Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 October 2025
Following the abandonment of the gold standard in 1931, the Bank of England searched for a policies that would stabilize the international financial system. Its officials turned to the empire as a potential solution to pervasive economic problems. Over the course of the 1930s, they sought to create new independent central banks that promoted intra-imperial trade and the use of sterling as a reserve currency. Neither upholding a particular set of “gentlemanly values” nor seeking to exert complete imperial dominance, the Bank envisioned a network of Empire Central Banks would appease rising nationalism and facilitated imperial monetary cooperation. It worked with foreign governments and economists who provided additional legitimacy to these reforms. With the establishment of the Reserve Bank of India and the Bank of Canada, the Bank was able to secure British financial interests abroad amidst the fracturing of the global economy.
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