Selling Britishness: Commodity Culture, the Dominions, and Empire

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 po