Paper short abstract:

Ugandans chose where to invest and save money during World War II and immediately after, but did so under distinct pressure from Britain. This paper looks at wartime propaganda and asks what Britain offered its wartime investors, what they expected, and what they got.

Paper long abstract:

In Uganda, World War II provoked serious official efforts to persuade Ugandans to buy war bonds. Further, as the war ended, official propaganda continued to encourage people to defer purchases in favor of longer term formal sector saving. Drawing on the propaganda of the 1940s preserved in the National Archives of Uganda—posters, advertisements, radio plays, and more—this paper will look at how modern savings and imperial thrift was promoted, and how spending for status, display, and politics was mocked. Juxtaposing the vividness of this specific thrift campaign with my larger research project on the politics of the 1940s and 1950s allows me to mark the vigor and creativity of efforts to shape African economic behavior. But it also points to an urban environment of media, politics, and ideas about money and citizenship where government campaigns were only one of the information sources people weighed when agitating for and investing war bonuses, deferred wages, gratuities and pensions, and profits from strong wartime commodity prices.