Sterling area

The sterling area (or sterling bloc, legally scheduled territories) was a group of countries that either adopted or pegged their currencies to the pound sterling.

The area began to appear informally during the early 1930s, after sterling had left the gold standard in 1931, with the result that a number of currencies of countries that historically had performed a large amount of their trade in sterling were pegged to sterling instead of to gold. A large number of these countries were part of the British Empire; however, a significant minority were not.

Early in the Second World War, emergency legislation united the sterling bloc countries and territories (except Hong Kong) of the British Empire in a single exchange control area to protect the external value of sterling, among other aims. Canada and Newfoundland were already linked to the US dollar and did not join the sterling bloc.

The Bank of England in London guided co-ordination of monetary policy in the currency area. Member countries with their own currency held a large portion of their foreign currency reserves as sterling balances in London.

After the Second World War, the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates to the US dollar (convertible to gold) gave the sterling area a second lease of life as Commonwealth of Nations kinship and trading loyalties were maintained after Britain's withdrawal from Empire by keeping a sterling peg and staying in the sterling area, rather than maintaining a direct dollar peg. Despite this, sterling did not regain anything like its place in international commerce that it had had before the war, and a devastated and financially exhausted Britain could not defend the international value of sterling to maintain confidence in the system, resulting in its devaluation of the pound sterling against the dollar in 1967 that was not reflected in other sterling area currencies. In the end the US dollar's inability to hold to the Bretton Woods gold standard precipitated the end of the era of fixed exchange rates: with all major currencies, including the pound, floating against the US dollar, the sterling area had lost its final raison d'être.

In June 1972, the British government unilaterally applied exchange controls to the other sterling area countries, with the exception of the Republic of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands. This arguably marked the end of the sterling area. During the rest of the 1970s and early 1980s, the remaining sterling balances were wound down to a level that represented the significance of Britain in contemporary world trade.

Before the First World War, the British pound sterling was the most important international currency, and the City of London was the world's most important financial centre. More than 60 per cent of global trade was financed, invoiced, and settled in sterling, and the largest proportion of official reserves, apart from gold, was held in sterling. Although not all the territories of the British Empire used sterling as their local currency, most of those that did not pegged their local currency at a fixed rate to sterling, as did many foreign countries outside the Empire. When Britain left the gold standard in 1931, many countries that had pegged their currencies to gold pegged their currencies to sterling instead; this group of countries became known as the "sterling bloc", though the term "sterling area" was used officially from at least 1935. When the Second World War broke out, the sterling bloc countries within the British Empire shared a desire to protect the external value of sterling; legislation was therefore passed throughout the Empire formalising the British sterling bloc countries into a single exchange control area. The sterling area was continued in the postwar era in an attempt to preserve the British Empire's superpower status during the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Canada and Newfoundland did not join the sterling area because their dollar currencies had effectively been linked to the US dollar (since 1858). In 1931, Britain and its Dominions abandoned the gold standard during the Great Depression. But while Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa all responded to the end of the gold standard by pegging their pounds to the pound sterling, Canada and Newfoundland instead pegged their dollars to the US dollar. So Canada and Newfoundland did not stand to gain by joining an exchange control bloc intended to protect the external value of sterling. The absence of Canada and Newfoundland from the sterling area was beneficial to Britain, as it curtailed capital flight to the North American mainland. Canada nevertheless introduced its own exchange controls at the outbreak of war; these were maintained until 1953. Canada's exchange controls were 'sterling area-friendly', in that their purpose was more to prevent capital flight to the US than to prevent flight to the sterling area.^{[citation needed]}