Decolonisation, Diversification, and Decline: Liverpool Shipping and the End of Empire

Abstract

The publishing and curating career of Mike Stammers demonstrated Liverpool’s multifarious colonial connections. The port city’s overseas trade remained heavily oriented towards markets in the Global South into the era of decolonisation after the Second World War. The non-European trade bias was reflected in the cluster of world-renowned imperial shipping lines which continued to be based on Merseyside. Drawing upon the rich archive collections of the Merseyside Maritime Museum, as well as company histories often written by ex-employees or authors with privileged access to business records, this article explores Liverpool’s experience of decolonisation. It analyses how Liverpool’s maritime cluster was affected by the ending of the European empires, how Liverpool shipowners reacted to decolonisation through diversification, and how the combination of decolonisation and diversification led to the decline of Merseyside’s overseas shipping sector by the late-twentieth century.