Bourses, banks, and Boers: Johannesburg’s French connections and the Paris Krach of 1895

ABSTRACT

The 1894/5 Paris boom in South African mining securities set forth the ultimate test of financial resilience for the South African Republic’s mining and financial sectors. The financial crash in Paris that halted the international boom in October 1895 exposed the globalized nature of markets for South African mining securities and their impact on colonial politics in southern Africa. This article reconsiders and qualifies the economic, financial, and political connections between South African gold mining and the Parisian capital market for the period 1887 to 1895. The Paris Bourse and its complimentary coulisse became the new loci of the South African mining market that ultimately crashed after the intervention of Johannesburg’s capital elites. Crucially for the future of the South African Republic, the Paris Krach set out the political circumstances for a direct confrontation between Johannesburg’s mining capital, British imperialism and President Kruger’s republicanism. Exposing new primary material gathered at the Archives Diplomatiques in Paris, the Paribas Group in Paris, the Central Archival Repository in Pretoria and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange in Sandton, this article examines the globalization of South African securities, concluding the investigation with an analysis of the financial and political ramifications of the 1895 Paris Krach.

KEYWORDS:

• Financial globalization
• financial intermediaries
• South African mining
• France
• stock exchanges

Acknowledgments

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 2018 World Economic History Congress in Boston, the 2018 International Studies Group workshop in Bloemfontein and the 2020 EHDR online workshop hosted by Stellenbosch University. I would like to thank Dmitri van den Bersselaar and colleagues at the Institute of African Studies and the Faculty of Economics and Management Science, Leipzig University for their feedback on numerous drafts of this paper. I would also like to thank Alfonso Herranz Loncán, Johan Fourie and the two anonymous EHDR reviewers for their detailed and constructive comments that helped substantially in revising this paper. I also want to acknowledge the wonderful archival assistance of Claudia Villanueva at the Centre des Archives diplomatiques de La Courneuve in Paris. Any errors or oversights are mine alone.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 More commonly known as the Transvaal.

2 Based on calculations from ‘Mining Market,’ The Financial Times 1890–1895; and Investors Monthly Manual 1890–1900.