The research for this book took an unexpectedly personal turn as I arranged fieldwork in Africa. A Kenyan organ ization, Tax Justice Network Africa (TJNA), had agreed to cover my travel costs through a consultancy fee. Kenya imposes a 20 percent tax on ser vice fees paid to providers based abroad, but I was glad to learn that I would have to pay only 12.5 percent, thanks to a four- decades- old treaty between Kenya and the United Kingdom (UK). This saved me (and cost Kenya) a few hundred pounds. In total, British multinational companies have invested over a billion dollars in Kenya, earning over $100 million per year from this investment.1 When they bring those earnings back home, they also benefit from reduced tax rates thanks to the Kenya- UK treaty.

As I emailed the digitally signed contract back to Nairobi, I realized that the treaty in question had been concluded in a building just opposite my office at the London School of Economics. Somerset House was the headquarters of the Inland Revenue for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As with all tax treaties, the design of the Kenya- UK treaty can be traced back to a model convention negotiated among the major powers when Kenya was still under British colonial rule. The “London Draft” of 1946, as it is universally known, was also concluded at Somerset House. It seems fitting that this grandiose building had previously been the headquarters of the Navy Board, the administration of Britain’s maritime force at the peak of its empire.