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- Author: Anandi Ramamurthy x
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We live in an age in which advertising is part of the fabric of our lives. Advertising in its modern form largely has its origins in the later nineteenth century. This book is the first to provide a historical survey of images of black people in advertising during the colonial period. It highlights the way in which racist representations continually developed and shifted throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, depending on the particular political and economic interests of the producers of these images. The book analyses the various conflicting, and changing ideologies of colonialism and racism in British advertising, revealing reveal the purposes to which these images of dehumanisation and exploitation were employed. The first part deals with images of Africa, the second deals with images of black people in the West, and the third considers questions relating to issues about images and social representations in general. The Eurocentric image of the 'savage' and 'heathen', the period of slavery, European exploration and missionary activity, as well as the colonisation of Africa in the nineteenth century are explored. Representations of the servant, the entertainer, and the exotic man or woman with a rampant sexuality are also presented. The key strategy with which images of black people from the colonial period have been considered is that of stereotyping. The material interests of soap manufacturers, cocoa manufacturers, tea advertising, and tobacco advertising are discussed. The book explains the four particular types of imagery dominate corporate advertising during the 1950s and early 1960s.
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book traces the relationships between companies, governments and emerging racist, colonial and imperialist ideologies through their production of image. It highlights the way in which racist representations continually developed and shifted throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, depending on the particular political and economic interests of the producers of these images. The book explores the Eurocentric image of the 'savage' and 'heathen', the period of slavery, European exploration and missionary activity, as well as the colonisation of Africa. It contributes to Douglas Kellner's request for a 'critical cultural studies' that situates culture within 'a socio-historical context' and 'criticises forms of culture that foster subordination'. The book reveals the purposes to which the images of dehumanisation and exploitation were employed.
This chapter explores the effect of the specific material interests of soap manufacturers, their consumers, and the general political climate of the period on the representation of black people. The advertisements during the period of conquest and occupation cannot be regarded as representing a coherent ideological position on colonial policy by soap companies. It highlights the shifting attitudes to Africa by merchants and traders during this period. It is during the period of 'pacification and elaboration of systems of administration', that conglomeration began to affect the soap trade, with Lever Brothers in particular acquiring a number of smaller firms. Soap companies were one of the key groups to exploit the image of Africans in their advertising during the late nineteenth century. Their expanding industry was dependent on the newly exported vegetable oils from West Africa.
For cocoa manufacturers the period of pacification and consolidation was marked by support for what became known as indirect rule in West Africa. Cocoa was originally grown in Central America and was first brought to Europe by Christopher Columbus. A dominant image of Africans on cocoa and other advertising during late nineteenth century was of labourers working tropical plantations, producing raw materials for European consumption. The cocoa advertisements from the first decade of the twentieth century appear to advocate support for the notion of 'partnership' as well as the value of promoting African peasant production. The cocoa companies, Cadbury's in particular, appear to have been at one with the ideas disseminated by the Third Party. The cocoa manufacturers, however, continued to maintain that the majority of holdings were 'very small', as W. A. Cadbury commented to the West African Lands Committee in February 1913.
The advertising of tea enables us to observe how the economic and political exploits of planters in the late nineteenth century shifted the identity of tea from a Chinese product to an Indian/Ceylonese one. Before 1838, the only country to cultivate and export tea was China. The battle for markets in the tea industry was always aggressive. Both the Ceylonese and Indian planters established organisations to represent their interests and promote the consumption of Ceylon and Indian tea. In the 1880s and 1890s the conflicting identity of tea as a Chinese or Indian/Ceylon product expresses the conflicts of companies with separate interests. It is clear that the planters exploited and created racist/'Orientalist' constructs that were useful to them. The unbending racial and colonial hierarchies which the planters upheld are perceivable in the rigid systems of order that were represented in the advertising of Lipton's and other tea companies.
In the inter-war period, the government's propaganda experiment, in the shape of the Empire Marketing Board (EMB), radically altered the state of affairs. This chapter traces the reasons for the government's direct involvement in marketing an imperial ideology and assesses the ways in which the EMB sold the idea of 'imperial partnership' to the nation. Through a perusal of tobacco advertising by both private enterprise and the EMB, the chapter considers the response and attitudes of private enterprise to the EMB ideals. Empire tobacco as a whole and Southern Rhodesian tobacco in particular was a heavily targeted commodity. The earliest representations of Africans in British advertising were to be found on tobacco labels and signs. The abrupt decline in use of the image of the African in tobacco advertising is matched to some degree by the rising use of the image of the white male imperial consumer.
Advertisements in establishment papers such as the Illustrated London News represent the corporate companies as bringers of so-called progress and development. For corporate companies who had clearly benefited from systems of imperial preference, the process of decolonisation in many parts of the Empire brought uncertainty. The representation of neo-colonialism through modernisation theory is apparent in all the images corporate firms. The creation of an indigenous elite, which would take over the reins of authority without destroying the economic interests of major firms, was a deliberate policy of both the colonial government and British companies working towards political decolonisation. The image of industrial development in Africa appears in advertisements as early as 1954 and expresses unequivocal support for the project of modernity. The actions of the Colonial Development Corporation (CDC) indicate the way in which British efforts to 'modernise' Africa were neither benign nor neutral.
The representations of black people demonstrate the value of the social, political and economic contextualisation of imagery and the limitations and uses of stereotyping theory. In the post-war period, as decolonisation became a reality, and immigration from the colonies began to change the face of Britain, consumer advertising stopped using the image of black people to sell products. Advertising as an industry also changed dramatically after 1960, with increasing market segmentation and the development of a more outwardly consumer-oriented society. Many have described the 1960s as the beginnings of a 'post-modern' advertising, an era in which advertising images rapidly change, representing a succession of ever-shifting lifestyles and conflicting perspectives. In the late twentieth century, advertising has certainly become more sophisticated. Advertisers exploited the imperial image and message to sell their products.