Managing British Colonial and Post-Colonial Development
The Crown Agents, 1914-1974
David Sunderland
Britain's Crown Agents' Office is a unique development agency. Until the early 1960s, its clients were colonial governments, and, thereafter, the administrations of dependencies and newly independent countries. As well as purchasing a large proportion of its customers' imports, it provided them with finance and managed their investments. It was thus one of the largest buyers of goods in the UK, and, after, the Bank of England, the country's biggest financial institution.
This book, the sequel to the author's Managing the British Empire: The Crown Agents, 1833 -1914 (Boydell, 2004), examines the Agents' various development roles, including the disastrous venture into secondary banking in 1967 which collapsed in 1974, then the largest bankruptcy in British financial history. The book contributes to a number of current debates in development studies, adds to our understanding of the London financial market and the competitiveness of British industry, and shows how present day aid agencies can learn much from the arrangements of the past.
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DETAILS
13 line illustrations
312 pages
Size: 23.4 x 15.6 cm
13 digit ISBN: 9781843833017
Binding: Hardback
First published: 21/Jun/2007
Price: 95.00 USD / 50.00 GBP
Imprint: Boydell Press
Subject: Modern History
BIC class: HBCW
STATUS: Available
Details updated on 18/11/2008
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Reviews
With this major work, we are now better placed to appreciate the complexities of Britain's relations with its overseas territories, and if the vital, yet little known, years after independence. THE OVERSEAS PENSIONER
In the end, specialists of British economic history will certainly find Sunderland's work both refreshing and informative, while students of British imperial history or British history in general will certainly have something to learn from this work. All said and done, Managing British Colonial and Post-Colonial Development: The Crown Agents, 1914-1974_ stands out as an example of how economic history should be written--detailed and yet accessible to those interested and yet non-specialists in the field. Hopefully, these two works will lay a foundation upon which further work in this area can be built. H-NET BOOK REVIEW, July 2008
Contributes to our understanding of imperial history.
All that being said, this study of the Crown Agents is a positive contribution that fills a gap in the existing literature on the British Empire. Those interested in imperial and colonial studies, not to mention British economic and financial history, will benefit from Sunderland's impressive scholarship. JOURNAL OF BRITISH STUDIES, July 2008, vol 47, no3
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