For many postcolonies, a national currency—like a constitution, flag, or passport—was a necessary accompaniment to independence. Money and credit were more than potent symbols of decolonization; they were means of constituting a new political order. This Introduction argues that the monetary regimes established in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania aimed to remake their independent societies, turning savings, loans, and other financial instruments into the infrastructure of citizenship and statecraft. These instruments tried to create a “government of value” in which personal interest and collective advance were aligned through mechanisms that were simultaneously ethical and economic, cultural and political. They did so because colonial subjects experienced empire as not only political domination but also a constraint on economic liberties. Yet, the ensuing decolonization was at best partial, not least because the value of national currencies depended on the accumulation of foreign money. Moreover, the independent political economy of East Africa created new inequalities and divisions. Struggles over money, credit, and commodities would animate a series of struggles between bankers and bureaucrats, farmers and smugglers in the coming decades. By detailing the notion of the “moneychanger state,” this chapter provides the conceptual frameworks to understand these conflicts in new ways.

This chapter contemplates addressing changes in economic distributions within states from the vantage point of international law. It does this by considering the potential of recognising changing economic distributions within states and the adverse effects that flow therefrom as a ‘common concern of humankind’. At the outset, a contemporary conceptualization of the ‘distributive autonomy’ of states is provided in light of recent economic globalization. The process for recognising new common concerns of humankind is subsequently examined and theorised before the paper sets out the potential and utility of recognising a distributional common concern, arguing that the raison d’être for sovereignty, itself a constitutive element of common concerns, is the marshalling of the state in order to enhance the welfare of the individuals in a given society through the provision of peace and stability. The predominant utility of recognising a distributional common concern of humankind, then, would be to rebalance sovereignty in a manner that would place greater emphasis on effectively ensuring the welfare of humankind, something which can be better – or perhaps only – accomplished through international coordination and cooperation, actions which in and of themselves are less likely to occur under conditions of growing economic inequality within states.