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Periodical article | Leiden University catalogue | WorldCat |
Title: | The role of banking development: South African economic development during the period of functional stability, 1850s-1970s |
Author: | Jones, Stuart |
Year: | 2009 |
Periodical: | South African Journal of Economic History (ISSN 1011-3436) |
Volume: | 24 |
Issue: | 1 |
Pages: | 94-117 |
Language: | English |
Geographic term: | South Africa |
Subjects: | banking economic history 1850-1899 1900-1949 |
External link: | https://doi.org/10.1080/10113430909511215 |
Abstract: | The first banks which were established in South Africa in the first half of the 19th century were small and confined to serving the needs of local agricultural communities. The reason for the solidity of South African banks was the quality of their management and the insistence on focusing on the classic functions of financial intermediary, security and the provision of short-term loans to merchants and farmers. This paper argues that the period 1850-1970 was a period of functional stability that may be subdivided into a period of vigorous local expansion in the 1850s followed by a long period of dominance by the imperial banks that lasted from the early 1860s to the 1980s. The long period of stable functions was dominated by conservative overseas banks. Only after two decades of unparalleled worldwide economic growth in the 1950s and 1960s did banking functions begin to change, and then it was in an environment of government controls and government-managed currencies that accompanied changing market needs. Ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |