Taxing Colonial Africa

The Political Economy of British Imperialism

Leigh A. Gardner

Oxford Historical Monographs

288 pages | Graphs and tables | 216x138mm

978-0-19-966152-7 | Hardback | 04 October 2012

Price: £60.00

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Won the Economic History Society's Dissertation Prize in 2011
First monograph-length comparative work on the development of fiscal policy in British colonial Africa; provides a more detailed and nuanced view of issues often mentioned in African history but rarely explored in depth
Combines archival research from UK, Kenya, Zambia, USA, and World Bank
Explores in detail the implications of the policy adopted by most imperial powers that colonial territories should be self-supporting
Presents extensive quantitative data on revenue and expenditure at different levels of government for different periods
Illustrates in an empirically rigorous way how colonial rule may have influenced post-colonial outcomes

How much did the British Empire cost, and how did Britain pay for it? Taxing Colonial Africa explores a source of funds much neglected in research on the financial structure of the Empire, namely revenue raised in the colonies themselves. Requiring colonies to be financially self-sufficient was one of a range of strategies the British government used to lower the cost of imperial expansion to its own Treasury. Focusing on British colonies in Africa, Leigh Gardner examines how their efforts to balance their budgets influenced their relationships with local political stakeholders as well as the imperial government. She finds that efforts to balance the budget shaped colonial public policy at every level, and that compromises made in the face of financial constraints shaped the political and economic institutions that were established by colonial administrations and inherited by the former colonies at independence.

Using both quantitative data on public revenue and expenditure as well as archival records from archives in both the UK and the former colonies, Gardner follows the development of fiscal policies in British Africa from the beginning of colonial rule through the first years of independence. During the formative years of colonial administration, both the structure of taxation and the allocation of public spending reflected the two central goals of colonial rule: maintaining order as cheaply as possible and encouraging export production. Taxing Colonial Africa examines how the fiscal systems established before 1914 coped with the upheavals of subsequent decades, including the two World Wars, the Great Depression, and finally the transfer of power.

Readership: Economic students and historians; students and scholars of African history and British Imperial history

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The Political Economy of British Imperialism

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