Thinking Outside ‘The Box’: Decolonization and Containerization

Based largely upon the Ocean Group archive at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, this chapter addresses how the rapid decolonization of the European empires after the Second World War had far-reaching implications for international shipping. The ‘rules of the game’ increasingly shifted away from European domination through the rise of national shipping lines in the developing world, the intrusion of Soviet bloc shipping and new regulatory regimes and ideological challenges overseen by the United Nations. Moreover, the drive towards diversification (containerization notably) by European shipping companies (and the leading British ones particularly) was indirectly and subtly influenced by these global developments. Existing studies of the rise of the container (most famously by Levinson) have been western-centric in their explanatory framework. Yet, the cost-cutting imperative—in terms of labour, for example—was representative of a global phenomenon, and reflective of the social and political changes unleashed by decolonization (which following the work of A. G. Hopkins represented rather more than merely the lowering and raising of flags at independence ceremonies). Moreover, in Southeast Asia especially, newly independent governments promoted containerization as a means of diversifying and developing their economies. This was a characteristic also of ‘settler’ societies, notably Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, pointing to the importance of not overlooking the ex-Dominions in the end of empire story. The exemplar of these links between decolonization and containerization, focused upon in the chapter, was the formation of Overseas Containers Limited by a consortium of Britain’s leading shipowners.