ABSTRACT
Based on archival research conducted mainly at the Bank of England, the National Archives of Zimbabwe, Central Archival Repository in Pretoria and the Cory Library at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, the article examines the financial planning of the Rhodesian Front (RF) government (1962–1979) in the making of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) of 11 November 1965. Its rebellion against Britain occurred in a period of decolonisation characterised by the attainment of majority rule in African countries. Having enjoyed settler colonial status from 1923 and significant political and economic room to manoeuvre, Rhodesians elected the RF into power to protect white minority interests indefinitely. Although the literature has focused variously on the British–Rhodesian impasse, UDI and the liberation struggle, it has neglected financial developments, without which the UDI would never have been declared and sustained for 15 years.
This article provides a first in-depth perspective on how financial considerations were just as important as political, social and military considerations in the period between the RF’s rise to power and its rebellion. Central to its analysis is changing imperial and colonial economic relations. Although Rhodesia’s financial system was fully integrated into London’s sterling area by the 1960s, this link was severed following the rebellion and a post-sterling Rhodesian financial system emerged. Given that London had ruled out military invasion to stop the Salisbury rebellion, its only alternative was economic sanctions on the basis of its historical control of the colony’s financial system in circumstances where the colony was keen on using financial instruments to survive punitive exchange control measures and sustain minority rule. This article examines the financial makings of this imperial-colonial conflict and the considerations and activities on the eve of Rhodesia’s UDI. It shows the importance of local political dynamics and their influence on global financial arrangements. Rhodesia’s rebellion, crucially aided as it was by local financial arrangements, became an important international issue leading to the ostracism of the colony through United Nations economic sanctions where it used 27its monetary system as a rebel bulwark. In a sense, an examination of the making of Rhodesia’s financial system prior to UDI provides an important background account to its subsequent survival of sanctions for 15 years where it had been projected to collapse in just months.
