Decolonizing business history: the case of Unilever historiography

Abstract

The rise of the radical right in the context of neoliberal capitalism within an era of decolonization and the new age of empire has been triggered by revisionisms supporting the radicalization of North-South coloniality on a global scale denied by history. In this context, we investigate the absence of Latin America when interrogating the historiography of Unilever, one of the most important in the field of business history (BH). We also seek to overcome this absence in BH through a transmodern decolonial approach from the perspective of the majority of the population living “histories others,” which promotes an innovative South-North dialogue between the Euro-British and the decolonial historic turns in management and organization studies (MOS). We developed a decolonial practical perspective of historiographic investigation to overcome the pattern of conformist plurality in the North toward liberating transmodernity in both the South and North. The research suggests that the historiography of Unilever embodies an ambivalent pattern of historicization ignored by both the Euro-British and the decolonial historic turns. We argue that inter-imperial dynamics and radicalization inform the institutionalization of BH by the Anglo-American world as a post-imperial turn of North-South binarism championed by the field of imperial history. With implications for research and teaching in BH and MOS, we conclude that transmodern dialogues from the perspective of a growing population living colonialism-imperialism presents enable the renewal of solidary decolonial struggles in the South and North against inter-imperial dynamics of silencing and appropriating-limiting “histories others” also lived by scholars.