The Rise and Fall of the Greek-Australian Milk Bar: American Dreams with an Hellenic Touch

Posted on by Wolfgang Childerglas
Cinema, Commerce & Business, Inter-ethnic relations, Local history, Memorabilia, Popular Culture, Retailing history

🇬🇷 🇦🇺🥤🇬🇷 🇦🇺

Anyone who grew up in the golden age of milk bars in Australia, from the 1940s to the 1960s, will have a memory of or an association with these erstwhile hubs of suburban and small town social life…for many of that vintage it’d be hanging out inside with friends, indulging in their favourite flavoured milkshake, ice cream or other sweet tooth delight. My own fond recollection is of salivating over chocolate malt sundaes with nuts and taking turns at playing (or tilting) the pinball machine in the back corner of the shop. This treat was an exhilarating antidote to the aftertaste of having spent the preceding six hours toiling away in school confinement.

B&W 4d Milk Bar with mechanical cow & Red Cross-like symbol

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They were such an integral institution during my salad days that I was under the assumption that milk bars had been around forever. In fact they only surfaced in Australia for the first time in the early years of the Depression. The first bonifidé milk bar is generally considered to be the Black and White 4d. Milk Bar which opened its doors at 24 Martin Place, Sydney, in 1932𝕒, it’s conception was the idea of a Greek migrant to the Antipodes, Joachim Tavlaridis, who had Anglicised his name to Mick Adams. Mick had visited the US and had drew on the American diner/soda parlour concept that was flourishing in the US for his inspiration (including American menus, ice creams and chocolate). The distinguishing feature of the Black and White Milk Bar was its singular purpose, it exclusively sold just sodas and milkshakes (in the iconic silver-coloured metal milkshake cups with actual fruit in the shake). Mick was an early entrepreneur in the field, later adding Wollongong, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane shops to his milk bar “empire”. (‘1932: Australia’s first milk bar’, Australian Food Timeline, www.australianfoodtimeline.com). Mick Adams and other Greek-Australian small businessmen like him were the pioneers of the milk bar trade in Australia…typically the shops operating as open-all-hours family businesses, cf. postwar migrant Italians in the vanguard of delicatessen culture in Australia𝕓.

Golden Star Milk Bar, Perth (Photo source: M. Coufos)

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Greek cafes with a large dollop of Hollywood glitz
The Greek owner-operators in Australia added glamour to their milk bars by infusing the decor with an vibrant American feel…gleaming chrome, neon illumination, plush leather chairs, mirrors, curvilinear Art Deco interiors, soda fountain pumps, snazzy uniforms, American jukeboxes. These early Greek milk bars (and cafés)𝕔 were purveyors of American dreams along with confectionery and sugary flavoured chilled beverages. Macquarie University history academic Leonard Janiszewski describes the agency of the early milk bars as “a kind of Trojan horse for the Americanisation of Australian culture” (‘The story of Australia’s Greek cafes and milk bars’, ABC Radio, Conversations (broadcast 02 May 2016). The milk bar caught on like wildfire—by 1937 there were around 4,000 in Australia, with names like “Olympia”, “The Orion” and “The Paragon”—as they did across the Tasman in New Zealand where the milk bar is known as “the Dairy”.

Milk bars passé
By the 1970s the heyday of the Australian milk bar was well and truly past its use-by-date. Faced with an inability to compete with supermarket chains and multinational-owned petrol stations plus high rents, milk bar closures (together with that of the community corner store) became an increasingly common sight. 7-Eleven-style convenience stores started to pop up everywhere across suburbia to fill the void (‘Remembering the Milk Bar, Australia’s Vanishing Neighbourhood Staple’, Matthew Sedacca, Saveur, 18 January 2018, www.saveur.com).

Olympia, tea and milkshakes (Source: Daily Mail Australia)

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One Greek milk bar that did manage to defy extinction for much longer than most was the Olympia Milk Bar in the inner-Sydney suburb of Stanmore. Taken over by the Fotiou brothers in 1959, the Olympia under surviving brother Nick achieved a kind of local iconic status in recent years for its anachronistic novelty…open late, and always dimly lit, ancient chocolate bar wrappers plastered all over, a yesteryear-looking shop locked in a time warp. The Olympia somehow survived to 2018, until the Council decided to close down the dilapidated milk bar.

Postscript: Green plaque fiasco
Attempts since 2017 to commemorate the Black and White Milk Bar as “the world’s first modern milk bar” with a green plaque have met with a roadblock. The plan had been to place the plaque on the original site of the proto-milk bar in Martin Place, Sydney, now the ANZ Tower. The spanner in the works has been the overseas corporate owner of the building who has steadfastly refused to allow the plaque to be mounted on the structure. The matter remains deadlocked with the City of Sydney Council unable to find an alternate, close-by location acceptable to Mr Adams’ relatives (“‘Disrespect’: Frustration grows over plaque for world’s first modern milk bar in Sydney”, Adriana Simos, Greek Herald, 05-Oct-22, www.greekherald.com.au).

Green plaque in limbo!

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𝕒 a staggering 5,000 customers fronted up on the opening day!
𝕓 Mick’s concept of a modern milk bar was later replicated overseas in various places within the Commonwealth and Europe
𝕔 the nouns “café” and “milk bar” seem to be interchangeable in describing these Greek-Australian run establishments

Slavery, the Elephant in the Room: Myth-making about the United States’ Uncomfortable Past

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Cinema, Inter-ethnic relations, Popular Culture, Regional History

When human rights principles buttressed by international law took root, slavery in both its traditional and modern forms became ever more of a dirty word in First World societies like the US. Little wonder then that faced with the stark realities of such a repugnant and vilified practice staining their own country’s history, some might seek to lay a euphemistic guise over the unpalatable nature of the institution.

⊳ Texas, 1835-36 (Source: texashistory.unt.edu)

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“Involuntary relocation”, denial, whitewashing?
One topical example of this involves Texas and its long and vexed relationship with slavery. A conservative group of Texas educators in 2022 proposed that schoolchildren should be taught about the state’s history of “involuntary relocation”, which enables teachers to neatly avoid the dreaded word “slavery” altogether (on the pretext that references to slavery might be too confronting for the tender ears of small children). Needless to say this attempt “to blur out what actually happened in that time in history” has been heavily criticised by progressive historians (‘State education board members push back on proposal to use “involuntary relocation” to describe slavery’, Brian Lopez, The Texas Tribune, 30-Jun-2022, www.texastribune.org)ⓐ.

⊳ The Alamo, San Antonio (Photo: age fotostock)

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Texas creation myth
Conservative groups in Texas have good reason to try to bury the spectre of slavery as the institution is very much connected to the state’s most sacred historical symbol, the Battle of the Alamo in 1836. The traditional Alamo story—brave American freedom fighters against the far superior forces of tyrannical México, their heroism inspiring the (Anglo-led) Texians under Sam Houston to achieve independence—is ingrained on the consciousness of all Texans and all flag-waving Americans…it is in fact a story central to the creation myth of Texas. The defenders of the Alamo, so the conventional Anglo narrative goes, made the ultimate sacrifice for liberty. The heroic Alamo myth has been reinforced by fictionalised screen versions of the Alamo’s leaders: Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie and William Travis come across as courageous martyrs for the Texians’ cause (largely thanks to Walt Disney and John Wayne)…in reality they were far from lily-white, Crockett was a slaveholder and an unsuccessful politician who resorted to buying votes, and his glorified death at the Alamo as portrayed on the screen—going down valiantly fighting “evil” Méxicans to the very end—was a fiction (first-hand accounts verify that Crockett surrendered and was executed). Bowie and Travis were both slave traders and the morally dubious Bowie also made a living through smuggling. Hardly 19th century model citizen stuff (Bryan Burrough, Chris Tomlinson & Jason Stanford, Forget the Alamo: The Rise and Fall of an American Myth, (2021)).

⊳ The Alamo according to the John Wayne movie

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Slaveholder rebellion, Manifest Destiny, American exceptionalism?
Similarly, the traditional view of why the American colonists revolted—because they were supposedly being oppressed by a tyrannical regime in Mexico City—is at variance with the inconvenient facts. American colonists came to Mexico’s Tejas with the purpose of making money through from cotton, the only viable cash crop in the territory at that time. For this to happen, black slave labour was a necessityⓑ. Once the Texians declared their independence in 1836, the centrality of slavery in the new republic became even more apparent with the institution being enshrined in the Texas constitution. Numbers of slaves in the republic grew exponentially, doubling every few years in the period from 1836 to 1850ⓒ. By 1860 slaves made up nearly one-third of the state’s population. As James Russell noted, rather than being “martyrs to the cause of freedom” as claimed, the defenders of the Alamo could more truthfully be tagged “martyrs to the cause of freedom of slaveholders”(‘Slavery and the myth of the Alamo’, James W. Russell, History News, 28-May-2012, www.historynewsnetwork.org)ⓓ.

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Slavery, mythology and the Civil War
When I went to school in the 1960s I learned that slavery was the cause of the American Civil War, clear and simple, the Southern states wanted to retain the practice and the Northern states wanted to end it. But in the US itself there has been no such consensus. As early as 1866 the defeated South had cobbled together its own, alternate narrative for America’s most costly war.

⊳ The post-bellum myth portrayed a society of happy, docile slaves and benevolent masters as conveyed in the classic film Gone With The Wind

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“Lost Cause of the Confederacy”
Southerners depicted the Civil War as a noble “lost cause”, romanticised its soldiers (Robert E Lee the chivalrous Christian gentleman) and constructed a pseudo-historical myth that the war was all about states rights, not slavery, the South was just protecting its agrarian economy against Northern aggression, trying to defend its way of life against the threat posed by the powerful industrial North. In reality, when South Carolina, the first of the Southern states to secede, did so in 1860, it complained that the national government had refused to suppress the civil liberties of northern citizens (ie, its failure to halt Northern interference in the South’s slave industry) (Finkelman, Paul (2012) “States’ Rights, Southern Hypocrisy, and the Crisis of the Union,” Akron Law Review: Vol. 45: Iss. 2, Article 5.
Available at: https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/akronlawreview/vol45/iss2/5).

Confederacy based on the principle of white supremacy
The Confederacy’s (CSA) philosophical underpinnings rested on an unquestioned sense of white supremacy and black subservience, bolstered by pseudo-scientific ideas of race gaining traction at the time. Suffrage was a right afforded only to CSA’s white males. The South fought to safeguard its “right to hold property in persons”, and to do so in perpetuity (‘The Confederacy Was an Antidemocratic, Centralized State’, Stephanie McCurry, The Atlantic, 21-Jun-2020, www.theatlantic.com).

⊳ Slaves in the cotton field (Artist: John W Jones)

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ⓐ it didn’t go without notice that this development is occurring at a time that Tejanos (Texas Latinos) are poised to become the majority in the Lone Star state

ⓑ the government for its part had originally invited American migrants to Méxican Texas to populate the vast province and to counter the indigenous peoples, especially Comanches and Apaches, who freely raided and plundered Méxican settlements and ranches

ⓒ fulfilling the founder of Anglo Texas Stephen F Austen’s prediction that the Texas Republic would become “a slave nation”

ⓓ Burroughs et al dismissed the Texas Revolt as “a sooty veneer of myth and folklore”

Redeeming the Legacy of the Historic but Not-so-‘Honourable’ East India Company

Posted on by Bonza Rottwheeler
Inter-ethnic relations, Regional History
Source: American Numismatic Assn

The mention of the East India Company (EIC) evokes images of a Leviathan multinational corporation whose ruthless, monopolistic trading practices were conducted without moral scruples…for Indians the name recalls a colonial symbol of oppression and humiliation. The EIC had its origins as a English spices trading company in the East Indies in 1600. Over the following two centuries the EIC transformed itself into more than a gigantic business entity, becoming the de facto imperial ruler of a vast country containing some 20% of the global population. Between 1756 and the turn of the 19th century, the company, its authority and power buttressed by a private army numbering nearly 200,000 troops predominantly made up of Sepoys🄰, “swiftly subdued or directly seized an entire subcontinent” (William Dalrymple, The Anarchy, (2019)). Complementing the EIC’s military muscle used to threaten, destabilise and even depose local princes and moguls, control over the “empire” was aided by an elaborate and omnipresent network of spies.

Elite drug dealers
The company’s plunder of India in its relentless pursuit of profit extended to a prototype of large scale international drug dealing. Devoid of the slightest ethical misgiving the so-called “Honourable” East India Company created a monopoly over opium cultivation in Bengal…poppy farmers were forced into extremely onerous contractural arrangements to produce the opium which left them entrapped in an inescapable web of debt and impoverishment. The EIC then exported vast quantities of the narcotic to China🄱 in exchange for Chinese tea🄲 as well as porcelain and silks (‘How Britain’s opium trade impoverished Indians’, Soutik Biswas, BBC News, 05-Sep-2019, www.bbc.com).

Fringe benefits, accumulating a private fortune
In the 1850s Karl Marx summed up the EIC’s strategic focus: the company had “conquered India to make money out of it”. The company made a killing in India for its shareholders who had a big say in the company, but it’s overseas (especially executive) employees got in on the act as well, granted “the right to conduct private trade on their own account within Asia“ (in addition to their minimal salary) (Robins, Nick. “This Imperious Company.” The Corporation That Changed the World: How the East India Company Shaped the Modern Multinational, Pluto Press, 2012, pp. 19–40. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt183pcr6.9. Accessed 7 Jul. 2022).

EIC excesses
A raft of corporate sins were perpetrated in India under the banner of the EIC—representing the pinnacle of shady mercantilism—–including corruption, bribery, extortion, human rights abuses (torture, slavery, etc), crony capitalism, officially sanctioned looting by British officials, economic exploitation of Indians and the subcontinent’s resources, impost of ruinous taxation. Company exploitation of Indian sepoys resulted in a mutiny of in 1857, the fallout of which was the dissolution of the EIC the following year, necessitating the British government to take over the running of the Indian empire itself (creation of the British Raj). Finally, in 1874 the EIC’s legal identity was terminated.

Reclaiming and rehabilitating the “Honourable” name of the East India Company
In 2010 the long-dormant EIC story took an unexpected and highly ironic twist – the East India Company—a name historically synonymous with colonial anathema for Indians—was relaunched in London by an Indian! Entrepreneur Sanjiv Mehta introduced a range of luxury consumer items (including 100 varieties of tea) onto the market. Mehta’s stated aim is to cast the company name in a new light, to associate it with “compassion, not aggression” as it’s history bears grim witness to. Aside from the business opportunity the Mumbai-born businessman described his move as a redemptive act, giving rise to an “indescribable feeling of owning a company that once owned us” (India), a turning of the tables on the erstwhile coloniser so to speak (‘The East India Company that Ruled Over Us for 100 Years is Now Owned by an Indian, Nishi Jain, MensXP, Upd. 02-Aug-2018, www.mensxp.com

Clive was widely satirised in England and disparaged under various nicknames, “The Madras Tyrant”, “Lord Vulture”, etc (British Museum)

Footnote: Clive of India: From war hero to the most vilified man in India
the 1600 royal charter granted the EIC “the right to wage war”, initially to protect itself and fight rival traders, but by the 1750s it was being used undisguisedly for aggression territorial expansion…in 1757 the company army under Robert Clive seized control of the entire Mughal state of Bengal, a precursor to other takeovers by force in India. Clive who started with the company as a humble writer (ie, clerk) made himself governor of Bengal and enriched himself and the company from stolen Indian treasure (jewels of gold, diamonds, precious textiles). The grotesquely-corrupt nabob Clive returned to Britain with a personal fortune valued at a princely £234,000 (‘The East India Company: the original corporate raiders’, William Dalrymple, The Guardian, 04-Mar-2015, www.amp.theguardian.com).

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🄰 colonial Indian soldiers
🄱 having hooked millions of Chinese on the drug
🄲 which rapidly became the British drink of choice

Malaysia 1963-1965: A Rocky “Marriage of Convenience”, Two Years of Uneasy Federation

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Comparative politics, Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Politics, Regional History
Image: constitutionnet.org

In September 1963 the Federation of Malaysia came into existence, merging peninsula Malaya and the British crown colonies of Singapore, Sarawak and North Borneo (Sabah)𝕒. Not quite two years later, in August 1965, the Federation was rent asunder when Singapore abruptly exited the Federation, albeit with some reluctance initially from Singapore but ultimately by mutual consent of the two governments and with (on the surface) little apparent rancour. The reasons for the transitory nature of the Malaysia/Singapore unification lie in the fragility and weaknesses of the new federation’s arrangements at its onset.

What was Kuala Lumpur and Singapore seeking to get out of the merger in the first place?
Significantly, aside from wanting to merge for security from communist expansion, Singapore and Malaya had distinctly different reasons to unify. The original impetus lay primarily with the Singapore side. From as early as 1955 politicians starting with David Marshall (foundation chief minister of Singapore) proposed the idea to Malayan leader Tunku Abdul Rahman. Initially the Tunku refused to countenance the proposal, his principal focus being to maintain the racial balance of the peninsula state in favour of ethnic Malays. By around 1960 Abdul Rahman had changed his mind. Following Singapore’s attainment of self-government in 1959, Kuala Lumpur, fearful that a future independent Singapore might fall under the sway of communist power, was more favourable to merging with the island-state to shore up Malaysian security𝕓. A secondary but undeniably important motivation on Malaya’s part was the economic advantages that Singapore could bring to the Federation𝕔 [‘Merger and Separation’, www.mindef.govt.sg].

Singapore’s incentive to merge
 Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew sold the concept of the union with Malaya to the Singapore electorate by persuading it that the island-state’s political and economic survival depended on unifying. Lee saw the benefits in establishing a federation common market with the opening up of greater Malaysia to Singapore goods. Lee’s push for the merger alienated the radical left wing element of his ruling People’s Action Party (PAP), which split off forming Barisan Socialis (“Socialist Front”)…this helped Lee and the PAP moderates consolidate their hold on Singapore politics by broadening the party’s electoral appeal [Leifer, Michael. “Singapore in Malaysia: The Politics of Federation.” Journal of Southeast Asian History 6, no. 2 (1965): 54–70. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20172797].

Source: New Straits Times

Unresolved seeds of disunity
After two years of protracted and difficult negotiations the merger came into effect in September 1963. Neither Malaya or Singapore were ever really satisfied with the compromise agreement. While Rahman by including Sabah and Sarawak in the union was able to roughly retain Malay ethnic parity with the Singapore Chinese, communal tensions within the Federation exacerbated after 1963. The Tunku’s desire to grant special privileges and rights to Malays—to appease the radicals in the mainland’s dominant party UMNO (United Malays National Organisation)—left him at loggerheads with Lee who was determined to fix the federal status of Singapore citizens. Lee counter-campaigned against Malay political hegemony with the slogan “Malaysian Malaysia”, a call for racial equality in the Federation[‘Singapore Separates From Malaysia and Becomes Independent, 9 August 1965’, HistorySG, www.eresources.nib.gov.sg]

Singapore aerial view, 1964 (Source: Pinterest)

1964, pivotal year
With the 1964 federal elections in Malaysia, Lee’s agenda for effecting change crystallised as he sought to redress Singapore’s disproportionate representation of only 15 seats in the federal legislature (the Singapore-Chinese population size warranted at least 25 seats). Lee entered PAP candidates in the mainland elections, hoping to win a foothold in the ruling coalition (Alliance) with UMNO by elbowing aside the Malaysian Chinese Association. The tactic backfired with PAP securing only one new seat and caused resentment and further suspicion from Malays. 1964 also witnessed the outbreak of racial riots in Singapore between the Chinese and Malay communities (with both the Malayan Communist Party and UMNO playing active roles in the fracas). The consequence of which was to widen the gulf between Singapore and the mainland and hasten the eventual break in 1965 [Milne, R. S. “Singapore’s Exit from Malaysia; the Consequences of Ambiguity.” Asian Survey 6, no. 3 (1966): 175–84. https://doi.org/10.2307/2642221].

Distrust across the causeway
 By 1965 relations between the Malaysian mainland and Singapore had deteriorated graphically. Divisions were widening with UMNO actively working to destabilise PAP’s position in the island-state. Both governments were dissatisfied with the way the federation was functioning. The Singapore government was frustrated by the paucity of its political clout at the federal level. Equally galling was the failure of the hoped-for economic benefits for the island to materialise. Singapore saw itself having to make a disproportionate contribution to Malaysian finances for very little return. Progress towards a viable common market was negligible, as was the promised pioneer status for Singaporean industries. Singapore retaliated by delaying the loans promised to Sarawak and Sabah, much to KL’s displeasure.

LKY, after signing of the Malaysia agreement (Photo: Ministry of Information and the Arts Collection, courtesy of National Archives of Singapore)

Bilateral tensions and antagonisms played their part in perpetuating division between the two main constituent parts of the Malaysian Federation. Lee Kuan Yew’s personality and tendency towards unilateral action at times didn’t help keep a lid on those tensions, eg, Lee’s decision to unilaterally declare Singapore’s “de facto independence” in August 1963 ahead of the official proclamation by the Tunku didn’t win him friends in either Malaya or Britain.

Endgame: Schism, regrets and relief
 The split occurred in August 1965 after a separation agreement had been drafted, the lead-up to the event was kept very hush-hush (even the Malaysian deputy prime minister was not made privy to the process in train). Singapore was hived off from Malaysia in the end in a bloodless but nonetheless dramatic manner. The failure of the Singapore/Malaysia nexus, as Nancy Fletcher observes, ”grew out of differences in intention and expectation bound up in the very concept of Malaysia (shaped by) divergent economic interests, conflicting political ambitions, and brought to the point of conflagration by inter-racial fear” [Nancy McHenry Fletcher, ‘The Separation of Singapore From Malaysia’, Data Paper # 73, South East Program, Cornell University, July 1969, www.ecommons.cornell.edu.

Source: Straits Times

Footnote: ultimately both parties reached the conclusion that the status quo was beyond salvation but that was not completely the end of it. Rahman, prior to initiating the severing of Singapore from the Federation, first proposed to the Singaporese the alternate arrangement of a “confederation”. According to Janadas Devan, the Singapore government after consideration ultimately rejected the confederation idea, apparently on the “no taxation without (national) representation” principle𝕕[‘Singapore could have been ‘one country, two systems’ within Malaysia, not sovereign country’, Janadas Devan, Straits Times, 28-Jan-2015, www.straitstimes.com].

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 𝕒 Brunei was originally intended to be part of the new federation but withdrew prior to its formulation
 𝕓 a large concern for the Malayan leadership was a hostile Indonesia who were against the whole concept of “Malaysia” as a British “neo-colonial plot” [‘Why Indonesia Opposes British-Made Malaysia’ (1964), www.lib.ui.ac.id], culminating in the Konfrontasi episode between the two countries
 𝕔 Singapore was also attractive to the Malay Peninsula rulers for its strategic location and fine natural harbour
 𝕕 the British were also opposed to the confederation solution