ABSTRACT
There are two inter-related themes running through our account of the Gold Coast economy in the inter-war period. The first concerns the experience of the Gold Coast as a primary producer, highly dependent on a single crop, cocoa, whose price on world markets began to decline in the early 1920s, recovered briefly in the latter years of that decade, but then slumped dramatically in the 1930s-a decline which ended only with the post-World War II commodity boom. The second theme concerns the status of the Gold Coast economy in the inter-war period, viz. that of a dependent colony of Britain. As a consequence of falling prices, all primary producers experienced a decline in their capacity to import during the inter-war period. But the ways in which they coped with this problem depended to a large extent on whether they could operate with a degree of independence in the international economy. Countries like Australia could impose tariffs as their external indebtedness rose in the 1920s, and this period saw a rapid increase in tariffs throughout the world. Eventually, as the crisis worsened, ‘independent’ primary producing countries such as Australia drew on overseas balances, sold gold and depreciated their currencies. For Britain’s dependent empire, which included the primary producing countries of West Africa, the situation was different. A major plank of colonial policy was that such countries should balance their budgets without recourse to outside assistance. Moreover unilateral action on tariffs was ruled out. Ruled out too was an independent monetary policy, since monetary systems were offshoots of the British one, local currencies exchanging with sterling on a pound for pound basis. Thus West Africa had a very limited range of policy options f or coping with the reduced import capacity which resulted from falling export prices. The impact of such measures as were adopted, and especially their place within the broader framework of colonial economic policy, forms the subject-matter of this chapter.
