Networks of Imperial Finance: An Unusual Case Study

Holly Hiscox (Open University)

The City of London elites who enabled Britain’s imperial activity in the 19th century through their management of complex webs of credit, currency management and insurance almost entirely shared a common educational background – the English public school.[1] My research on ‘Networks of imperial finance’ seeks to understand the extent to which imperial ideas were inculcated and internalised in the formative years of life, underscoring the professional and personal lives of the late 19th century financial elite. What follows is a brief overview of a key area of my work viewed through a case study of two individuals.

My project lies at the intersection of several significant bodies of work incorporating the history of education, family and business history, economic and financial history, and histories of the British empire. I am using a cohort study – men who attended Rugby School between c.1828 and 1850 - to draw together relevant strands of these disparate historiographies to consider how the formative influences of school and family life informed the social, cultural, political, professional, economic and imperial networks key individuals later inhabited. The use of Rugby School as a case study is an important facet of my work given the central educational and domestic role elite schools played through the total immersion of pupils in the boarding environment.

Rugby School

Old Rugbeians were deeply entrenched in the worlds of economics, banking and finance. Connections made at school continued into adult professional life. This is particularly well demonstrated by two individuals: Henry Hucks Gibbs (L) and Bonamy Price (R). These men provide a slightly unusual illustration of the intricacies of the Rugbeian network. Gibbs was a pupil at Rugby in the 1830s, whereas Price was an assistant master.

In the second quarter of the 19th century Rugby School operated as a site of elite cultural, social and symbolic capital creation, not only through the taught curriculum but also through extra curricular activities such as the debating society, school magazines and organised sport. The temporal and spatial organisation of school systems along with the domestic life of the boarding house were also contributory factors.[2] The environment which produced these different forms of capital was infused with a particular brand of imperial thinking, all of which converged to inform – in Bourdieusian terms – a pupil’s habitus or embodied disposition.[3]

School systems and the networks engendered within the institution provided a ‘training for Empire’, not just in preparation for military or colonial administrative roles, but also in areas such as commerce, banking and finance. In addition, the complex and at times unexpected relationships forged at school continued to have significant professional implications decades later.

Henry Hucks Gibbs

Henry Hucks Gibbs entered Rugby at age 13 in August 1832. He was the first of the Gibbs family to be educated at a public school. His father – George Henry Gibbs - presumably used the proceeds from the successful family business (Antony Gibbs & Sons) to purchase an elite education for his children, and with it a higher social status.

School records show that Henry Hucks Gibbs was placed in the Remove (fourth form) following his entrance examination, and by Christmas of 1835 was in the fifth form. Although Gibbs left Rugby before entering the sixth form, being a member of the fifth would have afforded him certain privileges – for example, he would no longer have to undertake any fagging (doing minor chores for older boys) and could also join extra-curricular activities such as the debating society.

After leaving Rugby, Gibbs matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, graduating with a 3rd-class degree in Classics in 1841. He began working for his family firm, Antony Gibbs & Sons, in 1843. The company had initially traded in cloth, fruit and wine, but from 1842 increasingly focused on the export of Peruvian guano, holding an exclusive concession on the product. This meant the firm became exceptionally profitable.[4] Henry Hucks Gibbs became a partner in the business from 1848, taking full control in 1858 following his uncle’s retirement. Antony Gibbs & Sons continued to evolve, moving into merchant banking, shipping and insurance. By 1900 it had shifted from its commercial origins to focus on operations in the financial sphere.

Henry Hucks Gibbs was appointed as a director of the Bank of England in 1851, and between 1875 and 1877 served as its Governor. He was a strident campaigner for bimetallism (the use of both silver and gold to define the value of a currency rather than only gold), one of the most high-profile City proponents of this view.[5] In 1896 Gibbs was raised to the peerage, assuming the title Baron Aldenham.

Bonamy Price

Bonamy Price was born in Guernsey in 1807, the son of Frederick Price Jr and his wife Maria Vardon. Frederick Price Jr was a well-known figure on Guernsey as Dean of the Douzaine of the parish of St. Peter-Port, President of the Chamber of Commerce and Colonel of the East Regiment of Militia.[6] Bonamy Price was one of fourteen children (although not all survived to adulthood), and he was sent to the mainland to be educated, studying under Thomas Arnold when Arnold ran a private school at Laleham in the 1820s.

When Price graduated from Oxford University with a double first in Classics in 1829, Arnold – who had recently been appointed Headmaster of Rugby – invited Price to join him as an assistant master. Price accepted and remained in post at Rugby from 1830 to 1850. He taught Mathematics and later Classics, ran a boarding house, and established himself as master of the fifth form. We catch other glimpses of Price’s life at Rugby in the archive, for example, in records of some pupil disciplinary matters, and also in documents such as the one below right, where Price is listed as a spectator for one of the school’s debating society’s meetings. In this case the motion being ‘That the immediate and total repeal of the Corn Laws would be a justifiable, just and politic measure.’

Price’s time at Rugby was of a long duration, and he received praise for his teaching from former pupils. In 1850 he resigned his post and spent some years in London as a businessman and writer, before being appointed to the Drummond Chair of Political Economy at Oxford University in 1868, a position he held until his death.

The Drummond Chair was a significant role, its occupant seen as one of the chief economist theorists of the day. Recent scholarship focusing on Price’s tenure in the job has concluded that his impact was minimal, although there is evidence that he did make attempts to modernise some of the undergraduate programmes of study, and was quoted as an authority in several parliamentary debates. Robert Bigg argues that Price’s lukewarm reputation as Drummond Chair is partly a consequence of the fact that his chief interests in currency and banking were not subjects of the greatest interest in Oxford at the time.[7]

Banking and currency: theory and practice

What then is the significance of these two parallel lives? As master of the fifth form during the mid-1830s, Bonamy Price would have had direct, daily contact with Henry Hucks Gibbs who was one of his pupils. The acquaintance did not end there. Price and Gibbs remained in contact long after their Rugby days. Correspondence between them during the late 1870s demonstrates continued and wide-ranging discussions on currency questions and the reserve of the Bank of England.[8]

In the letters, Bonamy Price sought the expertise and practical experience of Henry Hucks Gibbs to provide clarity to his theoretical understandings. These later entanglements are demonstrative of an interaction between the practice of banking and currency control and its theory. Whilst Gibbs and Price did not always agree, there is evidence of shared understandings and a willingness to engage in debate.

In the correspondence the roles of teacher and pupil are also somewhat reversed, revealing an interesting dynamic. In a letter of December 19th 1877 (see extract below), Gibbs raised their different professional experiences as an explanatory factor for their contrasting viewpoints. He asserted his authority in the situation by reminding Price that in a previous letter Price had deferred to Gibbs’s view by stating ‘you have silenced me, for you know, and I don’t.’[9]

Imperial implications

This case study reveals a slightly unusual snapshot of the operation of a tiny part of the Old Rugbeian network involved in the banking, finance and currency questions of the day. The issues discussed by Gibbs and Price in their letters had deep significance for the British Empire in the later 19th century.

The Bank of England provided a platform for imperial activity as banker to the State and the central reserve bank of the Empire. As lender of last resort its actions could see off financial crises (as in the Barings crisis of 1890) and maintain stability. Indeed, a significant proportion of colonial financial reserves were held in London for this purpose. The Bank acted as a fulcrum to integrate connections between colony and metropole and was crucial in providing liquidity to the state at short notice if required for military action overseas.[10]

Henry Hucks Gibbs was a driving force in the activity of the Bank of England through his long tenure as a Director, but Bonamy Price’s role as Drummond Chair at Oxford is also significant, as an important voice of theoretical academic expertise on currency and banking. In this role – and through the correspondence with Gibbs – we can recognise that Price was often willing to submit to Gibbs’s ‘practical’ expertise, thus further underscoring the authority of the men in the City and partly explaining the fact that there were few major academic challenges to the practice of extractive capitalism evident in the late 19th century.[11]

Finance and banking – concentrated in the City of London – was a key enabler of British high imperialism. Understanding more about the educational, social and professional networks that sustained it can shed further light on the nature of the British Empire and the processes which underscored its existence.

[1] Cassis, Youssef. City Bankers, 1890-1914. Digital reprint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

[2] Joyce, Patrick. The State of Freedom: A Social History of the British State since 1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

[3] Medvetz, Thomas, Jeffrey J Sallaz, Thomas Medvetz, and Jeffrey J Sallaz. The Oxford Handbook of Pierre Bourdieu. 1st ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.

[4] The English House of Gibbs in Peru's Guano Trade in the Nineteenth Century

[5] Green, E. H. H. “The Bimetallic Controversy: Empiricism Belimed or the Case for the Issues.” The English Historical Review 105, no. 416 (1990): 673–83.

[6] Frederick Price (1786-1846) | WikiTree FREE Family Tree

[7] Bigg, Robert. ‘Bonamy Price (1807-1888)’, in Cord, Robert, editor. The Palgrave Companion to Oxford Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

[8] Gibbs, Henry Hucks, and Bonamy Price. Correspondence between Henry Hucks Gibbs, Esq. and Professor Bonamy Price, on the Reserve of the Bank of England. Bank of England, 1877.

[9] Ibid.

[10] See, for example, Kynaston, David. The City of London. Pimlico, 1995.

[11] Gibbs, Henry Hucks, and Bonamy Price. Correspondence between Henry Hucks Gibbs, Esq. and Professor Bonamy Price, on the Reserve of the Bank of England. Bank of England, 1877.