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SUMMARY:Gold\, Coins and Conflict: Currency Tensions and the Minting of th
 e Anglo-Boer War\, 1891-1899 - Dr Tinashe Nyamunda (University of Glasgow)
DTSTART:20250317T171500Z
DTEND:20250317T190000Z
UID:TALK228727@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Gareth Austin
DESCRIPTION:The historiography of the Anglo-Boer war has largely\, and not
  incorrectly pointed to the contest between British capital and Afrikaner 
 interests as a major factor. It has also emphasized the role of political 
 protagonists such as\, on the one hand\, British Secretary of State for Co
 lonies\, Joseph Chamberlain and the High Commissioner for South Africa and
  Governor of the Cape and the Transvaal\, Alfred Milner who were committed
  to seizing political and economic control of the South African Republic\,
  retaining it as a British suzerainty. On the other hand\, was the figure 
 of Paul Kruger and his Volksraad who galvanised Afrikaners to express Boer
  independence. The war of 1899 – 1902\, largely termed Milner’s war\, 
 is usually traced to rising tensions following the activities of Milner fr
 om 1895 onwards. What is missing in these accounts are particular strands 
 of monetary causes that can be traced back to the currency tensions trigge
 red by Kruger’s importation of a mint into the South African Republic. S
 cholars attribute Britain’s construction of the international gold stand
 ard in the late nineteenth century as the reason behind Chamberlain and Mi
 lner’s effort to bring the Boer republics under imperial control. But th
 ese discourses miss particular nuances about coinage which can be traced b
 ack to the 1891 importation of a mint and the holding of mint and coin con
 ference in 1892 where the ZAR announced the introduction of its own gold c
 oins and started the process of demonetizing sterling in its territory. Th
 is had significant reverberations across British southern Africa in ways t
 hat threatened its economic control of the region and the position of Brit
 ain at the apex of the international gold standard. What follows attempts 
 to use newly explored archival evidence to fill this gap. It demonstrates 
 how currency tensions between the British colonies of the Cape and Natal v
 ersus the ZAR unleashed forces that made the war inevitable\, despite the 
 interests of Chamberlain and even before the arrival of Milner. At the hea
 rt of these tensions\, this paper suggests\, were Britain’s efforts to r
 etain global monetary hegemony centred on the Transvaal and Kruger’s mis
 sion at devolution. The currency tensions perspective contributes to conve
 rsations about the economic makings of the Anglo-Boer war in interesting w
 ays.
LOCATION:Audit Room\, King's College\, Cambridge: to receive zoom link ple
 ase subscribe at https://lists.cam.ac.uk/sympa/subscribe/history-global-ec
 onomic-history at https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series/global-economic-
 history
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