From the 1920s Boots The Chemists was Britain's largest retail chain pharmacy. A common feature of every British high street, Boots was a popular distributor of a huge variety of health, hygiene, and beauty products, as well as everyday domestic goods and gifts. Yet between the two World Wars, Boots began to actively assert itself throughout the British Empire. It expanded its presence through sales agents in some colonial territories, while even opening versions of branded Boots stores in selected others.This paper critically examines Boots largely unknown retail operations in New Zealand (1936-1990) and Fiji (1944-1964). We explore how Boots understood itself as an agent of Empire, by facilitating ‘British’ modes of health and well-being within these two territories. Not only did they hope to offer British expats a material connection with the metropole, but they also sought to offer a retail experience that allowed them to feel ‘at home’. In this paper, I chart the failures and successes of this enterprise.  Boots' shops in New Zealand and Fiji were, I argue, key sites where British expats could negotiate their relationship with both the colony and the metropole. They were also sites of cultural contestation between expats and local populations. In both locations and for different reasons, Boots self-image as a provider of imperial well-being was challenged and undermined by political, practical and cultural realities.

Anna Greenwood is Professor of Health History at the University of Nottingham, UK. She is the author of several books and articles on topics ranging from western medicine in the British empire, to Florence Nightingale. She is currently at ANU on a Humanities Research Fellowship looking at the role history can play in health and well-being. This paper, however, relates to another current research project on the history of British retail chain pharmacist, Boots the Chemists.

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