Based on archival research covering more than two centuries and most former British colonies (West Indies, India, Singapore, Malaya, West Africa and East Africa), this book is a 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 II. Britain forcibly replaced international currencies, including gold and sterling itself, by new localised silver currencies, backed by gold and sterling reserves in London, under the total control of...