Financing white rule

How Luxembourg became a banker for the Belgian Congo and Apartheid South Africa

Bibliographic Data

ID4495255
AuthorsWeek (0000-0002-3883-2174, Thomas Jefferson University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume10
Issue3
Pages234-250
Publication date2024-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueFinance and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2059-5999 • E-ISSN: 2059-5999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/fas.2024.12
OpenAlexW4404419469
LanguageEN
References cited19

In this article, I offer a historical analysis of how bankers in Luxembourg came to be important service providers to borrowers in the Belgian Congo and Apartheid South Africa. I demonstrate how a series of unique political and cultural factors linking Luxembourg and these two (neo)colonial regimes account for the financial activities that developed between the three jurisdictions. As such, I show that officials in the Belgian Congo and Apartheid South Africa were able to count on their Luxembourg-based bankers for a variety of finance-related services, including the provision of Eurocurrency loans and the formation of offshore companies. In doing so, the article contributes to a body of literature in the social sciences of finance that has grown significantly in recent years: on the imperial and neocolonial basis of the contemporary global financial system

Economic history · Economics · Political science · Chemistry · European Union Policy and Governance · Leadership, Human Resources, Global Affairs · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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