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Buying for Britain, China, or India? Patriotic trade, ethnicity, and market in the 1930s British empire/Commonwealth*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2017

David Thackeray
David Thackeray*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Amory Building, University of Exeter, Rennes Drive, Exeter EX4 4RJE-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article seeks to gain a clearer understanding of the language, reach, and limits of competing patriotic trade campaigns in the British empire during the 1930s, focusing on efforts to promote the purchase of Indian, Chinese, and ‘British’ products (a term which was used to refer to goods from both the UK and the Dominions). Civil society groups used patriotic-buying campaigns to promote and maintain forms of regionalized integration in response to the partial deglobalization of trade. Supporters of such campaigns sought to develop trade networks based on ethnic ties which could connect across and, in the Chinese case, beyond imperial spaces. However, the hybridity of colonial subjects’ identities impeded each of these efforts to develop patriotic trade networks and meant that the content, character, and popular appeal of trade campaigns shifted between different regions.

Keywords

empireethnicityglobalizationpatriotismtrade
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 2017 , pp. 386 - 409
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to audiences who gave feedback on earlier drafts of this article at various seminars in Australia, New Zealand, and the UK. In particular I would like to thank Andrew Dilley, Andrew Thompson, Richard Toye, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of this journal for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References

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49 Gerth, China made; See also Yeh, Shanghai splendour, ch. 3.

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51 Gerth, China made, p. 22.

52 Along with the city’s British and Indian-led merchant communities, the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce opposed efforts to establish tariffs within Malaya and the Straits Settlements, which they feared would hamper Singapore’s valuable entrepôt trade. Hiroshi, Shimizu and Hitoshi, Hirakawa, Japan and Singapore in the world economy: Japan’s economic advance into Singapore 1870–1965, London: Routledge, 1999, p. 82 Google Scholar.

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66 Kuo, ‘Rescuing businesses’, pp. 99–102.

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76 Fitzgerald, Rise of the global company, pp. 192–3, 230–1.

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79 For Australian opposition to using EMB posters on account of their ‘Buy British’ slogans, see Melbourne University Special Collections (henceforth MUSC), Australian British Trade Association papers (henceforth ABTA papers), 2/5, Empire Shopping Week Council minutes, 7 April 1932.

80 Examples of the use of EMB posters and slogans in the Dominions include The Argus (Melbourne), 23 May 1929, p. 5, and 27 May 1929, p. 12; Ottawa Citizen, 24 April 1928, p. 11; National Archives of South Africa, Pretoria (henceforth NASA), GG2303 1/224, ‘Buy empire goods campaign Johannesburg 1923’ leaflet. Of the 40,000 posters used in the 1939 empire shopping week in West Australia, 35,000 were produced locally: see Reid, H. C., ‘Objects of the campaign: helping Australia and the empire’, West Australian (Perth), 23 May 1939, p. 4 Google Scholar.

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83 ‘Empire shopping week’, Kalgoorlie Miner, 26 May 1933, p. 4. For other examples of Australian attempts to link empire shopping week to ‘British’ loyalty, see ‘Empire shopping week’, Daily News (Perth), 3 May 1933, p. 6; ‘Australia’s part in British trade’, The Age (Melbourne), 25 May 1937, p. 16; ‘“Buy British” principle advocated: empire shopping week’, Queensland Times (Ipswich), 24 May 1937, p. 6.

84 UCT, CCI papers, BC848 A2, Cape Chamber of Industries minutes, 25 Apr. 1929, Memo. ‘Problems of publicity for South African products’, 17 Dec. 1930, 13 Sep. 1932.

85 Western Cape Archives, Cape Town, Association of Chambers of Commerce of South Africa papers, A.1909, 1/5/5, Southern executive committee minutes, 12 Oct. 1931, 11 Nov. 1931.

86 NASA, GG2303 1/224, ‘Buy empire goods – Johannesburg 1932’ pamphlet, p. 9. See also NASA, HEN2193 432/4/1, ‘Buy empire goods – South African first’ supplement, Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg), 10 April 1933.

87 Empire shopping week advertisement, Ottawa Citizen, 24 April 1928, p. 11.

88 ‘Trade binds the British empire together’, Ottawa Citizen, 24 April 1928, p. 12. For other examples of the use of ‘British’ loyalism among the shopping week’s supporters, see also ‘British stock has made Canada sound and stable’, Calgary Daily Herald, 21 April 1928, p. 9.

89 TNA, BT90/25, ‘Empire shopping week in Canada’, n.d. [1929].

90 ‘Empire shopping week’, Montreal Gazette, 17 February 1928, p. 7.

91 TNA, BT90/25, ‘Empire shopping week in Canada’.

92 ‘Montreal’s produced in Canada exhibition’, Industrial Canada, December 1930, pp. 54–5.

93 LAC, Department of Trade and Commerce papers, RG20, file 17417, ‘Made in Canada’ file, vol. 2, pamphlets from Industrial Canada. For the Made-in-Canada campaign, see for example the following articles from the CMA’s journal, Industrial Canada: November 1930, p. 62; December 1930, pp. 52–3; October 1931, p. 56.

94 Industrial Canada, July 1930, pp. 103–4.

95 The Johannesburg and Durban shopping weeks received little attention in Cape Province newspapers: see British Trade in South Africa, June 1932, p. 5. For the problems faced in financing the campaigns, see ibid., July 1932, p. 6; December 1933, pp. 9–10.

96 UCT, CCI papers, BC848 A2, Cape Chamber of Industries minutes, 19 October 1932; see also 13 September 1932 and 18 January 1933.

97 MUSC, Australian Chamber of Manufactures (henceforth ACM) papers, 1/4/4/1, Made-in-Australia Council minutes, 6 March 1924 and 11 April 1925.

98 MUSC, ABTA papers, 2/3/5, Victorian Council, Federal Executive minutes, 12 April 1929 and 26 May 1930.

99 MUSC, ABTA papers, 2/5, Empire Shopping Week Council minutes, 9 March 1937 and 22 June 1937.

100 MUSC, ACM papers, 1/4/4/1, Made-in-Australia Council minutes, 26 May 1928.

101 TNA, CO758/94/6, Managers’ reports on ‘Buy British’ campaign, 23 February 1932.

102 TNA, CO759/94/6, T. Walton (proprietor of T. Walton Ltd, Covent Garden fruit merchants) to Stephen Tallents, 22 February 1932.

103 ‘Why women buy Japanese goods’, Australian Women’s Weekly, 10 March 1934, p. 4; see also 3 March 1934, p. 15.

104 For claims that trade publicity campaigns had encouraged British retailers to stock more produce from the Dominions, see Advertisers’ Weekly, 24 March 1938, p. 460; Churchill College, Cambridge, Amery papers, AMEL5/13, Empire Marketing Board, The Empire Marketing Board in May 1932, London: HMSO, 1932, p. 14.

105 LAC, Department of Trade and Commerce papers, RG20, vol. 204, ‘Canada calling Great Britain’ leaflet, 1936. The Australian government spent similarly large sums on trade promotion in the UK, making personal contact with 25,000 British retailers: see NASA, HEN2185 432/1/10, ‘Memo. on the question of advertising South African agricultural products in the domestic and export markets’, n.d. [c. 1937], p. 3.

106 Hill, O. Mary, Canada’s salesman to the world: the Department of Trade and Commerce, 1892–1939, Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1977, pp. 352–357 Google Scholar. The EMB’s practice of promoting the King’s empire Christmas pudding derived from a 1925 campaign by the Australian Dried Fruit Board to encourage UK consumers to buy Australian rather than Californian raisins. O’ Connor, ‘King’s Christmas pudding’, p. 141.

107 Manchester Guardian, 30 April 1937, p. 10, and 11 June 1937, p. 12; Barnes, ‘Bringing another empire alive?’, p. 79.

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109 New Zealand producer boards made use of the S.L.A. Martin agency in London: see Barnes, , New Zealand’s London, pp. 155–156 Google Scholar.

110 Barnes, ‘Bringing another empire alive?’, pp. 65–8, 71–3.

111 Ibid., p. 79.

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114 See, for example, Vakil, ‘Swadeshi and non-essentials’.