'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.

"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

Autorentext
ALAIN CANUEL Researcher PHILIP CASS Acting Assistant Dean, College of Communication and Media Sciences, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE DENIS CRYLE Lecturer in Media and Communication Studies, Central Queensland University, Australia ROSS HARVEY Professor of Library and Information Management, Charles Sturt University, Australia DEANA HEATH Lecturer in South Asian and World History, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland JOHN LAMBERT Associate Professor, Department of History, University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa JOANNA LEWIS Lecturer in Imperial and African History, Department of International History, London School of Economics, UK SU LIN LEWIS Researcher JOHN M. MACKENZIE Professor Emeritus of Imperial History, Lancaster University, UK PHILIP MURPHY Reader in Imperial and Commonwealth History, University of Reading, UK TIM PRATT Researcher IAN ST. JOHN Researcher MARK TULLY Researcher SUSAN WILLIAMS Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London, UK PHILIP WOODS Lecturer in History, Thames Valley University, UK

Inhalt
Introduction; C.Kaul 'To Enlighten South Africa': The Creation of a Free Press at the Cape in the Early Nineteenth Century; J.M.Mackenzie 'The Thinking is Done in London': South Africa's English Language Press and Imperialism; J.Lambert 'The Old Pals Protection Society?' The Colonial Office and the British Press on the Eve of Decolonisation; J.Lewis & P.Murphy The Media and the Exile of Seretse Khama: The Bangwato vs. the British in Bechuanaland, 1848-56; S.Williams Ernest Jones' Mutiny: The People's Paper , English Politics and the Indian Rebellion 1857-58; T.Pratt Writing to the Defence of Empire: Winston Churchill's Press Campaign Against Constitutional Reform in India, 1929-1935; I.St.John India, the Imperial Press Conferences and the Empire Press Union: The Diplomacy of News in the Politics of Empire, 1909-1946; C.Kaul 'Business as Usual'?: British Newsreel Coverage of Indian Independence and Partition, 1947-1948; P.Woods Purity, Obscenity, and the Making of an Imperial Censorship System; D.Heath Peripheral Politics? Antipodean Interventions in Imperial News and Cable Communication, 1870-1912; D.Cryle A 'Sense of Common Citizenship'? Mrs Potts of Reefton, New Zealand, Communicates with the Empire; R.Harvey That Some Must Suffer for the Greater Good: The Post Courier and the Bougainville Crisis; P.Cass The Influence of the British Empire Through the Development of Communications in Canada: French Radio Broadcasting During the Second World War; A.Canuel Echoes of Cosmopolitanism: Colonial Penang's 'Indigenous' English Press; S.L.Lewis Bibliography