The Political Economy of Imperial Relations offers a much needed historical and theoretical intervention into the relationship between Britain and Malaya after the Second World War. It challenges existing accounts and details a strong continuity in this relationship from 1945 until 1960.

To complement current work on the British domestic economy in the post-war period it is necessary to examine external economic policy. Whilst considerable work has been done on Britain's relations with Europe and with America, the complexities of the sterling area have remained obscure. This volume makes a significant contribution to unravelling the strands of British external economic policy in the post-war period.

This book examines how Great Britain, as a colonial power in Africa, organized and exercised control at the international and domestic level to advance British interests in Uganda and beyond. While this book is by no means an exhaustive study of the various modes of control that took hold in Uganda since its inception as a territorial state up to the period of juridical independence, it is hoped that its historiographical contributions to the post-colonial dispensation of Uganda will be threefold. First, it systematically sheds light on the combined influence of racist ideology, class, and politics in perpetuating informal imperial control in Uganda. Second, it demonstrates that consolidating informal imperial control has required externalizing the legitimacy of the Ugandan state. This suggests that African leaders not supported by external powers may be externally delegitimized and their position made untenable. Third, it demonstrates that the informal control imposed upon Africans by external powers, by removing incentives for internal legitimacy, encouraged violations of human rights as African leaders did not need to obtain the consent of their own people in order to remain in power. Furthermore, it advances the argument that democracy, the rule of law and the protection of human rights can be achieved in Africa if leaders enjoy internal legitimacy derived from the people. The various modes of control imposed by former masters over colonial and post-colonial states were not meant to protect African, but imperial interests.

Jonathan Kirshner here examines how states can and have used international currency relationships and arrangements as instruments of coercive power for the advancement of state security. Kirshner lays the groundwork for the study of what he calls monetary power by providing a taxonomy of the forms that such power can take and of the conditions under which it can have effect. He then establishes the actual existence of monetary power by showing how the taxonomy is supported by the historical record, including cases from nations from all over the globe and throughout the twentieth century. He uncovers how monetary power is affected by different monetary regimes, the sources of its success and failure, and the factors that lead states to turn to its use. Kirshner thus succeeds in developing a generalized framework for the analysis of an important yet neglected form of state power that is likely to be of increasing importance in the post-Cold War era. Although some distinguished scholars have touched on the issue of monetary power, there has been until now no standard text on the subject. Integrating security studies and international political economy, this book is a timely synthesis that will be important to the entire discipline of international relations.

At head of title: Institut universitaire de hautes eÌ tudes internationales. Includes bibliographies and index.