Have we left postcolonial globalization behind with the demise of the Third World, the emergence of a global network society, and a shift away from debating fair trade predominantly in relation to South-North relations? This concluding chapter reconsiders the history of humanitarianism in the light of the evolution of the fair trade movement’s repertoire and goals. It argues that even though the legacy of colonialism is still with us, the practices and perspectives of fair trade activism have recently shifted to such an extent that we are indeed entering a new phase of the history of globalization.

The introduction posits the relevance of the history of fair trade activism to the history of postcolonial globalization to highlight three striking transformations: decolonization, the rise of consumer society, and the emergence of the internet. It underlines the importance of studying ‘moderate’ movements as part of a social history of globalization. It goes on to relate the history of fair trade to earlier historiography, demonstrating how the history of third-world movements, consumer activism, and humanitarianism can be combined to better understand the history of this movement. It finally introduces the structure of the book, which takes its cue from the materiality, which was crucial to the development of the fair trade movement by centring five products: handicrafts, sugar, paper, coffee, and textiles.

During the 1950s, civic groups started to sell handicrafts as an act of solidarity with their makers. This fostered a new global outlook amongst producers and potential buyers. This chapter analyses the early history of fair trade history, which revolves around handicrafts which were sold by charitable and solidarity initiatives since the early 1950s. It thus focuses on those actors within the movement which directly import products, first from all over the world, then more pronouncedly from ‘developing’ countries. The chapter tracks the emergence of these importers to demonstrate how the fair trade movement could develop, demonstrating the importance of missionary and solidarity networks and the fluent transition from an approach related to charity to one aiming at structural change.

Why are American INGOs’ missions becoming narrower while global issues are arguably becoming more expansive and interconnected? This chapter argues that mission specialization is a response to growing population density. As many INGO sectors became denser, more concentrated, and more competitive in the early 2000s, entrepreneurs began seeking ways to distinguish their new organizations. Creating an organization with a specialized mission was one way to survive in a crowded sector and thus became a common strategy. We support this argument with an analysis of original data on American INGOs’ mission statements. A case study of humanitarian INGOs further illustrates the value of our approach.

The ‘Cane Sugar Campaign’, launched in 1968, introduced a distinctly political perspective in campaigns for fair trade, exposing the unequal structures of global trade around the disparities in the global sugar trade. The campaign was ignited by the stalling negotiations of the United Nations Conferences on Trade and Development in 1964 and 1968. It thus directly responded to the impact of decolonization in international politics. Through transferring these issues to local activism, it related such international development to the everyday lives of people in Western Europe. The chapter charts the emergence of attempts to address global inequality through interventions in national, European, and international politics. It then shows how European integration in particular prompted activists to set up transnational campaigns, but also severely hampered attempts at campaigning because of the difficulty of transnational communication as well as a lack of experience in addressing transnational institutions.

The history of postwar clothing can be understood only with prior reference to wartime conditions. The reorientation of civilian industries (including textiles and garment manufacture) towards military production, severance of prewar shipping routes and supply lines and redirection of millions of workers into uniform all contributed to a chronic shortage of garments and footwear available for civilian purchase. Civilian scarcity existed alongside, and largely because of, a surfeit of military apparel. Clothes rationing and campaigns to ‘make do and mend’ were introduced both in Britain and in Nazi Germany. Wartime planners in Britain and the newly formed United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), set up in 1943, anticipated that the end of hostilities would leave millions of people in areas hitherto occupied by Axis forces in dire need of fundamental human necessities. Along with shelter, food and medicine, humanity in extremis would need clothing and footwear. ‘Postwar’ efforts to recirculate secondhand garments, manufacture civilian apparel and repurpose military surplus all began before fighting ceased, forcing us to rethink conventional periodization of when, and how definitively, World War II ended. Victory’s texture was extremely uneven.

Making Do unpicks the devastating impact of World War II by focusing on fabric. As the war ended, a ‘textile famine’ loomed. Carruthers argues that material stuff – garments and footwear, as well as blankets and bedding – was critical to how Britons refashioned relationships within Britain and with allies and former enemies. Clothing lay at the heart of an interlocking series of postwar entitlement struggles. Clothes rationing, introduced in 1941, lasted until 1949. With clothing and shoes chronically scarce, policymakers, military commanders and humanitarians had to adjudicate whose needs to prioritize as uniforms were discarded in Britain and abroad. Service personnel, prisoners of war, former inhabitants of Axis camps all required ‘civilianized’ clothing as they reconstructed postwar lives. Making Do foregrounds mobility as central to the history of postwar adjustment, as millions of people and garments changed places and shapes. Military surplus found myriad new uses with people continuing to ‘make do and mend’. Carruthers offers an intimate portrait of everyday life in postwar Britain – and in transient spaces inhabited by veterans, relief workers, displaced persons and ‘GI brides’ – as they attempted to reconstruct new relationships in an age of persistent austerity shadowed by catastrophe.

This chapter analyses garments in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945, where clothing was a vital matter. Lice-ridden garments spread typhus, claiming hundreds of lives after the camp passed from SS to British control. Medical students and humanitarian workers, from the Red Cross, Friends Relief Service and UNRRA, worked alongside military personnel and impressed German civilians and Hungarian guards to check disease and bring Holocaust survivors ‘back to life’. Clothing was crucial to the restoration of dignity. Many survivors were naked or partially clad; those with garments often had nothing to wear but camp uniforms or plundered SS apparel. Where would sufficient garments be found to stock ‘Harrods’, as Britons nicknamed Belsen’s clothing store? Initially, clothing, shoes and bedding were levied from the German population near Belsen in a British military effort to enact retributive justice that encountered considerable resistance. The chapter also explores relationships between survivors, medical students and relief workers, as clothing and makeup ‘refeminized’ women survivors, and as Britons wrestled with ambivalence towards Jews and Jewishness.

Making Do unpicks the devastating impact of World War II by focusing on fabric. As the war ended, a ‘textile famine’ loomed. Carruthers argues that material stuff – garments and footwear, as well as blankets and bedding – was critical to how Britons refashioned relationships within Britain and with allies and former enemies. Clothing lay at the heart of an interlocking series of postwar entitlement struggles. Clothes rationing, introduced in 1941, lasted until 1949. With clothing and shoes chronically scarce, policymakers, military commanders and humanitarians had to adjudicate whose needs to prioritize as uniforms were discarded in Britain and abroad. Service personnel, prisoners of war, former inhabitants of Axis camps all required ‘civilianized’ clothing as they reconstructed postwar lives. Making Do foregrounds mobility as central to the history of postwar adjustment, as millions of people and garments changed places and shapes. Military surplus found myriad new uses with people continuing to ‘make do and mend’. Carruthers offers an intimate portrait of everyday life in postwar Britain – and in transient spaces inhabited by veterans, relief workers, displaced persons and ‘GI brides’ – as they attempted to reconstruct new relationships in an age of persistent austerity shadowed by catastrophe.

Previous scholarship on the end of indenture in the British Empire has asserted that a revived and reinvigorated humanitarian movement coincided with a series of public scandals over indenture and the increasingly vehement objections of the Indian and Chinese governments. Chapter 7 demonstrates how the model of the overseer-state prompts a very different perspective on the “second abolition.” This chapter argues that the expansion of the indenture system created the blueprint for its own undoing. It did so in three primary ways. First, it tied labor relations, labor immigration, and the moral and physical well-being of the indentured workforce indelibly to state agents and institutions of governance. Second, it entangled the operation of this labor governance in disparate regions of the empire, ensuring that issues arising in one region reverberated politically and economically throughout the system. And third, its own processes of recordkeeping, adjudication, inquiry, and oversight provided a channel along which the suffering and discontent of those under its yoke could be communicated to both the public and the highest levels of government.

This chapter examines the brief but formative pontificate of Benedict XV, the most important in the early twentieth-century history of the papacy: Benedict’s return to the policies of Leo XIII (r. 1878–1903) and, above all, his responses to the challenges of the First World War and its aftermath, transformed the scope and impact of Vatican diplomacy, restoring its prestige and influence on the international stage. More broadly speaking, Benedict set the agenda of the next two pontificates, those of his successor Pius XI (r. 1922–39) and Pius XII (r. 1939–58). They continued the policy of seeking to implement the new Code of Canon Law, and where possible by concordats with states, they would continue to seek reunion with the Orthodox Churches and Benedict’s postcolonial vision for the missionary outreach of the Church. They would also continue to follow the broad outlines of his initiatives in Vatican diplomacy through his commitment to seeking to play a role in international peace and security. Benedict’s policy of impartiality in war was not a passive one, but active and constructive, aimed both at providing humanitarian relief to victims and encouraging peace negotiations between the belligerents. His peace-making and humanitarian efforts reflected new forms of papal humanitarian diplomacy and have become a permanent feature of the papacy’s role in promoting international peace and security.