Colonial Days: We Demand Colonies For Poland Poster, Maritime and Colonial League (1938)

Dr. Piotr Puchalski depicts interwar Poland's imperial aspirations, through the Maritime and Colonial League's 1938 poster, Colonial Days: We Demand Colonies For Poland.

Facing economic crises and the onset of World War II, Poland looked to Africa as a source of material wealth, potential place of alternative appeasement, and site of refuge for its Jewish population. With their abundance of 'exotic' fruits and peoples, propaganda posters advertised Poland's Colonial Days events in April 1938, improving public awareness of places like Cameroon, Madagascar, and Liberia, and bolstering national support for elites' ever-shifting visions for colonialism. Colouring Eastern European perceptions of Africa, this poster highlights how colonialism was a truly global phenomenon, attracting the interest of powers without colonies of their own. Today, Poland is more often considered a victim of imperial exploitation – most famously by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union - than a historic empire or colonial power. But Colonial Days reveals persistent Polish cultural and socioeconomic insecurities, and how European political and artistic trends, from racial pseudoscience to modernism, were moulded by colonial interactions.

PRESENTER: Dr. Piotr Puchalski, Assistant Professor of Modern History at the Pedagogical University of Kraków. He specialises in the history of Poland, colonial empires, international relations, and contemporary tourism. He is the author of Poland in a Colonial World Order: Adjustments and Aspirations, 1918-1939, published by Routledge in 2022.

ART: Colonial Days: We Demand Colonies For Poland Poster, Maritime and Colonial League (1938).

IMAGE: 'Colonial Days Poster'.

SOUNDS: Gary War.

PRODUCER: Jelena Sofronijevic.

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