Central Banking and Colonial Control

doi:10.1017/9781009367578.017

14 - Central Banking and Colonial Control

India, 1914–1939

from Part II - Specific

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2023

G. Balachandran

Edited by

Barry Eichengreen and

Andreas Kakridis

Show author details

Barry Eichengreen: Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Andreas Kakridis: Affiliation:
Bank of Greece and Panteion University, Athens

Book contents

Get access

Summary

In the 1920s, the Bank of England promoted central banking to preserve London’s control over Indian financial policies and insulate those policies from political changes sweeping the colony. This chapter traces India’s deepening distrust of London in the monetary sphere, and the role envisaged by the Bank of England for an Indian central bank operating under its tutelage. After the failure of efforts to create a central bank in the 1920s, the Bank of England and Whitehall insisted on a privately owned, ‘independent’ central bank as a precondition for Indian constitutional reform. In the end, notions of an independent central bank did not stand up to the vicissitudes of colonial bureaucratic politics. Efforts of the colonial government and the Bank of England to curb the independence of the Reserve Bank of India offer important insights into the early history of central banking in India, but also shed new light on the role central banks in economies undergoing the transition from colonialism to independence.

Keywords

India British colonialism Silver Gold standard Gold-exchange standard Monetary control Macroeconomic policies Imperial Bank of India central banking Reserve Bank of India

Type: Chapter
Information: The Spread of the Modern Central Bank and Global Cooperation
1919–1939
, pp. 383 - 405

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009367578.017 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Primary Sources

Archive of the Centre of South Asian Studies (CSAS), Cambridge (United Kingdom).Google Scholar

Papers of Sir Edward Charles BenthallGoogle Scholar

Bank of England Archive (BOEA), Bank of England, London (United Kingdom).Google Scholar

ADM Administration Department recordsGoogle Scholar

G1 Governor’s Files, 1922–1967Google Scholar

G14 Committee of Treasury Files, 1919–1967Google Scholar

G30 Governor’s Miscellaneous CorrespondenceGoogle Scholar

OV56 India – Country fileGoogle Scholar

Churchill Archives Centre (CCA), Churchill College, Cambridge (United Kingdom)Google Scholar

Papers of Sir Percy James GriggGoogle Scholar

Papers of Sir Ralph HawtreyGoogle Scholar

National Archives (UKNA), Kew, Richmond (United Kingdom).Google Scholar

T TreasuryGoogle Scholar

National Archives of India (NAI), New Delhi (India).Google Scholar

FD Finance DepartmentGoogle Scholar

Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi (India).Google Scholar

Papers of Purshotamdas ThakurdasGoogle Scholar

Oriental and India Office Collection (OIOC), British Library, London (United Kingdom).Google Scholar

L/F Finance DepartmentGoogle Scholar

L/PO Private OfficeGoogle Scholar

Mss. Eur. European ManuscriptsGoogle Scholar

Secondary Sources

Balachandran, G. (1993). ‘Britain’s Liquidity Crisis and India, 1919–1920’. Economic History Review, 46(3): 575–591.CrossRef Google Scholar

Balachandran, G. (1998). The Reserve Bank of India, 1951–1969. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Balachandran, G. (2013). John Bullion’s Empire: Britain’s Gold Problem and India between the Wars. London: Routledge.Google Scholar

Boyle, Andrew (1967). Montagu Norman: A Biography. New York: Weybright and Talley.Google Scholar

Bridge, Carl (1986). Holding India to the Empire: The British Conservative Party and the 1935 Constitution. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers.Google Scholar

Chandavarkar, Anand (1989). Keynes and India: A study in Economics and Biography. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar

Chaudhuri, K. N. (1983). ‘Foreign Trade and Balance of Payments (1757–1947)’, in Kumar, Dharma and Desai, Meghnad (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of India. Vol. 2, c. 1757–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 804–877.Google Scholar

Goldsmith, Raymond (1983). The Financial Development of India, 1860–1977. Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Grigg, Percy James (1947). Prejudice and Judgement. London: Jonathan Cape.Google Scholar

Heston, Alan (1983). ‘National Income’, in Kumar, Dharma and Desai, Meghnad (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of India. Vol. 2, c. 1757–1970. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 376–462.Google Scholar

Keynes, John Maynard (1971). Indian Currency and Finance, Vol. 1 in Johnson, Elizabeth and Moggridge, Donald (eds.), The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Kisch, Cecil H. and Elkin, Winifred A. (1932). Central Banks: A Study of the Constitutions of Banks of Issue (with an analysis of representative charters). London: Macmillan.Google Scholar

Lowenstein, Roger (2015). America’s Bank: The Epic Struggle to Create the Federal Reserve. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar

Maddison, Angus (1971). Class Structure and Economic Growth: India and Pakistan since the Moghuls. London: George Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar

Siddiqi, Asiya (1981). ‘Money and Prices in the Earlier Stages of Empire: India and Britain 1760–1840’. Indian Economic and Social History Review, 18(3–4): 231–262.Google Scholar