'Decolonization, Diversification and British Shipping: the Case of Liverpool's Ocean Group'

The British Empire relied upon its metropolitan merchant marine for its economic and political integration. After 1945, the dismantling of that global system (and indeed European empires generally) involved a painful set of readjustments for UK commercial shipping. Focussing upon Liverpool’s Blue Funnel and Elder Dempster lines in eastern Asia and West Africa, this paper demonstrates how leading UK shipping companies attempted to accommodate economic nationalism to manage political risk. In their limited successes at appeasement, they also came to undertake strategies of geographical and product diversification (the results of which were often equally problematic). For UK international shipping, the end of empire mattered: through uncertainty and instability, the winding down of European imperial power led to major reorientations in business activity.

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