Throughout the interwar period, Canada, Australia and New Zealand ran intensive marketing campaigns designed to sell their produce to British consumers. Using the very latest in marketing techniques, money from their respective governments, and advice from Britain’s leading advertising agencies, the dominions created films, advertisements, radio talks, recipe books, shop-window displays and street parades to persuade British consumers to buy Canadian apples, New Zealand lamb or Australian butter. These varied campaigns shared a single message: British consumers should buy their products because, the Dominions, like their produce, were British. These campaigns were surprisingly large: one Australian promotional film screened to more than 3 million people in month. But despite its scale, dominion marketing has largely escaped historical attention. However, it offers a new approach to what historians Gary Magee and Andrew Thompson have recently termed the ‘cultural economy’ of empire. Their work emphasizes the role of ‘co-ethnic British networks’ in shaping patterns of trade and migration. This paper interrogates the idea of co-ethnic networks, moving beyond their function to suggest trade not only benefited from such networks but mobilised ideas about race, especially whiteness, to create them.
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