The Colonial Currency Transition. A View from East Africa

The colonial currency transition in East Africa presents important parallels with that in West Africa, but at the same time it is also distinctive in some respects. East and West Africa presented important institutional and economic differences at the time of the establishment of colonial rule, particularly in terms of state centralization and participation in the global economy. By drawing paral- lels between East and West Africa, this article is a comparative reflection on the articles of the special issue “Currency Transition in West Africa: From Commodity to Colonial Currencies”. It focuses on five main themes, each of which is related to the topics discussed in the articles that form the special issue: 1) the role of the precolonial states in the adoption and circulation of money; 2) the materiality of colonial money; 3) the limited reach of the colonial state; 4) frontier zones as sites of currency multiplicity; 5) the seasonality of currency circulation.