Commodity culture and colonialism are intimately related and mutually constitutive. The desire for commodities drove colonial expansion, at the same time that colonial expansion fuelled technological invention, created new markets for goods, displaced populations, and transformed local and indigenous cultures in dramatic and often violent ways. Contemporary interest in the object and its affective regimes has intensified following the recent material turn in literary and cultural studies.

This book analyses the transformation of local cultures in the context of global interaction...