Van Breukelen naar Brussel Fair trade en de transnationale vervlechting van lokaal engagement in de jaren 1960 en 1970

By selling cane sugar, setting up 'world shops', or picketing supermarkets activists throughout Western Europe demanded fair trading conditions for people in the global South. Since the cane sugar campaign was launched in 1968 and a world shop opened its doors in Breukelen in 1969, these activists have predominantly addressed the inequality of the global market through local activism. Local coalitions were markedly broad. Fair trade activism thus highlights the impact of the rise of a strand of activism which aimed to unite citizens across religious and ideological divides during the postwar era.

Although fair trade was aimed at the local population, activists also hoped to pressure national, European, and global politics. This (trans)national perspective also impacted their own activities: a change in the global sugar market, the negotiations over the British membership in the European Economic Community or the position of the Dutch government could decisively change the shape and the goals of local activism. The local was thus inextricably intertwined with the translocal - 'Brussels' was an integral part of activism in Breukelen. An analysis of the local commitment to fair trade in the early years of this movement shows that we can only understand the dynamics of local activism by taking its simultaneous entanglement in local, national, European, and global frameworks into account.