The study brings together insights from IPE studies with historiographies relevant to the specific historical context and official records from British public archives to examine the central features of the role that the British administration played in tax haven formation in British dependencies. This thesis contributes with one historical assessment of the British administrative tax haven experience as the phenomenon unfolded in a formative stage during the 1960s and 1970s. However, this literature does not fully explain how this British system came about with much historical detail. Literature within an International Political Economy (IPE) tradition of the social sciences has placed the role of the British Empire at the centre of the formation of a British-based tax haven system within a broader offshore world of global reach.
Whilst the dominance of these networks even historically within financial services needs to be treated with caution, they do reflect wider understandings of the importance of personal contacts for individuals to learn about new job openings in professional and highly skilled occupations (see Granovetter, 1973).ĭespite the centrality of tax havens to the global political economy, up to this point historians have largely neglected in-depth research on the origin of the global phenomenon.
For example, elite labour markets in financial services in the UK have historically been described as 'old boys' networks' (Michie, 1998) in which personal contacts formed through shared educational backgrounds at a small number of fee-paying schools and at Oxbridge were a central way in which individuals secured entry into the labour markets (see also Cain and Hopkins, 1987 Cassis, 1985 Jones, 1998 McDowell, 1997). In terms of the initial work of disassociating moral foundations that led onto changed normative associations, historically at least, personal networks and practises of networking have been central to securing entry into and upward mobility within elite labour markets.
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