Gold, Coins and Conflict: Currency Tensions and the Minting of the Anglo-Boer War, 1891-1899

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• Dr Tinashe Nyamunda (University of Glasgow)
• Monday 17 March 2025, 17:15-19:00
• Audit Room, King's College, Cambridge: to receive zoom link please subscribe at https://lists.cam.ac.uk/sympa/subscribe/history-global-economic-history at https://www.hist.cam.ac.uk/event-series/global-economic-history.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Gareth Austin.

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 Colonies, 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 from 1895 onwards. What is missing in these accounts are particular strands of monetary causes that can be traced back to the currency tensions triggered by Kruger’s importation of a mint into the South African Republic. Scholars attribute Britain’s construction of the international gold standard in the late nineteenth century as the reason behind Chamberlain and Milner’s effort to bring the Boer republics under imperial control. But these discourses miss particular nuances about coinage which can be traced back to the 1891 importation of a mint and the holding of mint and coin conference in 1892 where the ZAR announced the introduction of its own gold coins and started the process of demonetizing sterling in its territory. This had significant reverberations across British southern Africa in ways that threatened its economic control of the region and the position of Britain 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 versus the ZAR unleashed forces that made the war inevitable, despite the interests of Chamberlain and even before the arrival of Milner. At the heart of these tensions, this paper suggests, were Britain’s efforts to retain global monetary hegemony centred on the Transvaal and Kruger’s mission at devolution. The currency tensions perspective contributes to conversations about the economic makings of the Anglo-Boer war in interesting ways.

This talk is part of the Global Economic History Seminar series.

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