How do we make sense of the fact that our present-day system of #offshore #taxhavens expanded significantly during the 1950s&60s, the main decades of decolonization? In this piece, I explore part of the answer to this question: a thread academic.oup.com/past/advance-a… #twitterstorians
European settlers, businessmen, officials had been invested in #empire in various ways, across different colonies and imperial contexts. Such entanglements only increased in the final years of European rule #twitterstorians #offshore #taxation 
At the same time, we know that many investors, where possible depending on circumstances and the nature of their assets, sought to remove themselves and their funds from the decolonizing world when non-white rule appeared increasingly likely #twitterstorians
All this raises many questions about which we know relatively little to date. There's lots of work to be done surrounding global movements of capital during decolonization, and on the micro level, individual decisions about divesting from empire or restructuring one's assets
Let's take a very brief look at the history of #taxhavens. In their contemporary form, they emerged beginning in the late 19th c (CH Cantons, Delaware), expanded during and esp after WWI&again expanded dramatically in the 1950s-60s
One early and important 'wave' of decolonization occurred in the Middle East and North Africa during the 1950s and early 1960s. Several French colonies achieved independence in short sequence, leading to an outflow of money and investments on a large scale
This brings us to the fascinating story of Tangier in these years. In the interwar years and post-WWII, Tangier had become what the WSJ called the "haven of four freedoms" (not the ones you're thinking of!) in 1956, a center for secretly moving funds, anonymously parking assets
When Morocco became independent in 1956, it announced an end to Tangier's special regime, sending funds from all over the Middle East that had been placed in Tangier, scrambling for ersatz havens. The most common destination: the tax haven of Switzerland
In CH, such funds contributed to the re-internationalization of banking post-WWII and made CH an important source of intl liquidity in the following decades. But MENA/CH was not the only example of what I call late colonial money panics
From 1946/48 to the 1960s, we can find such movements occurring from mainland China to Hong Kong, in Malaya, South Africa, Belgian Congo, Angola. There will be examples in the Dutch Empire, in LatAm/end of informal empire, and in the context of Partition in Pakistan/India
The banks and accordingly, sources pertinent to such operations are very geographically specific, hence if Dutch colonies don't show up in my material, and British India doesn't, it doesn't mean there is no story. This requires more research in other archives, national contexts
In the British imperial world, money moved less to Switzerland but to tax havens still within the British Empire, above all, the Bahamas. This had to do with personal connections and ties across the empire, and legal traditions as well as preferences of language
One region stood out in sending funds out of the decolonizing world to the Bahamas: the white settler colonies of Kenya & Southern Rhodesia. Early trust company business in the Bahamas systematically targeted these areas and worked with lawyers in Kenya specializing in #offshore
Bankers involved in creating and recruiting tax haven business recognized that the empire functioned as a tax haven of sorts for those who refrained from bringing funds back to the UK and remained mostly overseas
White settlers, businessmen, and officials had enjoyed very low tax rates in colonies, while fighting tooth and claw against the introduction of progressive income taxes in colonies, which came late and was hard to enforce
Two other tax havens within the British fold, the Channel Islands and Malta, began to successfully offer themselves up not just as havens for the funds of imperial returnees, but as settlement destinations for retired colonial dwellers themselves. #twitterstorians
What were the consequences of these early money movements out of colonies into tax havens, other than contributing to the expansion of #offshore? Local elites in newly independent countries would soon discover the advantages of a Swiss bank account for themselves
The same connections by lawyers&bankers to offshore banking in the British financial orbit or in Switzerland, now stood available to be used by wealthy individuals in former colonies. Today, corruption &tax evasion of course are major problems plaguing many low-income countries
Another question I could not answer, but that I think historians of different post-colonial national histories should take up: who stood to benefit from (cheap) access to liquidated European assets left behind? We can easily imagine wealthy elites snapping up such opportunities
Finally, on the most general level, late colonial money panics contributed to the growth of portfolio investment and thus to a much broader transformation of assets and ownership that we associate with the 1970s but that may have had earlier roots #twitterstorians
Conclusion: looking at #decolonization as a series of economic and financial events opens up a global perspective on the end of empires that leaves much exciting work to do in a wide and diverse set of sub-contexts. I hope you'll have fun thinking with this! End.
