British Imperialism and the Making of Colonial Currency Systems

Covering the colonial Empire (including The West Indies, India, Singapore, West Africa and East Africa), this book is a detailed revisionist history of the British imperial manipulations of colonial currency systems to facilitate the rise of sterling to world supremacy via the gold standard, and to slow its eventual decline after World War I. Official internal correspondence is used to show that Britain typically acted against the advice of colonial commmercial interests, colonial governments, and even officials in the Colonial Office, in order to replace international currencies (including gold and sterling itself), with localised silver currencies. The local currencies were backed by gold and sterling reserves in London, under the total control of the British Treasury and the Bank of England. In the process liquidity was provided to the London money market, and cheap finance to the British Government. This book provides a new perspective on theories of imperialism, colonial money and colonial underdevelopment, with possible geostrategic historical lessons for the US dollar and emerging global currencies such as the Chinese renminbi and the euro

OBITUARY: Vale Robbie Robertson, a 'son of Fiji and the Pacific'

While most University of the South Pacific academics were united in their opposition to the 1987 and 2000 coups in Fiji – and many of them suffered in various ways from the 1987 coup, the 2006 coup was divisive in that quite a few senior USP academics and former academics (mostly Indo-Fijian) gave tacit and active support to it, believing in coup leader Voreqe Bainimarama’s rhetoric of anti-corruption and racial equality for all in Fiji as his justification. The death of historian and prolific author and writer professor Robert Robertson has highlighted through his books, scholarship and academic activism the injustices inflicted by the coups and globalisation on academics, journalists and marginalised beginning with Fiji: Shattered Coups (1988), co-authored with his journalist partner Akosita Tamanisau. This essay profiles an academic who ‘planted deep roots, metaphorically and literally, in the DNA of Fiji and the Pacific

PICTA, PACER and EPAs: weaknesses in Pacific island countries trade policies

Most Pacific island countries have now signed the Pacific Island Countries Trade Agreement (PICTA) and the Pacific Islands Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER) and are negotiating Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with the European Union. These countries (their governments, companies, employees and the public) are not prepared for the economic adjustments that will be required under such trade agreements and there are likely to be defensive reactions to employment losses and significant losses of government revenues. PACER holds much greater prospects than EPAs for addressing problems of unemployment of unskilled labour and the broader development challenges of raising living standards in the Pacific island countries