The United Kingdom and the political economy of the global oils and fats business during the 1930s

This article examines an aspect of the globalization of commodity production, exchange, and consumption in the interwar years: the differential impact of protectionism on primary producers in the context of the Great Depression. Focusing on West African oilseeds, especially Nigerian palm produce, it highlights the dilemma of imperial Britain in the synchronic interplay of forces that operated in the north and south, and globally in the two-dimensional inter-product competition of the late 1920s and 1930s. Imperial Britain was caught in intricate and interlocking facets of inter-product competition on the world market, both north–south (palm produce versus whale oil), and south–south (West African palm produce, Indian groundnuts, and Dutch East Indies palm produce). The article highlights the implications and consequences of the extensive interchangeability of these products, the dilemmas of the colonial and imperial governments, reactions to protectionist policies, and the differential impact of the interwar depression upon the growth and freedom of commodity flows within the global economy.