Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T01:23:39.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Eagle Eye: Africa in the 20th Century as viewed through the archives of Barclays Bank

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

Maria Sienkiewicz  and
Billy Frank
Maria Sienkiewicz
Affiliation:
Barclays Group Archives
Billy Frank
Affiliation:
University of Central Lancashire
Get access

Extract

Barclays’ international business was founded in 1925 as Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas). The roots of the business lay in three 19th century banks: the Anglo-Egyptian, the Colonial, and the National Bank of South Africa. It had long been the dream of Barclays Chairman, Frederick Goodenough, to create an ‘Empire Bank’, and, by buying these three and merging them, that is precisely what he achieved. This article sets out to provide an overview of the collection and suggest avenues of future research.

Type
Articles
Information
African Research and Documentation , Volume 125: African Trajectories: Travel and the Archive: papers from the 2014 Scolma Conference , 2014 , pp. 29 - 44
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

This article is based on a paper delivered at the 2014 SCOLMA Conference ‘African Trajectories: Travel and the Archive’ held at the University of Birmingham, 2nd July 2014.

References

This would later be shortened to Barclays DCO, before becoming Barclays Bank International or BBI.Google Scholar
Julian Crossley, unpublished diaries. 3 June 1946. (Barclays Group Archives, henceforth BGA)Google Scholar
See for example Hodge, Joseph, Hödl, Gerald and Kopf, Martina (Eds), Developing Africa. Development Discourse(s) in Late Colonialism (Manchester University Press, 2014), and C. A. Bayly, Vijayendra Rao, Simon Szerter, and Michael Woolcock (Eds), History, Historians and Development Policy: A necessary dialogue (Manchester University Press, 2011)Google Scholar
Julian Crossley, unpublished diaries, 16 August 1943. (Barclays Group Archives) Goodenough was already a member of the Colonial Research Council at this time and would later be appointed to the Colonial Economic Advisory Council, established within the Colonial Office in 1946. Although the CRC was primarily concerned with research into agriculture in the colonies, Barclays were included as financial advisors. At one meeting of the CRC Crossley (DCO's General Manager) noted in his diary that Professor J. F. R. Hill (Chairing the Committee in Lord Hailey's absence) was “quite prepared to turn over all questions of the control of expenditure” to the Barclays representative as the “financial member of the committee”. See Julian Crossley, unpublished diaries. 12 January 1943. (BGA)Google Scholar
Barclays Bank (DCO) Head Office Circular Letter No. 42/33, 23 September 1942 (Barclays Group Archives)Google Scholar
Barclays Bank (DCO) Head Office Circular Letter No. 42/33, 23 September 1942 (Barclays Group Archives)Google Scholar
Essay by G. G. Collins (Swakopmund, South West Africa), 8 April 1943, pp. 6-7. Collins’ suggested name for such an organisation was included in a digest of the essays given to the Colonial Office in August 1943.Google Scholar
Borer, Leslie, History of Barclays DCO 1945 - 1965 (unpublished manuscript), pp. 403 - 404 (BGA)Google Scholar
Barclays DCO Board minutes 23 November 1944. (BGA)Google Scholar
These were Commander Couldrey (Chairman of the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya), R. E. Norton (Director of Produce Disposal, Kenya Government), and G. McCall Rennie (Chief Secretary to the Kenyan Government). Julian Crossley, unpublished diaries. 19 June 1945. (BGA).Google Scholar
Crossley, Julian, unpublished diaries. 28 February 1945. (BGA).Google Scholar
Crossley, Julian, unpublished diaries. 17 June 1947. (BGA).Google Scholar
Crossley, Julian unpublished diaries. 26 August 1947. (BGA)Google Scholar
Crossley, Julian unpublished diaries. 16 July 1948. (BGA)Google Scholar
DCO Board minutes for 24 June 1948. (BGA)Google Scholar
Crossley noted that applications were coming in ‘almost daily’. Julian Crossley, unpublished diaries. 11 September 1947. (BGA)Google Scholar
DCO Board Minutes for 1 January 1948 and 25 May 1949 respectively. (BGA)Google Scholar
DCO Board Meeting Papers. Statement of Accounts presented at Ordinary General Meeting 30 September 1949. (BGA)Google Scholar
Barclays DCO Statements and Accounts 1951 (BGA)Google Scholar