Global Consumer Economy in Inter-war India

Can history provide a fresh approach to understanding glossed-over aspects of how they have transformed different societies and their sociocultural and consumer habits? Douglas E Haynes’s book, The Emergence of Brand-Name Capitalism in Late Colonial India: Advertising and the Making of Modern Conjugality offers a unique and comprehensive addition for those interested in the business history of advertising in the first half of twentieth-century India, particularly after the 1920s. The book’s thorough exploration of the emergence of brand-name capitalism in India is a critical theme that sets it apart from other historical works. In the 1920s and 1930s, the advertising market in India started to align with the Indian consumer market despite the rise of the Indian national movement and anti-colonial sentiments. This alignment was particularly noteworthy because the advertising concept was rooted in the West, yet it was taking hold in the Indian context. Haynes discusses a variety of newly discovered sources and uses visual archives of advertising from early twentieth-century India (inter-war period) to explain the history of consumer behaviour. The book also sheds light on the strategies used by western businessmen to gain the trust of the emerging Indian middle-class market through innovative advertising methods for their consumer products.