Colonial goods

Colonial goods (German: ) was a term used in the first instance by retailers, wholesalers and economists/statisticians during the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century. The term chiefly refers to foods and other consumer goods imported from European colonies, as opposed to commodities produced domestically or imported from nearby countries.

The term was widely used in Germany and in export oriented countries that traded with Germany, notably Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg, as well as in the Nordic countries. It referred to food and other widely traded commodity items with good storage properties that were consumed in Europe but for the most part produced in other continents, notably sugar, rice, coffee, tea, cocoa and tobacco. These goods tended to be sold in specialist “colonial goods” shops, which were regarded as a distinctive sector.

At a time when food and agriculture represented a relatively large proportion of overall economic activity, economic statistics often divided traded goods between “Colonial goods”, “Domestic (agricultural & extractive sectors) production” and “Manufactured (secondary sector) production”. The term ‘’’Colonial goods’’’ became less appropriate with the collapse of the western European empires that followed the Second World War. It nevertheless still appeared in books and articles in the 1970s, by now covering not merely agricultural output from (formerly) colonial countries but all long-life staple foods, regardless of provenance, as well as soap, washing powder and petrol/gasoline, and other newly important basic household supplies.

By the end of the twentieth century the term had largely fallen out of use, while the items in which Colonial Goods retailers had specialized had long since been included in the wider range of goods offered by general purpose supermarkets. Where colonial goods shops survived, they were regarded as old fashioned, and tended to be known in Germany and Switzerland as . In Austria the etymologically convoluted term is used. In Germany the earlier term is still used in Bremen by the , founded in 1874, which claims to be Germany’s last Colonial Goods shop.

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