those of states. Imperial statehood no longer worked because Western economic liberalization required adjusting European economies and reassessing long-established colonial ties. What is more, maintaining the existing economic organization of empire proved to be less feasible as overseas countries sought to build their national economies. Economic liberalization and international organization under the aegis of the West went hand in hand with the refocusing on national development once ideas of the mutually beneficial relationships between advanced and subservient economies had faded. As a consequence, states in Europe reinvented themselves as globalizing post-imperial nation-states. States shielded hegemonic economies in the West, controlling labour migration at the national level in opposition to the South. Imperial statehood, which characterized the history of the modern European nation-state between the 1890s and 1960s, was neither the opposite of national isolationism nor was it the antithesis of liberalism but rather an alternative borne out of economic crisis management. Unlike in the utopian Cobdenite conception of the early mid-nineteenth century, this was not a choice between liberal hegemony and a colonial empire. Empire was rather the attempt to address problems of national development transnationally. Opposition to colonial empires existed but rarely amounted to an objection to the modern state model. Certain policy-makers and experts considered imperial statehood as economically premature or disagreed with aspects of colonial development doctrines. Critique of empire, however, quickly turned into its endorsement once linkages between empire and national welfare gained ground. The logic of the nation-state meant that

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critiquing empire, too, normally occurred according to the externaldomestic duality of national statehood. When policy designs tried to go beyond these parameters, they were marginalized in the political debate as undermining national progress. Consequently, a political course outside these confines was the exception. The easier it was to blame external factors for a national crisis, the less track critics had in countering asymmetrical strategies of transnational governance in empire. Arguments about universal humanitarian trusteeship further confounded the critique of empire. At the end of the twentieth century and in the early twenty-first century, the crisis of economic globalism, once again, impacted on the Western notion of statehood. Readers of burgeoning publications on globalization and global governance written in economics and political science in the 1990s and early 2000s might be forgiven for failing to spot the state, believing in the inevitability of the end of statehood. In the 2010s, by contrast, readers of the same studies, might be puzzled by the optimism that mainstream political scientists expressed regarding neoliberal globalism, or by the marginal role they attributed to nation-states on the verge of a new world order.63 Rare were researchers who argued that the model of the nation-state exerted a continuing influence, among others, because it was the inescapable node through which international governance addressed global limits and social movements could make themselves heard.64 The liberal optimism of international relations experts in the 1990s bears a similarity to the ways in which economic liberals advocated the dawn of a new world order in the late mid-nineteenth century. Neoliberal and neo-conservative thinking in the 1990s cast itself in the image of this golden era. Nonetheless, the state re-emerged, certainly after the world financial crisis of 2008, and probably never had been as absent as globalists had argued. As a consequence of experiences during the 1990s and in 2008, and just as political scientists in the 1990s had harked back to a liberal past, economic historians now wrote about the present, arguing about parallels with and lessons from historical crises, especially those in the 1890s and 1930s.65 With hindsight, politicians and experts asked whether 2008 was merely an unavoidable ripple on the path to one-world liberalism after history, where the state was redundant as self-regulating markets would ultimately ensure universal welfare. Or they pondered, in ways that have many historical parallels, which option was the lesser evil: condoning state intervention in the economy, at least temporarily, or letting the effects of the crisis run its course in the expectation of economic self-regulation by open markets. Confounding globalist panegyrists, however, the state was called in as a consequence of 2008 not as Hajek’s economic gardener, but as a crisis manager. In unprecedented moves, states temporarily regulated large segments of the banking sector. What is more, debates about the boundaries between national welfare and transnational economic relations

Globalization, empire, nation-states 397 intensified, ushering in acrimonious debates about global exposure in both Western Europe and the United States. Triggered by the external shock, demands for state intervention once again became strong. Some of the characteristics of the model identified in the historical examples were coming back in Europe’s defensive search to reassert national statehood. The mainstream policy discourse among experts reverted to the logic of the nation-state model as a necessity. Political mobilization skipped over the fact that, historically, nationalism in Europe had been reinforced by the failure to reconcile notions of universal and national progress. The national version of globalism in the late twentieth century, like the historical one, had a penchant of positing universalism in terms of the defence of European civilization rather than inclusion. A nationalcultural delineation in European countries occurred on the labour market with increasing references in the political discourse to guide cultures, given immigration flows from non-European countries from the 1990s onwards. Arguments about reinforcing the nation-state extended to external economic policy. In Britain, the hangover from empire between the 1970s and 1990s returned to a proactive civilizing discourse with an economic edge. The nation should show pride in its past, when it had “scrambled” for Africa, and engage in mutually beneficial aid policy combined with trade deals geared towards Britain. These visions tapped into popular memories of Britain’s historical prowess to steer free trade with the help of empire as a progressive national strategy.66 The traits of a state model that organizes economic complementarities transnationally in support roles are also apparent outside Western Europe. As in the historical examples, China, shows the transnational organization of an emerging national economy with hegemonic ambitions. In generalized crises of international economic relations, the state mattered not only as an economic ordering tool but as a social and political one. Unlike in the historical narrative, however, in the twentyfirst century, the reproduction of Western nation-states occurs in a world in which strategies on labour markets and the identities of migrants from the previous colonial empires increasingly undercut and irritate national conceptions of Western statehood.67 In both mid-nineteenth century liberalism and the neoliberalism of the 1990s, the argument was that commercial exchange, the communications revolution, and open capital flows together with science-led self-regulation would make the state redundant. The 1990s conjured up images, in both neo-conservative and post-Marxist thinking, of dissolving the economic duality of the state in world capitalism.68 Neoliberal virtual statehood separated the political and emotional sphere of nation-states from a universal economic regime in ways similar to ideas of a world state advanced by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek in the 1920s.69 However, the neoliberal episode of the 1990s failed to usher in the common-wealth side of

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Hobbes’ Leviathan at a world scale or the withering away of the state after capitalism. Universal development in capitalism, as in Joseph Schumpeter’s vision of overcoming imperialism through rational economic agency, remained utopian. Optimizing a global technocratic bureaucracy in view of neutral, expert-led economic policy proved elusive, not least since state building is an intrinsically political process. In essence, the Leviathan is likely to retain its Janus face in the twentyfirst century. Especially in times of crises, the nation-state recurrently sees its duality reinforced. The forces that formed national economies with reference to the wider world in the late nineteenth century have reverted statehood back onto the national control sphere ever since. Inclusive policy approaches are frustrated by this process. The European nationstate appears to be a model of statehood frozen in limbo between domestic welfare ambitions and the discontents arising from global exposure. This model tried to resolve the contradiction by projecting core identities onto transnational regimes of organization, and in this sense has left an ongoing legacy.

Notes 1 Notes for this chapter will be confined to literature that identifies pertinent academic debates and to references to chapters of the book. 2 See Jeffrey G. Williamson and Kevin H. O’Rourke, Globalization and History: The Evolution of a Nineteenth Century Atlantic Economy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003), chs.1, 2, and 6. 3 Uday Singh Mehta, Liberalism and Empire: A Study in Nineteenth Century British Liberal Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 4 See chapters 2 and 3. 5 Eric Helleiner, The Making of National Money: Territorial Currencies in Historical Perspective (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2003), ch.7. 6 Helleiner, The Making, ch.8; and Eric Helleiner, “The Monetary Dimension of Colonialism: Why Did Imperial Powers Create Currency Blocks,” Geopolitics 7, no. 1 (2010), 5–30. 7 For the study of monetary agency in colonies, see, for India, G. Balachandran, “Debasing Indigenous Statehood: Sovereign Monies, Markets and Imperial Power in the Indian Subcontinent, c.1893–1905,” Past and Present (October 2022); and Balachandran, “Money and its Ideas: Colonial Currency, Money Illusions’, in Federico Neiburg and Nigel Dodd, eds., A Cultural History of Money, Vol. 5 (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), 35–55. For Africa, see, among others, Karin Pallaver, “‘The African Native has No Pocket’: Monetary Practices and Currency Transitions in Early Colonial Uganda,” International Journal of African Historical Studies 48, no. 3 (2015), 471–99; and Leigh A. Gardner, “The Curious Incident of the Franc in the Gambia: Exchange Rate Instability and Imperial Monetary Systems in the 1920s,” Financial History Review 22, no. 3 (2015): 291–314. 8 Hubert Bonin, Catherine Hodeir, and Jean-François Klein, eds., L’Esprit économique imperial (1830–1970): groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l’empire (Paris: Publications de la Société Française d’Histoire d’Outre-Mer, 2008), 7–15.

Globalization, empire, nation-states 399 9 See, for instance, Jean-François Eck, “Le patronat du Nord et la question coloniale au XXe siècle,” in Hubert Bonin, Jean-François Klein and Catherine Hodeir, eds., L’esprit économique impérial (1830–1970): groupes de pression & réseaux du patronat colonial en France & dans l’empire (Paris: SFHOM, 2008), 329–45. 10 Jacques Marseille, “L’industrie cotonnière française et l’impérialisme colonial de 1885 à 1970,” Revue d’histoire économique et sociale 53, nos. 2–3 (1975), 386–412. 11 The relevant episodes discussed in the book refer to the mise-en-valeur ( chapter 4), the Popular front period ( chapter 5), and state reorganization after the Second World War influenced by François Bloch-Lainé ( chapter 7). 12 Helmut Washausen, Hamburg und die Kolonialpolitik des Deutschen Reiches, 1880 bis 1890 (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1968). 13 See the arguments by contemporary expert-practitioners like Karl Helfferich and Bernhard Dernburg discussed in chapter 2. 14 P.J. Cain and A.G. Hopkins, British Imperialism, 1688–2000 (Harlow: Longman, 2002), ch.6; and Paul Bairoch and Richard Kozul-Wright, “Globalization Myths: Some Historical Reflections on Integration, Industrialization and Growth in the World Economy,” in R. Kozul-Wright and R. Rowthorn, eds., Transnational Corporations and the Global Economy (London: Macmillan, 1998), 37–68. 15 Valerio Castronovo, “Cent’anni di imprenditoria lombarda,” in La Lombardia moderna (Milan: Electa, 1989), esp. 41–61; and Anna Milanini Kemény, La Società di esplorazioni commerciali in Africa e la politica coloniale (1879–1914) (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1973), 14–8. 16 Bernard Semmel, “Sir Halford Mackinder: Theorist of Imperialism,” Canadian Journal of Economics and Political Science 24, no. 4 (1958), 554–61. 17 G. Balachandran, John Bullion’s Empire: Britain’s Gold Problem and India between the Wars (London: Curzon, 1996, new edition Routledge, 2015); Gerold Krozewski, Money and the End of Empire: British International Economic Policy and the Colonies, 1947–58 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); and R.S. Sayers, Financial Policy, 1939–1945 (London: HSMO, 1956). 18 Giovanni Federico, “Italy, 1860–1940: A Little-Known Success Story,” Economic History Review 49, no. 4 (1996), 764–86; and Gianni Toniolo, Leandro Conte, and Giovanni Vecchi, “Monetary Union, Institutions and Financial Market Integration, 1862–1905,” Explorations in Economic History 40, no. 4 (2003), 443–61. For the argument on military spending and growth, see Giovanni Busino, L’Italia di Vilfredo Pareto. Economia e società in un carteggio del 1873–1923 (Milan: Banca Commerciale Italiana, 1989), 95–101. 19 Relevant controversies are ongoing since Lance E. Davis and Robert A. Huttenback, Mammon and the Pursuit of Empire (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1986). 20 See Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 21 For an influential programmatic study, see Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 22 Jeremi Suri, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 23 I.G. Patel, “The Link between the Creation of International Liquidity and the Provision of Development Finance,” Report of the Committee on Invisibles and Financing Related to Trade: Further Considerations of the Report of the Expert Group on International Monetary Issues (Geneva: UNCTAD, 1967).

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24 Giuliano Garavini, After Empires: European Integration, Decolonization, and the Challenge from the Global South, 1957–1986 (Oxford: OUP, 2012), esp. ch.5. 25 This observation qualifies the widely debated arguments about “juridical statehood” in the late 1980s and 1990s, for which see R.H. Jackson and C.G. Rosberg, “Sovereignty and Underdevelopment: Juridical Statehood in the African Crisis’, Journal of Modern African Studies 24, no. 1 (1986), 1–31. 26 Mikuláš Teich, “The 20th Century Scientific-Technical Revolution,” History Today 46, no. 11 (1996), 27–33. 27 See chapters 2 and 3. 28 Walter B. Wriston, The Twilight of Sovereignty: How the Information Revolution is Transforming our World (New York: Scribner, 1992). 29 Duncan Bell, and Casper Sylvest, “International Society in Victorian Political Thought: T.H. Green, Herbert Spencer, and Henry Sidgwick,” Modern Intellectual History 3, no. 2 (2006), 222–7. 30 Stephen D. Krasner, Sovereignty: Organized Hypocrisy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999). 31 Stephen Castles and Mark J. Miller, The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003). 32 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998). 33 Stefan A. Schirm, ed., New Rules for Global Markets. Private and Public Governance in the World Economy (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 34 Benjamin J. Cohen, The Geography of Money (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), ch.6. 35 Suffice to mention as an indication the following article from The Guardian: Annie Kelly, “Palm Oil Boom: Companies Must Clean Up Their Act in Africa,” 7 December 2016, www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/ dec/07/palm-oil-africa-deforestation-climate-change-land-rights-private-sectorliberia-cameroon (accessed 5 July 2022). 36 An example is Derek Byerlee, Walter P. Falcon, and Rosamond L. Naylor, eds., The Tropical Oil Crop Revolution: Food, Feed, Fuel, & Forests (Oxford: OUP, 2017). 37 Helen Tilley, Africa as a Living Laboratory (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2011), ch.4; and John M. Hodge, Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2007), ch.2. 38 See chapter 5 on debates in the 1930s. 39 Marika Vicziany, “Imperialism, Botany, and Statistics in Early Nineteenth Century India: The Surveys of Francis Buchannan (1862–1829),” Modern Asian Studies 20, no. 4 (1986), 625–60. For a comparison on East Asia, see Federico Marcon, The Knowledge of Nature and the Nature of Knowledge in Early Modern Japan (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2015). 40 John Merson, “Bio-Prospecting or Bio-Piracy: Intellectual Property Rights and Biodiversity in a Colonial and Postcolonial Context,” Osiris 15 (2000), 282–96. 41 For the relevant reading of history, see chapter 2. 42 See chapters 2 and 3. 43 William Reno, “War, Markets, and the Reconfiguration of West Africa’s Weak States,” Comparative Politics 29, no. 4 (1997), 493–510. 44 Wenran Jiang, “Fuelling the Dragon: China’s Rise and Its Energy and Resources Extraction in Africa,” China Quarterly 199 (2009), 585–609; and Hong Zhao, “China’s Oil Venture in Africa,” East Asia 24 (2007), 399–415.

Globalization, empire, nation-states 401 45 Julia C. Strauss and Martha Saavedra, “Introduction: China, Africa and Internationalization,” China Quarterly 199 (2009), 551–62; and Deborah Brautigam, Will Africa Feed China? (Oxford: OUP, 2015). 46 Gerold Krozewski, “Problematizing an ‘Imperialism of Intent’: Colonial Raw Materials, Globalism, and European Nation States, from the Pre-1914 Period to the 1930s,” in Toyin Falola and Emily Brownell, eds., Africa, Empire and Globalization (Durham: Carolina Academic Press, 2011), 357–76. 47 Tinashe Nyamunda, “Free For All? Artisanal Diamond Mining and Redistribution on the Edges of the State, 2006–2008,” in Richard Saunders and Tinashe Nyamunda, eds., Facets of Power: Politics, Profits and People in the Making of Zimbabwe’s Blood Diamonds (Johannesburg: Wits University Press, 2016), 112–34. 48 Giles Mohan and Ben Lampert, “Negotiating China: Reinserting African Agency into China–Africa Relations’, African Affairs 112, no. 446 (2013), 97. 49 Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong, “Friends and Interests: China’s Distinctive Links with Africa,” African Studies Review 50, no. 3 (2007), 75–114. 50 He Wenping, “China’s Aid to Africa: Policy Evolution, Characteristics and Its Role,” in Jan Stilhoff Sörensen, ed., Challenging the Aid Paradigm: Western Currents and Asian Alternatives (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 138–165; and May Tan-Mullins, Giles Mohan, and Marcus Power, “Redefining ‘Aid’ in the China–Africa Context,” Development and Change 41, no. 5 (2010), 857–81. 51 Edward Wong, “Competing against Chinese Loans: U.S. Companies Face Long Odds in Africa,” New York Times Online Edition, 13 January 2019. 52 “China’s Soybean Politics,” New York Times International Edition, 31 January 2019, 7. 53 Tonderayi Mukeredzi, “Chinese Yuan Penetrates African Markets,” August 2014, www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/august-2014/chinese-yuan-penetrates-africanmarkets (accessed 5 July 2022); and Irwin, Neil, ‘The choice facing China as its currency becomes more global’, New York Times Online Edition, 30 November 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/12/01/upshot/the-choice-facing-china-as-its-currencybecomes-more-global.html (accessed 5 July 2022). 54 Brautigam, Will Africa Feed China? ch.4. 55 See chapter 1, for the argument. 56 Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital and European States, AD 900–1990 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990). 57 See the following studies as examples in the corresponding order: Martin Van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1999); Gianfranco Poggi, The State: Its Nature, Development and Prospects (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 1990); and Frank Longstreth, “The City, Industry and the State,” in Colin Crouch, ed., State and Economy in Contemporary Capitalism (London: Croom Helm, 1979), 157–90. 58 See research influenced by Michel Foucault’s notion of governmentality: Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, eds., The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991). 59 George Steinmetz, The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Quindao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2007); and Angelika Epple, “Lokalität und die Dimensionen des Globalen. Eine Frage der Relationen,” Historische Anthropologie 21, no. 1 (2013), 4–25. 60 An influential study is C.A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 1996).

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61 For one among a growing number of such histories in Germany, see Bernd Stefan Grewe, Markus Himmelsback, Johannes Theisen, and Heiko Wegmann, Freiburg und der Kolonialismus. Vom Kaiserreich zum Nazionalsozialismus (Freiburg/Breisgau: Veröffentlichungen aus dem Archiv der Stadt Freiburg im Breisgau 42, 2018). 62 See, respectively, Martin Shaw, Theory of the Global State: Globality as Unfinished Revolution (Cambridge, UK: CUP, 2000) and William Robinson, A Theory of Global Capitalism: Production, Class, and State in a Transnational World (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004), esp. ch.4. 63 For the debate, see David Held and Anthony McGrew, Globalization/AntiGlobalization (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2002). 64 Such an exception is Michael Mann, “Has Globalization Ended the Rise and Rise of the Nation-State?” Review of International Political Economy 4, no. 3 (1997), 472–96. 65 Prominent examples include Harold James, The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002); Harold James, “Unlearnt Lessons of the Great Depression,” Financial Times Online, 4 January 2010; and with a focus on Britain, Peter Cain and Scott Newton, “Crisis and Recovery: Historical Perspectives on the Coalition’s Economic Policies,” History & Policy (March 2011). 66 Ewa Połońska-Kimunguyi and Patrick Kimunguyi, “‘Gunboats of Soft Power’: Boris on Africa and ‘Global Britain,’” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 30, no. 4 (2017), 325–49. 67 Appadurai, Modernity. 68 For the early twenty-first century version of the post-Marxist argument, see Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000). 69 Compare Richard Rosecrance, The Rise of the Virtual State: Wealth and Power in the Coming Century (New York: Basic Books, 1999) with the account in Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the Birth of Neoliberallism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), ch.3.

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Index

Addis, Charles (British banker) 116 Africa: agriculture and Britain after 1945 297, 301, 334, 347; and British character building 125–6; in colonial education 108, 130, 218, 229, 235; and colonial labour 174, 175, 184, 185–7; compared to Asia/South America 121, 131; as creditor to Britain 252, 289–90, 330, 355; development and coercion 113, 127, 130; as economic frontier pre-1914 107, 110, 115; in European education 122, 125–6; and European statehood 111, 113–4, 205, 230–6; and German social reform 111, 113–4, 123–5; and Germany in 1900s 45, 111, 113–4, 121–5; and interwar Europe 215–23; and Italy 60, 77–8, 112–3, 128; as nation-states 282, 339, 346; and Nazi Germany 209, 212, 217–18, 225; role in modernity 107, 110, 119, 124–5, 284; in Second World War 247–69; see also sterling area; franc zone; escudo zone; and under individual countries and raw materials agrarian crisis in Europe (19th c) 53–4, 78 agrarian development: Africa in Second World War 262, 264, 266; in British empire 125–6, 297, 298, 351; colonies vs industrial Europe post1945 291, 297, 299, 301–2, 304, 339, 349, 350, 354; in French empire 184, 291, 301, 305, 328, 346–7; and Italian fascism 180, 219, 220; and Nazism 210, 212–3, 217–8, 231 Albania 119, 168, 258, 268 Algeria 21, 326, 328, 334, 335, 339, 340, 341, 342–3, 349, 353, 356

Alsace-Lorraine: and French colonial expansion 80; loyalty question 128; regional bourgeoisie 121; see also France Amery, Leo (British politician) 11, 216, 222, 230, 233; on Germany and raw materials 254; vs Nazi Germany 228; on sterling balances 288 Angell, Norman (British lobbyist) 205, 228, 230 Anglo-International banks 46, 52–3, 67–8, 71, 73 Anglo-South African war 115; British vs Italian liberals 60–1; and economic liberalism 61, 65 Angola 186, 294, 304, 326, 336, 337–8, 341, 345, 347–8; and Schacht 227 Argentina: and China in 2010s 392; Italian immigrants 54; and London finance in 1890s 53, 54–5, 68; trade with Britain 47–8, 51 aristocracy see landed aristocracy; Junker class; agrarian development Ashanti cocoa farmers 250, 334 Asia see under individual countries atavism vs modernity 60, 62, 63, 119, 153, 180; see also Pareto, Vilfredo (Italian economist); Schumpeter, Joseph Anton (economist) austerity in Europe: and supplies 182–3, 208, 212; see also food; fats and oils (vegetable); autarky policies; Second World War Australia 46, 48, 76, 130, 158, 170, 181, 307 autarky policies 169, 188; in fascist Italy 156, 220, 231; and Nazi agrarian development 212, 217, 218, 231; Nazi Germany and “global”

408

Index

Germany 176, 177, 213, 215, 217, 234; see also food sovereignty Austria-Hungary 6 Bagehot, Walter (British economist) 82 Baghdad railway project 110–1, 113 balance of payments: and Britain post1945 285–6, 287–8, 290, 297, 306–7, 308; and France post-1945 311; Portugal 287, 294, 300, 311; and trade in Second World War 247–9, 251–8; see also currency Balandier, Georges (French sociologist) 329 Baldesi, Gino (Italian trade unionist) 160 Banca commerciale (Milan) 112–3 Bank of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) 105 Bank of Egypt 105, 325; and LeithRoss 325 Bank of England 102; and Baring crisis 55; on colonial sterling balances 326, 330; and India 159; in 1930s 155, 225; in 19th c 101–2; in 1950s 290–1, 296, 306, 332–3; and overseas lending post-1945 331, 350; and World Bank 332, 332 Bank of France 102, 178 Bank of Italy 119 Bank of International Settlements (Basle) 159, 226 Bank of Rome 53, 80, 119, 135 banking (international) pre-1914: Europe and South America 54, 67; and French railways 54, 67; overseas banks and Asia 46, 67–8; shipping and commerce 69; see also AngloInternational banks, and under the names of banks Banque de l’Indochine 67, 121 Baring financial crisis 55, 101, 115 Basle agreements on sterling area 286, 288, 290, 333 Belgium: and Congo 49, 81, 110, 113, 115–6, 248, 249, 259, 255, 260, 265, 284; Congo and Italy 113; and international governance 228, 268; and Portuguese colonies 295, 338, 348 Bengal famine (Second World War) 266 Benn, Tony (British politician) 343 Bentham, Jeremy (British philosopher) 82

Berlin Congo Conference (1884/ 85) 80–1 Bernard, Paul (French economist) 267 Bevin, Ernest (British politician) 297–8, 344 Białoweża primeval forest (Poland) 257, 265 bimetallism controversy 63, 116; see also gold standard biology see organicism Bismarck, Otto von 74, 75, 78, 79, 81 Bleichröder bank 70, 75, 120 Bloch-Lainé, François (French official) 23, 295; on colonies 328, 350–1; on economic doctrine 356, 357; on franc zone 299–300, 311, 335, 345; on rubber from Indochina 328 Blum, Léon (French politician) 178, 185, 208, 209, 221; on German colonies 227; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 226 Bodin, Jean (French philosopher) 3, 17 Bordeaux 51, 66, 68 Brazil: and Germany pre-1914 120; and Nazi Germany 170–1, 176, 183; as rubber producer 163; sterling balances in Second World War 252 Brazzaville conference (1944) 262, 266 Britain (19th c to 1939): appeasement argument 225–6; and Argentina vs Ottoman empire 53; balance of payments in late 19th c 50–1; and Berlin Congo conference 81; character building and colonies 122, 126; and chartered companies in Africa 114; colonial agriculture and modernity 125–6; colonial trustee investment 82; empire and core population 125–6, 130, 222; in empire studies 11; financial hegemony 8, 12, 155, 159, 184; French colonial rubber 165; and global governance 10, 82, 99, 115, 136; and Indian economy 179, 184; and mineral resources 49; as model of development 17, 158; as nationstate 99, 136; and Nazi demands for colonies 205, 225–6; and Nazi Germany 159, 170, 212, 218, 225–6, 228; and overseas debt management 54, 101, 105, 111; and palm oil 16, 47; peace and empire in 1930s 207, 223, 228, 229; petroleum policy 167;

Index 409 protectionism vs free trade 115, 135, 136, 158, 181, 228, 230, 233, 235; and raw materials in 1920s 158, 163, 171–2; and raw materials in 1930s 163–4, 210, 223–4; and rubber 161–4; state and one-world development 6–7, 9–10, 18, 81; state in 1890s, 1900s 102, 104–5, 115, 118, 127, 133, 135–6; state reproduction 126, 233; state role overseas 59, 100, 101; on synthetic rubber 177; Treasury on colonies in 1930s 223, 225; as viewed by Fascist Italy 222 Britain (Second World War): and colonial soldiers 258–9, 262; imperial organization 253–8; and raw materials for Germany 256; rubber from French colonies 255; supply strategies 254–5; see also sterling area, sterling balances, and Second World War Britain (post-1945): and aid policy 324, 329, 332, 344, 350; and China in Africa 343–4; “civilizing mission” after empire 341, 344–5; and Colombo Plan 288, 306, 307–8, 331, 332, 344; and colonial sterling area 324, 325, 330, 331, 333, 334; and colonial development finance 306, 310; and colonial independence 330–1, 333, 347; conception of external economic policy 296, 297–8, 309–10; “dollar gap” 283, 290; and economic reform 295, 296, 298, 308; and European liberalization 293, 305–6, 307, 310; immigration after empire 340, 341; and imperial “common cause” 326, 344; imperial balance sheet 333, 354; and Kenya after empire 347; Labour government and colonies 297–8, 324, 329, 344; liberalism and empire 323, 355; and Malaya/Malaysia 330–3; as national economy 380, 391, 398; Overseas Development Ministry 336, 343; past and present 392–8; state and economic statistics 308; sterling crises 285–8, 296, 298, 306, 310; sterling cosmopolitanism 290, 293, 295, 296, 297, 305–6; sterling vs dollar 282, 285, 286, 290, 299, 307; and technical cooperation after empire 309, 344; Treasury and

overseas finance 295, 296, 297, 298, 306, 308; and US after Suez 286; welfare state and empire 297; see also sterling area, and sterling balances British Cotton Growing Association 107, 114 British East India Company 107, 117 British Imperial East Africa Company 114 “Britishness” 125–6, 130 Buna (German synthetic rubber) 176–7, 250 bureaucracy see state Cameroun: and Allies in Second World War 249–50, 255, 257, 265; and fats and rubber 174, 208–9; and Nazi Germany 187, 225 Canada 50, 54, 181 Cape Colony: and labour 81–2 capitalism: and Cold War 342, 356; and colonial empires post-1945 327–8, 337, 338, 343, 345, 349, 353, 355–8; see also economic liberalism, economic liberalization, and Schumpeter Carpi, Leone (Italian economist) 78, 82, 106 Cartier, Raymond (French journalist) 327, 339, 353 case studies in the book: conception of 5–6, 377–8, 381 Castle, Barbara (British politician) 343 Catholic Centre Party (Zentrum, Germany): and colonies 104, 124, 217; see also Erzberger, Matthias (German politician) central banks see under individual central banks Chamberlain, Joseph (British politician) 64, 82, 110, 115, 125, 127, 130, 222, 297, 298, 351 Chamberlain, Neville (British politician) 225 Chartered Bank of India, Australia & China 70, 71 chartered companies 112, 114, 162, 178 Chevalier, Michel (French politician and academic) 56, 59, 64, 67 China: “Boxer” indemnity 116–7; in 1930s 159, 170; characteristics of development 387, 389, 390, 392; and

410

Index

Europe pre-1914 61, 66, 71, 80, 116; and French textiles pre-1914 76; overseas aid in 1960s 343–4; and overseas economies in 21st c 390–1; as overseas lender in 21st c 392; renminbi/yuan 392; state characteristics in 21st c 390, 391–2; as “yellow peril” 80, 116 Churchill, Winston (British politician): on empire 212; on India in Second World War 267–8 Clark, William (British official) 343 Clemenceau, Georges (French politician) 65, 80 coal 154, 165, 167, 177; vs petroleum 168–9 Cobden, Richard (British industrialist and politician) 24, 47, 59, 62, 63, 101, 117, 353, 355, 395; CobdenChevalier treaty 56 cocoa: and knowledge creation 107, 114; post-1945 325, 334, 346–7 coercion/violence in colonies: ambiguities in Second World War 258–60; in fascist empire 220; in German Southwest Africa 130–1; in Nazi Germany during Second World War 258, 261; pre-1914 113, 127, 130, 133; in 1920s-30s 154, 156, 182, 184–7; see also labour; war Cohen, Andrew (British official) 297 Colbert, Jean-Baptiste (French politician, 17th c) 64, 178 Cold War 382–7; and British empire post-1945 285–6, 298; and Portuguese empire in 1960s 282 Colombo Plan 288, 306, 307–8, 331, 332, 344 Colonial Development Corporation 297, 325 Colonial Stock Act 1900 82, 115, 331 colonies (19th c to Second World War): and appeasement of Nazi Germany 205, 223, 226; and British character formation 125–6; and British protectionism in 1930s 181; colonial POWs in Europe 262–3; continuities in Second World War 249–53; and currency management 6, 14, 19–20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 102–5, 114, 124, 133; and economic liberalism 62–3, 15, 19, 126–32, 135, 136, 162; and emigration from Europe 54, 57, 119,

121, 125, 206, 215, 217–20; and European peace 215, 217, 228–9; and French mise-en-valeur 19, 157, 161, 165, 169, 173, 176, 178, 185, 221, 229; and German character 123, 206, 216, 217; and German state in 1880s 52, 66, 74, 78; and German Weltpolitik 66; and German social reform 110, 123, 124, 125; German doctrine of 136, 215, 217–8; and German Zentrum 217; and international order 209, 215, 229, 235; as investment outlets 51, 58; and Italian latifundisti 78; in Italian fascism 180–1, 187, 219; and labour coercion 113, 127, 130; and mass society in Europe 5, 7, 8, 12–13, 15, 23; in modern nation-states 6, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 19, 205, 216–7, 233; and national economies in Europe 6, 10, 14, 15, 19–20, 26, 56–60, 62, 63–4, 99, 100, 108–17, 182–7, 223–30; and national welfare in Europe 211–5; and nation-states in Europe 6, 10, 15, 19, 24, 100–1, 105, 133; and Nazi anti-liberalism 213, 214; and Nazi food sovereignty 174, 211–2; and Nazi “living-space” 209, 219; and Nazi racism 217–8; in Nazism vs Weltpolitik 214, 215, 217, 219; and Polish economic policy 209, 221, 227; vs protectionism 59–60, 62, 63, 64, 74, 75, 79, 110; and providential Protestantism 126; and reproduction of nation 215–23; and science in Germany 107, 110, 121, 126; and science in France 106; soldiers as labour in Second World War 259; and state sovereignty 132–3; as trusteeship 108, 124, 216–7, 218, 233, 386, 396; see also raw materials; Africa colonies (post-1945): agrarian development doctrine 297, 301; anticolonialism 327, 328, 334, 337, 341, 346; cost/benefit argument 311, 312, 333, 353, 354; as creditors to Britain 289–90, 330; as currency zones 295–303; and development finance 324, 329, 332, 335–6, 344, 350; economic reform and empire 328–9, 334, 353; and European liberalization in 1950s 293, 303, 305,

Index 411 311, 312, 322, 323, 337, 338; and European integration 281–2, 284, 284, 286, 288, 292, 295, 300, 305; and French modernity in 1950s 292, 298, 300; legacies in Europe 382–3, 384, 393, 398; and London loan market 331–2, 344, 350; and social crisis in 1950s 330, 332, 333, 336, 337, 341, 346, 347; and statehood in Europe 348–53, 353–8; trade flows 281–2, 290, 293, 297, 299; see also sterling area; franc zone; escudo zone; names of individual countries colza (rapeseed) 171 Commonwealth Immigration Acts (1948, 1961) 340, 341 communications technology see telegraph Compagnie française pour le développement des fibres textiles 336, 346 Comptoir National d’Escompte de Paris 46, 67 Comte, Auguste (French philosopher) 79 Congo Free State: and international economic governance 81, 115–6, 228; and Italy 113; as palm oil producer 47, 80–1; as rubber producer 47, 49, 163 Congo (Belgian Congo) 284; and Nazi Germany 228; in Second World War 249, 251, 255, 260, 265, 268 Congo crisis (1960s): and modern statehood 356 consumption: austerity and substitute materials 161, 164, 169, 173, 174, 176, 177, 182; in colonies 121, 252, 260; and diet in Europe 47, 213–4; under-consumption in Europe 161 control in transnational relations 6–7, 9, 14, 19, 25, 375, 377, 382, 385–6, 389, 398; see also territory; labour copper 49, 116, 249, 251, 255 cosmopolitanism see sterling cosmopolitanism; multinationals Côte d’Ivoire: and French textiles 345–6; as nation-state and France 336, 341, 346–7; and raw cotton pre1914 114 cotton see raw cotton; textile industries in Europe cowrie 70, 103

Crédit Lyonnais 67 Crédit mobilier 67–8, 70 Cripps, Stafford (British politician) 297–8, 324, 344 crisis of economic liberalism (19th c) 126–31; and colonies pre-1914 10, 20, 67, 75; and colonies in 1920s-30s 153–4, 158, 177, 181, 184, 223–30; and expert views 55–66; financial crisis in 1890 44, 54–5; and state formation 101, 153–4, 234; see also economic globalization; economic liberalism Crispi, Francesco (Italian politician) 12, 112, 118, 119, 128, 135 cultural and economic history 132 currency: in colonies pre-1914 6, 14, 19–20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 102–5, 114, 124, 133; convertibility debate in 1950s 285, 286, 288, 289, 290, 299, 307; politics of currency areas 299–300, 345; and raw materials 160–75; devaluation 156, 159, 160, 285, 286, 292, 296, 333; reserves 156, 157, 158, 160, 162, 170, 171–5, 176, 184, 187, 208–10, 212–4, 226, 228; see also sterling; dollar (US); rupee; piaster; sterling area; franc zone; escudo zone Dalton, Hugh (British politician) 207 Danquah, J.B. (Ghanaian politician) 325 debt crises see sovereign debt de Gaulle, Charles (French politician) 292, 293, 326, 328, 335, 352, 356 Dernburg, Bernhard (German politician and banker) 19, 110, 111–2, 113, 120–5, 130–1, 134, 155, 156, 208, 229; on colonies and German economy 111–2, 121 de Sailly, Jean (French economist), on sterling area 299 deterritorialization see economic globalization; territory/ territorialization Deutsche Bank 61, 70, 109, 110, 120, 168, 379 developing economies post-1945: doctrines of 282, 290, 296, 297, 298, 300, 302; in 1960s, 1970s 382–7; in 1990s 385; in economics 302; and global Cold War 382; transnational

412

Index

framing of 387–92; and Western hegemony 299, 310, 376, 380, 382–7 development see economic development De Viti de Marco, Antonio (Italian economist) 61 diamonds 49, 81, 111–2, 123, 304, 326, 337 diet in Europe 47, 212–4; see also food Dilke, Charles 63, 64, 74; as viewed by Dernburg 121 Diskonto-Gesellschaft 70, 81 dollar (US) 159, 184, 282, 283, 285, 286, 289–90, 299–300, 305, 307, 309, 324–6, 330, 332, 335, 351, 352 Douglas, Hugh 181 Duke of Aosta 231 Dunlop firm, and Nazi Germany 256 Éboué, Félix (French colonial official) 260 economic complementarities: Europe and colonies post-1945 323–9; Europe and tropics pre-1914 45–55; France and empire 51, 114, 116, 121, 127–8, 134, 173, 178; Nazi Germany overseas 173, 182–3; in Second World War 247, 250–1, 268; see also sterling cosmopolitanism; sterling area; franc zone; escudo zone economic development: in Africa after empire 345–7; agrarian and industrial 20, 25, 179, 181, 210, 211, 212, 221; analysis of 5, 7; Britain as model 44, 55, 81; and colonial doctrine 64, 65, 82–3; and “constructive imperialism” 64, 82; crisis of one-world development 12, 14, 18; as crisis management 6, 10; doctrine vs policy 36, 79; doctrine and epistemology 153, 154, 169–71, 175, 177, 180, 188; Europe vs “nonWest” 8, 153, 182–7; in fascism 9, 207, 210, 213, 210, 232; German doctrine 61–2, 155–6, 176; Germany vs French mise-en-valeur 176; in Italy pre-1914 118; and modernity 4, 8, 12, 24, 25; national and imperial 182–7; national and world economy 6, 8–9, 10, 23, 208, 223–30; in Nazism 210–14, 216–7, 231; overseas support for Europe 5, 6, 19, 25, 58, 61, 100, 103, 108–17, 124, 127; and

peace 62, 228; racial construction of 129, 130–1, 133, 136; role of the state in 18, 23, 82, 117, 156, 169, 187–9, 209, 211–2, 213, 218, 227, 229, 231; and scientific innovation 175–7, 179; and state reform in 1920s 175–82; systems theory and organicism 179–81; and “the” people 20, 211–7; “trade and the flag” 207, 214; transnational post-1945 287–95; as universal 57–8, 62, 180; see also economic liberalism; economic globalization economic globalization: analysis of in 1990s 385–6, 396; and “backward” regions 132, 133; and China in 21st c 390–2; vs cosmopolitanism 99, 120; as crisis 14, 45–55, 375–7, 382, 385–7, 389, 395–8; and deterritorialization of state 351, 383, 386; as economic and financial integration 43, 376; expert views in 19th c 55, 59, 61, 62; and interconnectedness 17–8; and knowledge creation 99–100, 105–8; and modern statehood 101–8, 110; 1890s vs 1990s 385; and national economies 44–5, 51–2, 394–5; and nation-states pre-1914 12, 15, 43, 66–73, 100, 110, 127; and nationstates post-1945 348–58; and regional economies in Europe 5, 21, 43–4, 45–55; and shipping 69–70; see also crisis of economic liberalism; economic liberalism; colonies economic growth 110, 209–10, 283, 284, 285, 291, 293, 296, 300–1, 302, 304, 307, 309; labour-intensive vs capital-intensive 109, 120 economic liberalism: and colonies in 19th c 6, 18, 62–3, 65, 126–31, 162; culture critique of 4; and “developing world” post-1945 24, 25, 381–2, 383; and hegemony 9, 382–7, 397; as historical trajectory 14–15; “liberal imperialism” 63–5; and national economies 7, 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 162, 168, 181–2; and territory 225, 385–6, 388–9; theory and practice 9, 155, 175, 176, 178–9, 225; see also crisis of economic liberalism; economic liberalization (post-1945)

Index 413 economic liberalization (post-1945): and Britain 282, 288–9, 293, 298, 306–7, 309, 310; and empire 323–38; and France 286, 292, 305, 309, 310–1; and Portugal 282, 284, 287–8, 291, 293–5, 299–300, 303–4, 311, 312; and state governance 303–9; in Western Europe 383–7 Eden, Anthony (British politician) 223, 356 Edgeworth, Francis Ysidro (British economist) 60 Egypt: and raw cotton 50; and British debt management 54–5, 101; and Ethiopian central bank 105; and European banks 70; post-1945 285, 289, 325, 355, 356; and France 67, 121 Einaudi, Luigi (Italian politician) 25–6, 61, 71, 120 Elder Dempster (shipping firm) 69 Elf-ERAP firm (France) 335 emigration: and British empire 57; and class 57; from Germany 54, 57–8, 65, 206, 211, 217–8; from Italy 54, 61, 78, 219; and Polish Jews 221, 227; from Portugal 342; and reproduction of nation 218 entrepreneurship: and colonies 103, 213, 218; conception of German traders 62, 78, 112, 120, 122–3; and economy building in Europe 59, 61, 70–2; and French state 75, 79, 108, 114, 121, 134; German colonial enterprises in Second World War 265, 267; and piaster in Indochina 165; and regional-global relations 66–73; “Schumpeterian entrepreneur” 329, 354; and state 59, 106, 107, 112, 114, 133, 184; see also multinationals Erzberger, Matthias (German politician) 104, 124, 126, 130, 131 escudo zone 15, 21–2, 253, 282, 284, 293–5, 299, 301, 304, 311, 322, 326, 337–8, 348; and politics 299–300, 350–1; compared to franc zone 299–300 Ethiopia: central bank 105; and Fascist Italy 207, 213–4, 220, 226, 230–2, 259, 268; and Italy in 1890s 80, 112, 113, 119, 128; modernization of 80, 105

ethnicity: and French colonial empire 221, 340; and identity politics 127, 130, 211, 215, 217, 219, 221, 222, 341; and labour control 129, 131, 134, 186; see also race concept; nation-state Etienne, Eugène (French politician) 114, 127 European Development Fund 336 European Economic Community (EEC) 282, 283, 351; and food production 284, 291–2, 295; and franc zone 282, 284, 292, 345–6; Yaoundé (I) agreement 345–6 European Free Trade Area (EFTA) 283; and Britain 293; and Portugal 287, 295, 303, 337 European Payments Union (EPU) 287, 291, 300, 303 experts: and colonial empires 154–60; on colonial currency zones 295–303; on colonies in 1930s 206–11; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 224; and national economies 55–66; as national 205–6, 211; on population optimum 222, 340; on post-1945 economies 287–95; as practitioners 22–7, 59, 62, 55–66, 206–11, 295–303; on rational state in the world 5, 7, 11, 18, 22–7, 106, 175–82, 205, 232, 376–7, 385, 388, 396–8; “reading” of history 23; on regional growth in 1960s 287 Fabri, Friedrich (German lobbyist) 66, 75, 79, 122 fascism see Italy (under fascism) fats and oils (vegetable): and austerity 182, 208, 212; and China in 21st c 390; consumption in Europe 15, 16, 17, 47, 160, 170, 171, 387–8; and currency reserves 171–5; and foreign currency costs 173–4; France vs Nazi Germany 173–4, 229; and national economy building 208–9, 212–4; and Nazi Germany 170, 173–4; olive oil 171, 174; producers 48, 172; substitute materials 173, 176, 213; see also palm oil/kernels; groundnuts Ferreira Dias, J.M. (Portuguese engineer and official) 301–2 Ferry, Jules (French politician) 75, 127; on free trade and colonies 75; and

414

Index

J.S. Mill 77, 80; and Paul LeroyBeaulieu 65, 76 Filonardi Company (later Benadir Company) 80, 112 First World War: and Africa 110; colonial labour 186; and raw materials 162, 165, 173, 179; supply shortages 182; and war finance 156 Foccart, Jacques (French official) 346–7, 350 food: and globalization pre-1914 14, 15–6, 17, 20, 23, 45, 47–8, 50, 53, 56; in 1920s-30s 172, 173–4, 228, 231, 232; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 224; in Second World War 249, 250–1, 259, 262, 266; in 2000s 387, 389–90, 392; see also diet; fats and oils; palm oil/ kernels; meat; sugar food sovereignty: vs. food security 20, 23; in Nazi propaganda 174; supplies and nutrition 211–5 forced labour 130, 177, 186–7, 258, 261, 265, 303–4; see also coercion/ violence in colonies; labour forestry resources in Nazi Germany: as car fuel 264; in planning in Second World War 257, 262, 264–5 fossil fuels see coal; petroleum franc zone (post-1945): after empire in 1960s 335, 339, 345–6, 350; compared to sterling area, and escudo zone 299–300; and European integration 282, 335, 355; and French economic reform 21, 29, 30, 292–3, 295, 298–9, 300, 303, 310, 328, 356, 378, 384; and politics 300–1, 311, 328, 334; and raw materials discoveries 335; and state planning 311, 336, 349; and statistics 299; and textiles 300 France (19th c to 1939): chambers of commerce 76–77, 121; and China 116; and coal 169; and colonial labour 186; colonial mise-en-valeur 10, 19, 157, 161, 165, 169, 173, 176, 178, 185, 221–2, 229, 378, 392; colonial subjects vs citizens 221, 232; colonies and national economy 116, 134, 178; free trade empire 56; and Germany in 1930s 209, 219, 227; identity and colonial empire 134–5; immigration from colonies 221; imperial economy

in 1920s-30s 157, 158, 165, 167–8, 169, 173–4, 178, 185–6; Parti colonial 67, 128; petroleum policy 168; Popular Front and empire 153, 158, 185, 228–9, 232, 235; Popular Front and League of Nations enquiry 226, 227; private-public relations 79, 178; protectionism 65; regional bourgeoisies 121; Republican development 79–80, 221, 391–2; rubber management 165; rural France and empire 232; state and infrastructure 64; state and economic management 16, 19, 157–8, 178; textiles and colonial empire 55, 75, 76–7, 79, 121, 134; Vosges region 44, 50, 51, 52, 65, 75, 76, 77; and West African groundnuts 172 France (under Vichy government) 248, 250, 259; and Britain 255; and colonial POWs 262–3; and colonies 260, 263–4, 266; vs Nazi Germany in colonies 256–7 France (“Free France” in Second World War) 248, 250, 253, 255, 259, 260, 262, 263, 266 France (post-1945): and Algerian war 328, 343; and colonial industrialization 301; “Dutch complex” 327; economic liberalization 285, 286, 292, 305; economic reform and colonies 29, 30, 292–3, 295, 298–9, 300, 303, 310, 328, 353, 356; and European integration 282, 283; and gold, dollar 286; and immigration 340; post-empire boundaries 350–1, 353; textiles and Côte d’Ivoire 336, 346–7; views on modernity and empire 300, 326–9, 336, 350, 354 free trade see economic liberalism French Equatorial Africa, in Second World War 249, 250, 260, 262, 265 French Indochina see Indochina French Republicanism: and coercion in colonies 107; concept of overseas relations 79–80, 129–30; legacy of revolution 79, 128 French West Africa see under individual countries Gabon 255, 335 Gambetta, Léon (French politician) 79, 80, 128

Index 415 Gambia 325 geographical associations, and overseas economies 76, 79, 80, 106–8 German East Africa: currency policy 102–4; and German settlers 123; as raw cotton supplier 113, 123, 130 German East Africa Company (DOAG) 74, 75, 79, 103, 124, 130; legacy in Second World War 265 German Southwest Africa 110–1, 122–4, 128, 130–1; and German finance 111; and Herrero/Nama 111, 130–1 Germany (pre-1914): and beet sugar 48; and China 106, 116, 122; citizenship laws 129; colonial consumers 121; colonies and national economy 108–9, 110, 111, 124, 129; 1880s vs 1900s 119–20, 122; competition with Britain 109–10, 120; Deutschtum (German-ness) 123, 126, 215–8; economic consolidation 118, 119, 133–4; entrepreneurial spirit 120; financial sector 11, 61, 70, 109, 110, 111–2, 120, 122; free trade or protectionism 53, 62, 73–4, 79; global vs cosmopolitan Germany 109, 120; and Hamburg trade 52, 68, 69, 74–5, 78; Industriestaat 9, 12, 134, 389, 391; industry vs agrarian interests 119, 124, 125; lower middle class and colonies 122, 124; national economy and commerce 52, 73, 74; nationalism and liberalism 20, 66, 74, 79; notion of Volk 62, 123, 134; and Ottoman empire 110–1; and palm kernels 47, 69, 78; publicprivate relations 73, 78, 103, 106, 110–1; social imperialism 12; Social democrats on colonies 122; in South America 109, 120, 121, 124, 131; in Southwest Africa 111, 122–4, 128, 130; textile industry 112, 113, 121, 125, 130; Weltpolitik 65–6, 109, 124, 171, 177, 208, 214, 215, 217, 219, 229; and world economy 379, 389; Zollverein 73, 74 Germany (Weimar): and British economy 155; external economic policy 155–6; economic reform 175; and coal 169; and petroleum 168; and rubber 163; debt servicing 164 Germany (under Nazi rule): and

Afghanistan 176; and agrarian development 212, 218, 231; and Brazil 170–1, 176, 183; and British economy / sterling bloc 159, 225; and British colonial appeasement 205, 223, 226; and Cameroun 174, 187, 208–9, 225; and colonial doctrine 215–6, 218; colonial agrarian school 212; and colonial POWs 262; and colonial planning in Second World War 264–5; currency reserves 156, 160; entrepreneurial spirit 213; “fat gap” 170, 173–4, 249, 250–1, 264–5; and food sovereignty 206, 211–3, 233; “Greater” vs “global” Germany 216–7, 219; and hypothetical colonies 19, 20, 26, 153, 162, 185, 206, 216, 217; and Japan in Manchuria 170, 229 and China 170, 172–3; and labour in hypothetical colonies 187; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 226; and “living space” 209, 211, 215, 219; and minerals 165; Nazism vs capitalism 214, 217, 219, 229; Nazism and “Schachtianism” 159, 176, 180; notion of Volk 177, 183, 212, 214, 216–7, 218–9; notion of world order 214–6; raw materials from Eastern Europe 249, 257, 263, 265, 268; raw materials and population growth 27, 212; reproduction of state 215–6, 233; and rubber 164, 170–1, 176–7, 187, 250, 255, 257, 264–5; vs Salazar Portugal 228; and slave labour 258, 261, 265; and South Africa 169, 170–1, 183; war finance 257; welfare and autarky 156, 176, 212–3, 217; and whale oil 174 Germany (Federal Republic): and immigration 340; and French agriculture 291–2; and Portugal 294–5; “regional export integration” 285, 291 Gerschenkron, Alexander (economist) 52 Ghana see Gold Coast/Ghana Gide, André (French novelist) 185 Giffen, Robert (British economist) 58, 61, 63, 82, 105 Gini, Corrado (Italian demographer and statistician): on colonies 206–8;

416

Index

on emigration and viable empires 353; on India and Italy 222; on Italian economy 156–7, 160; and League of Nations 155, 160–1, 226; on liberalism 155; on optimum population 161, 222, 340; organicism 161, 175, 179–81; on science and fascism 20, 179, 181; on war and empire 207, 229–30 Giolitti, Giovanni (Italian politician) 113, 119 global/international governance: after empire 344, 350, 351, 352; and Berlin Congo conference 80–1; and British state 99, 115, 136, 223, 380; and development doctrine 284, 296, 298, 302; and “globalizing nation-states” 392–8; and knowledge creation 282, 284; and liquidity in 1930s 158–9, 162; and modernization theory 300; and nation-states 10–11, 23, 44, 82, 283, 284, 309, 386, 392, 396; and transnational norms 210, 235; and United States 386 global state concept see state globalization see economic globalization “globalizing nation-state” 348–58 Godeffroy & Sohn (German shipping firm) 68, 70, 78 Göring, Hermann (Nazi politician) 176, 209, 218, 264–5 Gold Coast/Ghana 104, 107, 114, 228, 250, 251, 253, 331, 334; and sterling area 289, 308, 333 gold standard 48–9, 63, 102–4; gold exchange standard 184 Gramsci, Antonio (Italian philosopher) 119, 181 groundnuts 47, 49, 72, 76, 172, 174, 250 Guernut, Henri (French official) 158; Guernut commission 185–6, 221, 228 Hamburg: and currency in East Africa 104; and Eastern Europe in Second World War 265; and fats and oils 51, 68; and German national economy 52, 74–5, 120, 136; and global commerce 69–70; and Godeffroy rescue 78–9; and Nazi colonial exhibition 213, 216, 219; and West Africa 78

Hansing & Co (German shipping firm) 70 Harms, Bernhard 216 Hauser, Henri (French economist) 109 Hayek, Friedrich (economist) 10, 153, 284, 357, 385, 397 Helfferich, Karl (German politician and academic): vs agrarians 120; on British liberalism 61, 109–10, 134; as civil servant 106; on colonies 66; and currency in East Africa 102–4, 124; on economic competition 111, 120; on economic growth 109; on German entrepreneurship 62; on money 103; and national-liberalism 23, 63, 64, 134, 155, 208, 233; and Schacht 156, 176, 177; and state governance 19, 23, 62, 177 Herero and Nama 216 Hewins, W.A.S. 65 Hilferding, Richard 109 historicizing economic agency 3–7, 187–9, 375–82 Hitler, Adolf 209, 215, 218–9; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 226 Hoare, Samuel (British politician) 223, 228 Hobbes, Thomas (English philosopher) 3, 9, 17; Leviathan 397–8 Hoffherr, René (French colonial official): on chartered companies in 1930s 162, 178; on colonial labour 187, 351; on colonial industrialization post-1945 301; on contradictions in mise-en-valeur 173, 184–5; on French imperial economy in 1930s 158, 160, 162, 173–4, 178; and Guernut commission 158; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 227; on Nazi Germany and Japan 229 Hongkong and Shanghai Bank 46, 68 Houphouët Boigny, Félix (Côte d’Ivoire politician) 346–7 identity politics: and British empire 125, 222, 235, 341, 344–5, 397; and diet in 1930s 212–4; in fascist Italy 214–5, 219; in French empire 80, 221, 327, 339, 340, 343; in Germany pre-1914 123, 126; and migration

Index 417 125, 126, 227; in Nazi Germany 215–8; in Poland 221; in Portuguese empire 228 IG Farben 177, 250, 264 immigration from former colonies: and ethnicity/“race” 221, 340–1; and post-empire 323, 339–41 imperial economies: contradictions within 173, 178; creditor relations and Britain 289–90; and Europe post-1945 298–9, 338–48; and European nation-states pre-1914 125–6, 135; and labour in 1930s 174, 185–7; Portugal in 1960s 294, 303; viability in 1950s 293 imperial nation-state: in 1900s 131–7, 394; critique of in Europe 384, 395–6; normalization in 1930s 206, 230–6; vs state model pre-1914 234; variants of model 234–5; in world wars 247, 248, 262, 263, 266, 267–9 India: banking and trade 71; and British monetary management pre1914 102–4, 159, 184; British doctrine after 1857 107, 127; and British civil service 106–7; and British economy in 1920s-30s 179, 184, 230, 233; and British war finance 252, 254, 267–8; and British immigration in 1960s 340; and Colombo Plan 288, 306, 307–8; and Fascist Italy 222; Gujarati Bania 71; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 224; and Nazi Germany 217, 222; sterling balances 252, 254, 288–9, 306; textiles and Europe 113; and UNCTAD 383; see also rupee Indochina: as coal producer 169; and France post-1945 326, 328, 334, 339, 356; and French textiles 16, 51, 77, 79; and French regions 121; in imperial economy 173; piaster 102, 165; as rubber producer 165, 249–50, 256–7, 267; Tonkin 67, 75–6, 80, 121 industry in Europe: vs agrarian society 12, 15, 19, 62, 63, 177, 210, 212, 217, 219–20; and agrarian economies post-1945 21–2, 283–4; see also textile industries; and bourgeoisie 60, 62, 64, 66, 77; and economic growth 51–2; German Industriestaat 62, 177, 208; and raw materials in 1930s 209–11, 227, 233;

as stage of development 56; and under-consumption 161; see also textile industries International Bank for Reconstruction and Development see World Bank international governance see global/ international governance International Labour Office 185, 186, 227, 260, 303–4 International Monetary Fund 283, 296, 308, 351, 383–4, 387, 392 Iran (Persia) 166, 167, 168, 183 Iraq (Mesopotamia) 166, 167, 168 Italy (pre-1914): and cotton textiles 112–3; economic integration 52, 77, 118; and emigration 54, 61, 78; empire and national cohesion 113, 128; and Ethiopia 112; latifundisti 78, 128, 135; and Libya 119; and overseas economies 15, 25, 128, 380–1; regions and national economy 52, 60, 72, 106, 118, 128; social relations and empire 20, 77, 78, 119; Somalia and textiles 51, 80, 113; state characteristics 77, 380–1; trasformismo 113, 118, 119; see also Lombardy; Liguria Italy (under fascism): and agrarian development 219, 220; businesses and colonies 231; class and empire 232; and coal 169; colonial soldiers 258–9; and colonial labour 187; concept of empire 219, 220–1, 234; development vs performance 156–7, 160, 180; as developmentalist” 9, 188; economic rationality 175, 179, 180; and emigration 340; empire in the Balkans 268; in Ethiopia 188–9, 207, 213, 220, 231–2; fascist communitarianism 179–81; food policy 214, 231, 232; and international sanctions 214, 220, 232; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 226; and liberalism 222, 226; as non-West” 222; notion of world order 175, 180, 207, 214, 220, 222, 229, 234; and olive oil 173; as organic hegemon 179–80; and petroleum 168; and population science 219; raw materials debate in 1920s 160–1, 173; and rubber 163; settlers in colonies 220; state reproduction 20, 181, 220–1, 231;

418

Index

war and empire 207, 220, 229–30, 232; and war finance 258 Ivory Coast see Côte d’Ivoire Jantzen & Thormählen (shipping firm) 68, 71 Japan 6, 105, 121, 124, 163, 173, 176, 249, 261, 285; and Colombo Plan 308; economic relations in 1930s 159; and France in Indochina 250, 257; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 224, 226; and raw materials for Nazi Germany 170, 184, 229, 257 Jews: in Nazi Germany 183; in Poland in 1930s 221, 227 joint-stock banks 52, 53, 67, 69–70; compared to states 59 Junker class 62, 66, 118; and German economy 129; and “Polish question” 131 Kant, Immanuel (philosopher) 62 Kenya 325, 330, 333–4, 391; and Britain in 1960s 343–4, 345, 347; Mau Mau 343 Keynes, J.M.: vs Amery on British war finance 254–5, 256; bancor proposal 162; on French economic policy 157; Keynesianism 351, 357; on population optimum 222, 340; on South Africa in Second World War 266 Kidd, Benjamin 126 Kipling, Rudyard 127 knowledge: 19th c compared to 21st c 100, 105, 387–8, 392; botany and empire 107, 125, 394; and British “civilizing mission” 126, 127, 130; and France 44, 106; China in 21st c 392; economic periodicals 105–6; and Germany 108, 121, 175–7, 207, 213, 216, 212, 218, 221, 230; and multinational firms 388–90; state and raw materials 107, 387–92 Koestner, Nicolai (Bank of Egypt) 325 Korean War: commodity boom 324, 325 Krasner, Stephen (US political scientist) 386 Krupp firm 165, 264 labour: and British colonial agriculture 125, 130; colonial seamen 129, 131;

as colonial community service 260; in colonies and German textiles 113; in colonies and Nazi slave labour 185–6, 261, 265; in colonies in Second World War 258–62, 264, 269; and ethnicity/“race” 131, 186; and German national economy 108–9; and immigration in Britain after empire 329, 340–1; in imperial economies in 1920s-30s 186–7; and nation-states post-1945 342, 351–2, 353; and Nazi planning for colonies 261; and “Polish question” in Germany 128–9, 131; in postcolonies 341, 346; surplus in Germany and France 57, 75, 130; surplus in French colonies 186, 187; see also coercion/violence in colonies Lancashire see textile industries landed aristocracy 117–9, 135; reproduction of 53, 107, 134 League of Nations 155, 215, 325; and colonial raw materials 160–1, 223–30; on substitute materials 177; universal norms 211 League of Nations raw materials enquiry (1936/37) 206, 223–30; and currency question 209, 224; terms of reference and report 224 Lebanese: and French colonial empire 134–5 Leduc, Gaston (French economist) 353 Leith-Ross, Frederick (British official) 23; on Belgium and economic liberalism 228; on colonies vs Amery 254; and economic liberalism 155, 181, 233; and Egypt 325; on imperial preference 181, 224; at League of Nations raw materials enquiry 223–8; on Nazi Germany and South Africa 170–1; and Schacht 155, 208; on substitute materials 177 Leroy-Beaulieu, Paul (French economist) 15, 56, 106, 389; on economic progress and colonies 57, 59, 61, 127, 162, 385; on overseas investment 58, 351, 384; on Say’s Law 58, 60; on agrarian crisis 56; bourgeoisie vs aristocracy 63, 64; on colonial war and liberalism 60, 127, 130; on Congo Free State 81; on state as developer 59, 64; on French state 65, 67, 106; and Ferry 65, 80,

Index 419 127; and J.S. Mill 59, 63; and Roscher 57; and Spencer 63; and Torrens 76 Lessona, Alessandro 220–1, 231–2 Lever, William 69, 115 Lévy-Bruhl, Lucien (French sociologist) 185, 222 Lewis, William Arthur (development economist) 302, 354 liberalism see economic liberalism Liberia 164, 255–6, 390 Libya 113, 119 Lille 76, 79, 121 Liguria 51, 52, 69, 118 List, Friedrich (German economist) 19, 57, 62, 118, 177; and Italy 118; Nationalkörper 73; Weltaufgabe 65, 79; Zollverein 73 Liverpool: and cotton trade 50; and trade in oils and fats 68–9, 71 Lombardy 5–6; and Argentina 61, 120; and colonies 108, 112–3; economic development 77; and Italian nationstate 77–8; and overseas economies 67, 77, 379, 381; and Somalia 113; textile industry 61, 100 London financial centre 43, 50, 120, 282, 297; and Argentine debt crisis 55; colonial development finance in 1950s 298, 306, 331–2, 349; see also sterling cosmopolitanism; sterling area; sterling balances Lothian, Lord (British politician) 178, 209 Lugard, Frederick (British colonial official) 218, 235 Luzzatti, Luigi (Italian politician and economist) 65, 168 Lyon 50, 67, 75, 121 Mackinder, Halford (British politician and academic) 65, 126 Mackinnon, William (Scottish shipping entrepreneur) 114 Mackinnon (shipping company) 69–70 Macmillan, Harold (British politician) 286, 293, 308, 330, 333, 335, 34, 352, 356 Maji Maji rebellion 104, 113, 124, 130, 216 Malaya / Malaysia: and Britain after 1945 308, 325, 330–3; economy in 1950s-60s 284; as palm oil producer

172; rubber and British state 163, 184; rubber exports to Germany 164; in Second World War 249, 251; and sterling area 285, 289–91; as tin producer 183 Malthusianism 207, 215, 218 Manchuria (under Japanese occupation) 170, 192, 173, 229 manganese 165, 170, 251, 255, 335 Marseille 51, 68, 114, 121 Marshall, Alfred (economist) 60 Maudling, Reginald (British official) 293 Maurette, Fernand (French academic) 164, 227 meat 47–8, 212, 213 Meillassoux, Claude (French sociologist) 329, 357 Meinhof, Karl (German ethnographer and missionary) 108 memory politics see identity politics Messageries maritimes (shipping company) 69 Middle East: in French imperial doctrine 134; as petroleum producer 166; and sterling balances 282, 291, 308–9 migration see emigration; immigration Milan 52, 53, 65, 77, 80, 112; see also Lombardy Mill, J.S. (English philosopher and politician): 3, 15; on colonies 63–4, 77, 80, 82, 127, 162, 384–5; on state in economy 59, 80 minerals: and Britain 48–9, 82, 110; and Germany in 1930s 165; post1945 284; in Second World War 248–51, 255, 260, 264; as stage of development 43, 56; see also under names of minerals Młynarski, Feliks (Polish economist and official) 154, 155, 157, 160, 162, 209, 233; on colonies 206, 209 modernity (assumptions about): and “backward” colonies 8, 24, 25; and agrarian crisis 53, 56; and agrarian development 126, 212; in British imperial union 65; and civilization 56, 62, 212, 218, 221, 222; colonies in British propaganda post-1945 344; in economic liberalism 100, 118, 216, 376; vs empire 326, 328–9, 339, 341, 342, 343, 353; in fascism 179; in

420

Index

French Republic 58–9, 67, 80; and imperial statehood 8, 377, 385; List and Germany 65; modernization theory 175, 177, 178–9, 180, 189, 300; and nation-state concept 5, 6, 7, 9, 12–3, 18, 24; in Portuguese empire-state 337–8, 341–2, 348; and state model 8, 24, 100–1, 107, 110, 112, 125, 131–7, 175–6, 232–4, 326, 375, 393, 394–6; West and the rest” 3–4, 8, 23, 24; see also atavism; Schumpeter, Joseph Anton (economist); industry in Europe Mollet, Guy (French politician) 292 Morocco 165, 169; in French empire 158, 173, 178 Mortara, Giorgio (Italian demographer) 154, 156 Mosul: petroleum 167, 168 Moussa, Pierre (French official) 295, 300; on colonies 328, 335; on “Dutch complex” 327; on franc zone 303, 328, 334–5, 350, 356; on modern development 300–1, 311, 327, 329, 335, 354 Mozambique 186–7, 294, 304, 338, 341 Mukerjee, Radhakamal (Indian demographer) 222 multinational companies: and China in 21st c 390; and intellectual property 388; in Portuguese colonies in 1960s 338, 342, 347, 348, 349; and state 383; in 1960s 282, 291, 349–50; see also Anglo-International banks Mussolini, Benito (Italian fascist dictator) 219, 222, 226, 229, 231, 232 natalism see population debate national economies (in Europe): and Britain 20, 99, 380, 397; building of in 19th c 52, 65, 72, 74, 79, 100, 103, 136; and class in Germany 134; and dependent territory 6, 10, 14, 15, 19–20, 26, 99, 101, 108, 109, 110, 115, 121, 124, 126, 127, 377; and European integration 282, 283, 291–2, 293, 295, 305; vs imperial economies 284, 287, 293, 323–9; and international governance 99, 115, 136; and liberalism 153, 154, 155, 156, 159, 162, 168, 181–2; and overseas raw materials 160–75; post1945 287–95, 281, 282, 283, 284, 288,

290, 291, 302, 309–12; and regions in Europe 7, 14–15; and statistics 105, 336; structural differences of 155, 157, 187; territorialization of 13, 18, 99, 115, 120, 128; in world economy 20, 82, 106, 111, 113, 121, 127, 132, 135–6, 155–8, 309–12 national-liberalism (Germany): in 1900s 120; and Nazism 213, 214, 218; vs Nazism 214, 218; and colonies 212, 216, 226 nation-state (as developmental entity in Europe): and “developing world” 323, 334, 342, 344, 349, 354; and “the” people 100, 127, 129, 130, 131, 206, 211–5, 219, 221, 233; after empire 348–53; in Britain 67–8, 99, 126; and colonial investment 58, 63; and colonies 126–31, 206, 211, 232–3; concept of 12–3, 106, 108; and cosmopolitan finance 51, 52, 63–4; domestic / external dichotomy 14, 132, 376, 395–6; as empire 99, 100, 105, 112, 126–31; and European integration 281, 284, 312; and globalization 3, 5, 7, 12, 15, 377, 385–6, 394, 396; in historical sociology 4, 9; in 19th c world economy 58, 61, 63–4; in Italy 52, 119; “Milward thesis” on European integration 21, 283; and national traders overseas 74–5; past and present 392–8; reproduction of 126–31, 215–23, 230–6, 353–8; vs transnational norms 211; welfare and overseas relations 211–5, 338–45; see also state; “globalizing nation-state”; imperial nation-state; identity politics; international/global governance Nattukottai Chettiar banks 71 Naumann, Friedrich (German politician) 110, 123, 177, 209, 216 Nazi Germany see Germany (under Nazi rule) Negri, Cristoforo 80, 107 Netherlands 5, 291 New Guinea 68 Nietzsche, Friedrich (German philosopher) 3 Nigeria 183, 228, 265, 266, 332; and raw cotton 114, 250; and tin and palm oil in Second World War 251

Index 421 Nkrumah, Kwame (Ghanaian politician) 325 Nyerere, Julius (Tanzanian politician) 343 Norman, Montagu (Bank of England) 155, 159, 225 O’Brien, Leslie (Bank of England) 326 O’swald & Co (German shipping firm) 70 oil see petroleum olive oil 47, 171, 174 Oliveira, José Carreia da (Portuguese politician) 337–8 organicism 20, 179–81, 222–4; see also Gini organization of the book 27–9 Orientalism 3, 8, 126 Ottawa agreements 158, 181, 184 Ottoman empire 53, 54, 67, 80, 100, 111 overpopulation: see population debate overseas, usage of term 27 Overseas Development Institute (Britain) 343, 344 Overseas Food Corporation (Britain) 334 overseas investment: and 19th c cosmopolitanism 50–1, 101; Baring crisis 54–5, 101; and British colonies 115, 298, 306, 330, 331, 332; in China 116; Colonial Stock Act 82, 115; as drain on national wealth 58, 327; in franc zone 301, 327, 335–6, 346; and German colonies 111–2; Germany and Ottoman empire 111; Italian in Africa 113, 119; in Portuguese empire post-1945 282, 295, 304, 311, 337–8, 347; as support for national wealth 53, 58 Owen, David (British and United Nations official) 344 Pakistan: and British immigration after empire 340; see also India palm oil/kernels 20, 48, 47–9, 68, 171–2, 174, 208–9, 387; German preferences 47, 69; import regulation in France 183; sources of supply 172; in West African trade 69, 71 Pantaleoni, Maffeo (Italian economist) 60–1, 105 Pareto, Vilfredo (Italian economist) 12,

15, 25, 109, 122, 119, 175, 179, 384; on circulation of elites 60; on irrational state 60; and political networks 65; on protectionism vs free trade 60; and Spencer 63; on war and liberalism 61, 65; on welfare conditions 60 Paribas (bank) 67, 68 Parti colonial 65, 128 peace: and economic liberalism 60, 61, 62, 64, 112, 117, 155; and colonies 207, 223, 228, 229 Peninsular & Oriental Steamship Navigation Company 69 Pereire (bank) 67 periodization 6, 28; Anglo-German relations in 1930s 225–6; 19th c and post-1945 liberalism 281–2, 288, 310, 311; 1960s and 1970s 381–3; 1890s vs 1990s 385; 2000s and 2010s 396; discontinuities in France post-1945 305; economic spaces in 1950s-60s 283–7, 309–12; Europe in world economy 6, 28, 153, 309–12; Germany pre-1914 and 1930s 264–5; historical trajectories 14–22, 375–82; late 19th c public-private relations 45, 82–3; state model 28, 394–7 Perrot, Bernhard (German colonial planter) 124–5 Peters, Carl (German colonial lobbyist) 66, 75, 79, 122 petroleum 165–9, 335, 337, 349 Pirelli firm 112 Poland 6, 205, 209, 287, 381; Polish views in Reichstag 74; coal policy 169; and colonies 221; foreign currency reserves 160, 209; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 226–7; as petrol producer 167; as quasi-colony 128–9, 131, 265; and raw materials cost 157, 161, 209; and rubber in Second World War 250; timber for Nazi Germany 257, 265 Polanyi, Karl (economist) 180 population debate (in Europe): among experts 54, 57–8, 75, 76, 161, 215, 218, 227, 229; and colonies in 1920s30s 211–2, 214, 216, 218, 220, 235; and end of empire 354; in fascist Italy 207, 219–20, 222, 229; in France 54; in Nazi Germany 218–9;

422

Index

on optimum 222, 340; in Poland 157, 221 Por, Odon [Pór, Ödön] (fascist lobbyist) 180–1 Portugal: agrarian vs industrial development 301–2; and Canary Islands in Second World War 256; and colonial labour 186–7, 234; colonies and gold reserves 187; and colonies post-1945 21–2, 293–4, 297, 304, 311, 322, 326, 329, 337–8, 339, 341, 347, 348; Economic Space in 1960s 293, 294, 303–4, 310, 311, 337–8; and EFTA 283, 287, 297, 303, 337; emigration in 1960s 342; external economic relations in 1920s30s 158, 169, 181, 183, 210; imperial identity in 1930s 230–1, 233, 235; imperial organization in 1960s 287, 301, 303–4, 337, 381; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 227–8; and multinationals in 1960s 336–7, 342, 349, 356; payments settlement 294, 338, 342; privatepublic relations 282, 291, 301; in Second World War 248, 250, 251, 253, 255, 256, 266, 268; state characteristics in 1960s 301, 311, 329, 341, 345, 347–8, 350–1; sterling balances 252, 256; and technology 301–2; see also escudo zone; Angola; Mozambique Powell, Enoch (British politician) 341 private-public relations: and colonial state in Malaya 184; and Europe’s overseas relations 73–83, 322, 335, 338, 342, 347, 349, 358; and national economy building pre-1914 45, 73–83, 162, 178; see also nationstate; state; entrepreneurship progress see modernity propaganda 206, 211–4, 218–9, 226, 248, 257, 263, 265, 268, 344 protectionism 53–4, 56, 59–60, 62, 63, 64, 65, 73–5, 77–9, 101, 110, 119, 136, 181, 224, 225, 227, 228, 233–5 Prussia see Germany quasi-states see colonies race concept: in 1880s Germany 66, 75; in British imperial-colonial doctrine 126, 127, 130, 133, 235, 343; and

colonial labour 258, 259, 261, 265; in European armies 259; Hola camp 343; and immigration post-1945 221, 340–1, 343; in Nazism/fascism 216–8, 219, 268; racialization of economies 25, 100, 125, 126, 127, 129, 130–3, 136 railways 45, 51, 54, 64, 67, 71, 72, 80, 81, 103, 105, 110–1, 113, 116, 120 rational governance: and economic performance 327, 356; and Italian fascism 179; and liberalization post1945 296, 302, 308, 358; vs “nonWest” 153, 182–7; and states 3, 5, 13, 15, 19, 24, 99–100, 101, 103, 107, 122, 124, 130, 175–82, 330, 353, 357 raw cotton 48–50, 67–8, 71, 76, 110, 113, 114, 121, 123, 130, 169, 170, 186, 210, 224, 231, 250, 253, 255, 265 raw materials: access to 129, 132, 160, 207, 210, 224, 227; and colonies / tropics 45–55, 110, 206–11; and communitarian fascism 180–1; and credits 157, 162, 209, 221; and currency reserves in 1920s-30s 160–71, 208, 210, 214; and economic policy in 1930s 206–11; in First World War 162, 165, 173, 182; and “globalizing nation-state” 387–92; in imperial economies 182–7; and knowledge creation 107, 121, 388; and labour coercion 115–6, 165, 186; and multinationals 384, 388–9; and national economies in Europe 5, 25, 160–71, 206–11, 328, 349, 376, 389, 395; nodes in resource globalization 66; and plunder by Nazi Germany 183, 253; and private-public relations in 1930s 227, 232, 234; producer cartels 161, 163, 184; as public good 180, 184; in Second World War 247, 248, 253–8; and shipping 51, 61, 67–9; state monopolies 160, 168, 169, 183; substitutes for 161, 164, 169, 173, 174–7, 182, 213, 229; underconsumption debate 161; world price 112, 113, 158, 163, 176; see also under individual materials (fats, palm oil, minerals, coal, petroleum, raw cotton, rubber, soya, and wheat); League of Nations raw materials enquiry

Index 423 regional economies in Europe: and entrepreneurship 66–73; and late 19th c globalization 5, 15–16, 21, 44–5, 66–73; and national economies 7, 14–15, 44–5, 52, 67, 287, 282, 283, 324, 327, 375, 394 Renan, Ernest (French academic) 116 Renault firm 328, 341 Republicanism see French Republicanism research paradigms 7–14 Reynaud, Paul (French official) 335 Rhodesia/Zimbabwe /Zambia: after 1945 325, 342, 355; in 2000s 391; and copper pre-1914 49; Northern Rhodesia in Second World War 251, 261–2; and raw cotton pre-1914 114; Southern Rhodesia in Second World War 251, 259 Ricardo, David (British economist) 60, 62 Ritter, Karl (Nazi official) 171 Ritter von Epp, Franz (Nazi politician) 216, 265 Robbins, Lionel (British economist) 10 Rohrbach, Paul (German lobbyist) 122–4, 126, 128, 134, 216 Roman empire 11; and Italian fascism 207 Romania 166, 167, 168, 172, 183, 257 Roscher, Wilhelm (German economist) 19, 56–9, 61, 64, 65, 66, 74, 75, 120, 121, 123 Rose, Adam (Polish politician and academic) 154, 157, 160, 161, 226–7 Rouen 121 Rowan, Leslie (British official) 295, 297, 303, 305–10, 330, 344 Rubattino (shipping firm) 69–70, 77 rubber: in Cameroun 174, 208–9; and economies in Europe 5, 17, 19, 47, 49, 77, 107, 110, 112, 114, 161, 165, 170–1, 208–9; in Indochina 165, 210, 328; and knowledge creation 107; in Malaya 164, 325, 333; and Nazi Germany 164, 170–1, 176–7, 187; plantation vs wild production 163–4; in Second World War 248, 249–50, 255–7, 260, 262, 264–5; and sterling 289; Stevenson scheme 161, 163; synthetic 176–7, 250, 284; uses of 162; world price 163, 176; world regions of production 163

Rueff, Jacques (French official) 292, 335, 356 rupee: British East Africa Company rupee 114; German company rupee 103, 124; German East African rupee 103–4; Indian 102–3, 127 rurality see agrarian development Russia/Soviet Union 6, 7, 166–7, 168, 169, 249, 257, 265 Said, Edward 3–4 Saint-Simonianism 64, 67, 80, 177, 180 Salazar, António (Portuguese dictator) 154, 158, 181, 186, 255–6, 287, 301, 303 Samoa 68, 74, 78, 217 Sarraut, Albert (French politician) 154, 155, 157–8, 173, 187; and colonial mise-en-valeur 160, 161, 174, 178, 185, 221, 229; and Italy 160; on Greater France 169 Say, Jean-Baptiste (French economist) 24; Say’s Law 58, 60, 76 Schacht, Hjalmar (German politician) 23, 154, 206; and Anglo-German relations 155, 225; on colonies 121, 174, 208, 209, 216, 227, 234, 250, 257, 261, 265; on Angola 227; on autarky 212–3, 230; on Eastern Europe 209; and Japan 229; and League of Nations raw materials enquiry 226–7; “Schachtianism” 159, 176, 180, 228, 229, 325; in 1950s 325, 352 Schmoller, Gustav (German academic) 74 Schnee, Heinrich (German official) 212, 217, 218 Schumpeter, Joseph Anton (economist) 12, 153, 180, 353, 357, 358, 398; on imperialisms 4, 9, 12, 13, 355–6; “Schumpeterian entrepreneur” 329, 354, 356 Scialoja, Vittorio (Italian politician) 161 science see knowledge Second World War: finance and colonial materials 248, 251–3, 255, 256, 257; visions of postwar development 263–7; war economies and empire 249–53; see also sterling balances Seeley, John (English historian) 63, 64

424

Index

Senghor, Léopold Sédar (Senegalese politician) 327 shipping entrepreneurship 51, 68–70, 77, 80, 82, 111, 124, 129, 132; see also Hamburg, Liguria, Liverpool, Marseille, and under names of shipping firms silver standard 48, 102–3, 165 Singapore 56, 165 Somalia 51, 80, 113, 226 South Africa: and British national economy 114, 115, 159; and British war finance 248, 253–4; J.M. Keynes on 266; and Nazi Germany 170–1, 183; and Portuguese empire 187, 256 South America 17, 109, 120, 121, 124, 133, 166, 170, 171, 174, 387, 390–1; see also Argentina; Brazil sovereign debt: management of 54–5, 70, 82, 101, 111, 115, 117, 136 soya 170, 173, 229, 387, 390; uses of 172 Spain 5; Canary Islands in Second World War 256 Spencer, Herbert (English philosopher) 63, 385 state (as functional entity): in 21st c 396–8; before / after Second World War 267–9; cases in book 16–22; and coercion 182, 377, 393, 395; and cost / benefit of empire 326, 330, 353; domestic/external dichotomy 4, 14, 132, 376, 395–6; and end of empire 348–53; and external shocks post2008/post-2020 396–7; French economic bureaucracy 175, 298–10, 323; global reproduction of 8–9, 13, 14–22, 131–7, 230–6, 353–8, 392–8; global state concept 10–11, 393–4; in Italian fascism 179, 219–20, 231–2; and knowledge creation 10, 100, 105–7, 110, 387–8; and liberalization post-1945 303–9; as manager of national economies 21–2, 24, 60, 62–3, 78, 79, 99, 153, 179, 162, 164, 165, 169–70, 175, 178, 187–9, 298–10, 308, 323–9, 353–8; and mass societies 4, 7, 8, 12–13, 15, 23; models of 5, 8, 13, 102–8, 126, 132, 136–7, 230–6, 267, 268, 353–8, 375–82, 392–8; and multinationals 322, 325, 338, 347, 248, 389–90; and overseas economies 15–6, 19, 63, 78, 82, 108–17, 223–30; periodization and types of 394–7; and

population debate 207, 219–20, 222, 229; Portuguese bureaucracy 301, 304; public-private nexus 15–16, 21, 25, 45, 59, 61, 73–83, 106, 111, 114–5, 162, 175, 178, 394; as rational / scientific 66, 99–101, 103, 107, 120–2, 125, 130, 153–4, 157, 175–82, 378–9, 357; research paradigms 7–14; as social trustee 64, 79; territorialization/ deterritorialization of 18, 99, 101, 115, 120, 123, 206–7, 230, 233, 351, 355–6, 385, 389; as tool of development 78, 82, 109, 132–3; transnational state concept 393–4; see also nation-state; imperial nation-state; experts; under names of countries sterling area: and 1947 convertibility crisis 285, 288, 289, 307, 324; in 195060s 282–3, 285, 286, 290, 293, 298, 306–10; coherence of 299, 306, 310, 330–1; crisis after 1967 286; doctrine 290, 297; currency reserves 285, 286, 290, 299, 307, 333; and dollar area 324, 332; Kuwait/Hong Kong “gap” 290 sterling balances: and Basle agreement 286; and colonies in 1950s 289–90, 308, 330, 339; and India 252, 254–5, 288–9, 306, 339; Keynes vs Amery 254; and Korean War 285; and London money market 298, 306; and Malaya/ Malaysia 330–1, 333; and Middle East 282, 291, 308–9; periodization of 288–90; regional distribution 289, 291; as risk for British economy 285, 286, 288, 290, 306–7, 310; in Second World War 252–3, 256 sterling cosmopolitanism 290, 293, 295, 296, 297, 305–6, 379; see also economic liberalism substitute materials see Buna (German synthetic rubber); consumption; rubber Sudan 355; see also Egypt Suez Canal Company 81, 162 Suez crisis 330, 333, 356; as sterling crisis 285–6, 288, 290, 307, 308 sugar 47, 48, 49, 50, 66, 67, 76, 118; as fat substitute 213 Swiss franc in Second World War 256 Tanzania/Tanganyika 228, 324, 330, 334, 339, 343 telegraph 43, 45–6, 77

Index 425 territory/territorialization: and 1990s globalization/deterritorialization 385, 388–9; after empire 348–53; and economic liberalism 21, 383, 385–6; and economy building 13, 15, 18, 21, 100, 119, 128, 136, 206–7, 230, 233, 281, 305; and hierarchies of money 13, 101–2; and sovereignty 132–3, 208; see also colonies; autarky policies textile industries in Europe: in Britain and France 43–4, 52, 72, 121; Britain and India 50; and colonies 6, 16, 17, 50–2, 61, 65, 67, 75–6, 77, 79, 108, 112–4, 130, 338, 350; France and Indochina 50–1, 75–6, 120; in Lombardy 52, 67, 77, 100, 108, 120 timber see forestry resources tin 168, 183, 184, 249, 251 Tinbergen, Jan (economist) 327, 354 Tittoni, Romolo (Italian politician) 119 Tittoni, Tommaso (Italian politician) 113, 160 tobacco 325, 338 Touzet, André (French official) 185, 228–9 transnational state concept see state transport see shipping, and railways Treitschke, Gustav (German historian) 74 Trotha, Lothar von (German general) 130 Turkey see Ottoman empire United States 6, 7, 9, 24; in 1920s-30s 158, 159, 161, 164, 165, 166, 167, 167, 173, 176, 179; post-1945 281, 283, 285, 286, 291, 294, 295, 298, 308, 324, 342, 376, 381, 384, 385; post-1990s 386, 390, 392, 397 Vansittart, Robert (British official) 225 Vichy France see France (under Vichy government) Vietnam/Cambodia see Indochina violence see coercion/ violence in colonies von Mises, Ludwig (economist) 10, 188, 397

war: economic origins of 61, 109, 110, 120; and France 107, 128; in fascism 207, 220, 229–30; and universal progress 61, 65; see also First World War; Second World War Weber, Max (German sociologist) 3, 128, 177 Weigelt, Kurt (Nazi official): raw materials for Nazi Germany 257, 264–5 Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv 207, 212, 216 West African Currency Board 102, 104, 290 Westermann, Diedrich (German orientalist) 108, 218 whale oil 170, 174 wheat 47, 53 Woermann, Adolph (German shipping entrepreneur) 74, 75, 81 Woermann, Carl (German shipping entrepreneur) 74 Woermann (shipping firm) 68, 69, 71, 124; in Nazi propaganda 213 World Bank 296, 328, 332, 343, 347, 383, 384 world civilization 56, 62, 126, 127, 130, 212, 218, 221, 222; and Britain after empire 344–5; and British trustee role 126, 130; in fascist development 179, 222; and hegemon as trustee 385–6; inclusion and exclusion 397–8; see also modernity world economy and raw materials trade: pre-1914 45–55; in 1920s-30s 160–75; post-1945 283–4; see also economic development; economic globalization world state 10–11; see also state (as functional entity); global/ international governance World War I see First World War World War II see Second World War Wriston, Walter B. (US banker and official) 385 Yokohama Specie Bank 46 Zambia see Rhodesia Zimbabwe 391; see also Rhodesia