Synopses & Reviews
'The only true history of a country', wrote Thomas Macaulay, 'is to be found in its newspapers.' Yet in the past scholars of imperial history and of the media have worked in separate, compartmentalized spheres and it is only recently that an integrationist approach has been taken towards studying the imperial experience. Media and the British Empire explores how the media shaped and defined the economic, social, political and cultural dynamics of the British Empire by viewing it from the perspective of the colonized as well as the colonizers.
Review
'Media and the British Empire is a wide-ranging and fascinating collection of essays, which describe and examine the role of the media in the empire during the 19th and 20th centuries. As some of the contributions dramatically illustrate, that role was extremely significant.' - Bill Kirkman, The Round Table
'Media and the British Empire is thoroughly interdisciplinary. It innovatively integrates media and imperial politics across the colonies, as well as within them, and synthesizes specific incidents with theoretical explorations of media permeability that permitted local and even individual voices to resist imperial power. These essays, conveying how Victorian press developments persisted well into the twentieth century, offer incisive, counter-intuitive insights into the ways national and class identities cohere and diffuse around the reporting of events. Despite collaborations with the politically powerful, media do not fully control news reception and can be undone by rumor or individual persistence. Without erasing realities of imperial repression, this excellent anthology reassesses empire as non-monolithic, dialogic, dialectical processes subject to highly nuanced metropolitan and colonial imperial media variables to expand our understanding of the complex textures of imperial media.' - Julie F. Codell, Victorian Studies
Synopsis
'The only true history of a country', wrote Thomas Macaulay, 'is to be found in its newspapers'. This book explores how the media shaped and defined the economic, social, political and cultural dynamics of the British Empire by viewing it from the perspective of the colonised as well as the colonisers.
Synopsis
'The only true history of a country', wrote Thomas Macaulay, 'is to be found in its newspapers.' Yet in the past scholars of imperial history and of the media have worked in separate, compartmentalized spheres and it is only recently that an integrationist approach has been taken towards studying the imperial experience. Media and the British Empire explores how the media shaped and defined the economic, social, political and cultural dynamics of the British Empire by viewing it from the perspective of the colonized as well as the colonizers.
About the Author
CHANDRIKA KAUL is Lecturer in Modern British and Imperial History at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Table of Contents
Introduction; C.Kaul
1. 'To Enlighten South Africa': The Creation of a Free Press at the Cape in the Early Nineteenth Century; J.M.Mackenzie
2. 'The Thinking is Done in London': South Africa's English Language Press and Imperialism; J.Lambert
3. 'The Old Pals Protection Society?' The Colonial Office and the British Press on the Eve of Decolonisation; J.Lewis and P.Murphy
4. The Media and the Exile of Seretse Khama: The Bangwato vs. the British in Bechuanaland, 1848-56; S.Williams
5. Ernest Jones' Mutiny: The People's Paper, English Politics and the Indian Rebellion 1857-58; T.Pratt
6. Writing to the Defence of Empire: Winston Churchill's Press Campaign Against Constitutional Reform in India, 1929-1935; I.St.John
7. India, the Imperial Press Conferences and the Empire Press Union: The Diplomacy of News in the Politics of Empire, 1909-1946; C.Kaul
8. 'Business as Usual'?: British Newsreel Coverage of Indian Independence and Partition, 1947-1948; P.Woods
9. Purity, Obscenity, and the Making of an Imperial Censorship System; D.Heath
10. Peripheral Politics? Antipodean Interventions in Imperial News and Cable Communication, 1870-1912; D.Cryle
11. A 'Sense of Common Citizenship'? Mrs Potts of Reefton, New Zealand, Communicates with the Empire; R.Harvey
12. That Some Must Suffer for the Greater Good: The Post Courier and the Bougainville Crisis; P.Cass
13. The Influence of the British Empire Through the Development of Communications in Canada: French Radio Broadcasting During the Second World War; A.Canuel
14. Echoes of Cosmopolitanism: Colonial Penang's 'Indigenous' English Press; S.L.Lewis
Bibliography