Gold standard exploits: Bank building in colonial Johannesburg

In 1862 the Standard Bank of British South Africa was formed in London. A so-called imperial bank, its growth became synonymous with that of South Africa itself. It achieved a dominant position during the Transvaal gold boom of the 1880s, where its presence on the Rand saw it go from a mere canvas tent in 1886 to a hulking, six-storey neo-Baroque “palace” of stone in 1908, setting new standards in banking architecture. Huge profits were to be had in Johannesburg for those institutions that could position themselves as indispensable to the gold-mining economy. There were heavy risks involved, but by the mid-1890s the Standard’s Transvaal operation was contributing 40 percent of the bank’s overall profits. Its Johannesburg branch not only boasted the biggest banking hall in the world, but was at the forefront of financial instrument technology, including an in-house assay and smelting operation and facilities for the safe storage of bullion. Yet, the bank was an enabler of workplace exploitation of white, black, and imported Chinese coolie labour, encouraging social tensions through the exacerbation of capitalist competition. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notion of symbolic capital, and Patrick Joyce’s ideas concerning institutional structuring and “performance,” this article considers the socio-economic dimensions of the Standard’s operation in relation to its architectural formation.