Shortly after the declaration of independence, the Liberian government established the Liberian dollar as its national currency. According to President Joseph J. Roberts, it was intended to both promote commerce and demonstrate the sovereignty of the Liberian state. The first coins were minted in England, with the financial backing of a British banker and abolitionist, as the Liberian state did not then have the means to fund their minting itself. These token coins were later supplemented with paper money printed in Monrovia. The Liberian dollar was an unbacked paper currency. It was initially valued at par with the US dollar but quickly depreciated as the Liberian government turned to the printing press during repeated fiscal crises in the decades after 1847. This chapter chronicles the Liberian government’s efforts to sustain the value of its currency, the adoption by the turn of the century of British sterling as the primary medium of exchange, followed by the replacement of British currency by the US dollar in 1943. The case of Liberia illustrates that formal monetary sovereignty may have little significance for governments lacking the resources and capacity to sustain the value of their currency, which may force them to adopt others to sustain their trade and public finances.

The Bank of England was heavily involved in the management of Hong Kong’s banking and currency arrangements. The shadow that continually hung over both was the prospect of the termination of the lease on the ‘Crown Colony’ in 1997. In the late summer of 1983, a property boom collapsed and brought major financial strain and an exchange rate crisis. The Bank sent experts who backed schemes to create a currency peg, managed by currency board arrangements, with a link to the British pound. That had implications for the positions of the large banks, which issued bank notes. There was also a question about the position of the large Hong Kong banks, and the largest, HSBC, wanted to acquire, or merge with, a UK bank: eventually HSBC took over Midland.