When a strong shilling shook the colonial government

The war of the currencies started soon after the end of the Great War. [File, Standard]

The shilling is battered by the major world currencies. Kenyans are crying as the cost of goods and services rise to unprecedented levels and although MPs have not yet constituted a special committee to rein in the shilling, like they did a decade ago, the future looks bleak.

The first time the Kenyan currency was in this kind of trouble more than a century ago, it was because of its strength. Ironically, trouble at the time arose because the shilling was stronger than the British Pound. The echoes of the battle of the shilling against the pound ricocheted in Nairobi, reverberated in London, Bombay, and Calcutta, and touched off a revolution that almost toppled the colonial administration.