Fair Trade
Humanitarianism in the Age of Postcolonial Globalization

The first transnational history of the fair trade movement traces its rise and provides a new understanding of postcolonial globalization.

Peter van Dam (Author)

9781009586252, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 15 May 2025

267 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.6 cm, 0.47 kg

'Van Dam traces the trajectories of the fair-trade movement over more than seven decades with remarkable clarity, a broad view of transnational networks, and an eye for significant detail.' Benjamin Möckel, The American Historical Review

The fair trade movement has been one of the most enduring and successful civic initiatives to come out of the 1960s. In the first transnational history of the movement, Peter van Dam charts its ascendance and highlights how activists attempted to transform the global market in the aftermath of decolonization. Through original archival research into the trade of handicrafts, sugar, paper, coffee and clothes, van Dam demonstrates how the everyday, material aspects of fair trade activism connected the international politics of decolonization with the daily realities of people across the globe. He explores the different scales at which activists operated and the instruments they employed in the pursuit of more equitable economic relations between the global South and North. Through careful analysis of a now ubiquitous global movement, van Dam provides a vital new lens through which to view the history of humanitarianism in the age of postcolonial globalization.

Introduction: shaping postcolonial globalization from below
1. Handicrafts: humanitarianism after empire
2. Sugar: goodbye to grand politics
3. Paper: the politics of everyday life
4. Coffee: turning towards the market
5. Clothes: activism in a network society
Conclusion: humanitarianism in the era of postcolonial globalization.

Subject Areas: Economic history [KCZ]