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From the 1920s until the outbreak of the Second World War, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand filled British shop windows, newspaper columns, and cinema screens with “British to the core” Canadian apples, “British to the backbone” New Zealand lamb, and “All British” Australian butter. In remarkable yet forgotten advertising campaigns, prime ministers, touring cricketers, “lady demonstrators,” and even boxing kangaroos were pressed into service to sell more Dominion produce to British shoppers. But as they sold apples and butter, these campaigns also sold a Dominion-styled British identity.
Selling Britishness explores the role of commodity marketing in creating Britishness. Dominion settlers considered themselves British and marketed their commodities accordingly. Meanwhile, ambitious Dominion advertising agencies set up shop in London to bring British goods, like Ovaltine, back to the dominions and persuade their fellow citizens to buy British. Conventionally nationalist narratives have posited the growth of independent national identities during the interwar period, though some have suggested imperial sentiment endured. Felicity Barnes takes a new approach, arguing that far from shaking off or relying on any lasting sense of Britishness, Dominion marketing produced it. Selling Britishness shows that when constructing Britishness, advertisers employed imperial hierarchies of race, class, and gender. Consumption worked to bolster colonialism, and advertising extended imperial power into the everyday.
Drawing on extensive new archives, Selling Britishness explores a shared British identity constructed by marketers and advertisers during advertising’s golden age.
‘An example of first-class scholarship, Selling Britishness is a convincing and compelling read.’ David Higgins, University of Newcastle and author of Brands, Geographic Origin, and the Global Economy: A History from the Nineteenth Century to the Present
“This is a colourful account of how, from the mid-1920s, the Western world embraced the consumer society and how three settler colonies of the British Empire marketed their goods in the ‘Home’ country. While [the book’s] academic framework is an essential part of scholarship today, the rich detail and anecdotes from the past are a valuable contribution to wider knowledge of how New Zealand earned a living from exporting food.” *National Business Review *
“Barnes takes a welcome alternative approach [and] convincingly argues that the Dominions played a leading role in developing commodity Marketing. Through a series of engaging case studies, Selling Britishness [challenges] the metropolitan focus of much of the literature that has explored the popular culture of imperial trade.” *Journal of British Studies *
“Barnes provides useful insights into how commodities were implanted within the daily lives of British people. [Selling Britishness] is a significant contribution to the history of commodities in the twentieth century [and] contributes to understanding national identity in an era when high imperialism had arguably waned but had by no means completely evaporated.” New Zealand Journal of History
“This is a major addition to the history of interwar British imperial marketing.” British Journal of Canadian Studies
“Selling Britishness explores the advertising campaigns of the three major British Dominions [and] places Dominion commodity marketing as a significant cultural force. Barnes delivers a compelling and enjoyable book.” Journal of Australian, Canadian, and Aotearoa New Zealand Studies
"Barnes provides a well-researched, strongly argued narrative for the roles of advertising and commodity culture in the development of consumer and political identities." H-Net