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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.
For cocoa manufacturers the period of pacification and consolidation was marked by support for what became known as indirect rule in West Africa. This support is apparent both from the kind of images of Africans depicted in cocoa advertising during the first decade of the twentieth century and from the frequency with which such images were used. As we have seen, soap firms repeatedly used
could be relied upon to continue exporting to Britain. 70 This meeting subsequently led to the founding of Cocoa Manufacturers Limited (later renamed Rowntree-Fry-Cadbury (Nigeria) Ltd). 71 The three companies had equal shares in this enterprise but its headquarters were at York. Meanwhile, Cadbury, who had had their agents stationed in Ghana since 1907, were to coordinate the purchase of Ghanaian
it easier to represent black women’s servitude without an outcry from the morally righteous. The use of images of women to legitimise slave relations may also have come about because of the Anti-Slavery Society’s own patriarchy and continuous use of the black male as freed slave in its images. In terms of inter-textual references within advertising, these women contrast with the cocoa manufacturers
interest in the reformation and policing of ‘disorderly’ women. Ladies’ Committee member Mrs Richardson was a friend of anti-Contagious Diseases Acts campaigner Josephine Butler, and also served as secretary of the York Association for the Care of Young Girls. 98 Both Joseph Rowntree (1801–1859) and his son Joseph (1836–1925) the cocoa manufacturer, social reformer and alderman of York, sat on the Gentlemen's Committee, who were in charge of managing the Refuge. Participation in these kinds of charitable ventures gave
in the autumn of 1892. The son of a cocoa manufacturer, he was expelled from Marlborough having been caught in the lavatory with a much younger boy engaging in lewd acts. In 1883, when of age, he came into a handsome fortune of £45,000, but with weekly expenses ranging from £40 and £50 a week on rent boys, bankruptcy within a year was inevitable. Taylor was married, and his husband, Charles Spurrier Mason with whom he staged a mock wedding in 1893, was a twentyfive-year-old prostitute. Maurice Schwabe introduced Wilde to Taylor. Schwabe was both Taylor’s former