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Selling Empire: Introduction
Get an overview of our 'Selling Empire' articles, which explore the selling and marketing of the British Empire.
Article
Level: 1 Introductory
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Selling Empire: Exhibitions
Trace how Empire changed from being a bit-player in the 1851 Great Exhibition, to the main focus of the 1924-5 Wembley Empire Exhibition.
Article
Level: 1 Introductory
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Selling Empire: The Empire Marketing Board
Explore the origins and role of one iconic Empire marketing institution – the Empire Marketing Board (EMB) was founded in May 1926 to encourage Empire trade, and given committees for research, marketing, and publicity.
Article
Level: 1 Introductory
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Selling Empire: Posters
Explore the Empire Marketing Board’s posters in more detail, starting with the Highways of Empire poster.
Article
Level: 1 Introductory
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Selling Empire: Film
Read about how Empire Marketing Board filmmakers were given enormous scope to experiment and explore how this allowed them to progress from cheaply shot shorts on British topics to innovative films such as Song of Ceylon.
Article
Level: 1 Introductory
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Selling Empire: Epilogue – the slow death of heroism?
This article traces the change from optimism over the Commonwealth and over Britain as a jet-age great power in the 1940s-50s, towards comedy and cynicism over empire by the 1960s. Starting with the Empire and Commonwealth Annuals of the early postwar years, it ends with Carry on Up the Khyber and the Flashman novels.
Article
Level: 1 Introductory
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Selling Empire: Further resources
Details of further reading and websites to help you explore 'Selling Empire'.
Article
Level: 1 Introductory
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Article reviews
Robert Miller - 24 October 2013 1:56am
It is amazing how much has changed in the space of 2-3 generations.
I was born in New Zealand as were my parents and grandparents. My father served in WW2 in Greece, Crete, North Africa was wounded at Sidi Rezegh, taken prisoner of war and escaped, was sent back to NZ, healed up and went back as a tank commander in a Sherman tank through Italy and came home in 1945. We were all brought up to be so loyal to the UK and the royal family.
Then in 1973 the UK joint the EEC, and they (the UK)dropped us like a hot potato.
Now the UK is a minor trading partner of New Zealand's we export very little to the UK and import very little from the UK.
From having willingly sung God Save the Queen prior to 1973.
You (the UK) then added salt into the wound by calling us aliens.
Now nobody sings God Save the Queen even though it is still one of our official national anthems and hopefully we have the wisdom to take the Union jack out of our flag and that we become a republic. We used to buy a great deal of English Cars, I don't think the brands have survived.
Certainly the British have not been very loyal to us especially the English. It could have been great to have a commonwealth Free Trade Agreement, it is probably impossible now though as there has been too much water under the bridge, I would struggle to think what we would want to import from England beside Gin.
Carole Nowell - 15 January 2015 12:25pm
Please don't tar all Brits with the same brush! We don't have a lot of say in what our governments do, but from a personal viewpoint of my family as it was then (sadly both my mum and dad have now died), we were always very happy to trade with our Commonwealth partners - including NZ. Your foodstuffs in particular were always superior to anything provided from the EU. My mum used to say that your lamb, despite coming so far, was reasonably priced and always tasted much better somehow than many other places. I know we may be in the minority, but we appreciated what our Commonwealth partners contributed to both World Wars and, possibly even more before that, that I perhaps have not yet discovered.
Again, I may be in the minority, but I truly wish we could go back to trading with NZ. A Commonwealth Free Trade Agreement sounds like a splendid idea, but, sad to say, the current government listens to no-one but their big business pals who have no interest in helping the "little people" like you and me!!
You are not aliens to many "ordinary" folk in the UK, you are New Zealanders and you still hold a place in our thoughts and hearts. Like I said at the beginning, please don't tar all Brits (English) with the same brush - most don't deserve it!!