Media and the British Empire, edited by Chandrika Kaul

Abstract

Reviewed by: Media and the British Empire Julie F. Codell (bio) Media and the British Empire, edited by Chandrika Kaul; pp. xv + 266. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006, £47.00, $75.00. Chandrika Kaul's edited anthology continues work she carried out in her book Reporting the Raj (2003) and adds to a growing field of studies of the collusion between empire and media, now aligned with studies of journalism, communication, and imperial identity politics. Media and the British Empire is thoroughly interdisciplinary. Its authors, largely specialists in history and journalism, examine relationships between media and imperial politics in India, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, New Guinea, the Straits Settlements (Penang, Malacca, Singapore), several African colonies (South Africa, Bechuanaland/Botswana), and Britain. They define media broadly, embracing rumor, mail, newsreels, wire service, and television, all focusing on the English-medium press during the long nineteenth century to expose Victorian imperialism's far-reaching legacy. Kaul applies an "integrative approach" to "the role of the media in shaping the political, economic, social and cultural dynamics" (1) through multiple colonial and metropole perspectives. Authors emphasize "cross-media culture of past societies" [End Page 157] in which communication is "complementary and cumulative" (3). Essays cover the early nineteenth century to the 1960s through several themes: communications, India's impact on British politics, imperial culture, and government media "management." Politics, technology, and institutions mutually inflected one another as colonial and British media contested national identities and the meanings of specific incidents that induced both imperial surveillance and colonials' resistance. Tim Pratt's outstanding study of how Chartist Ernest Jones, editor of the People's Paper, deployed the "Mutiny" exemplifies this dynamic. Pratt demonstrates "the fluidity of the nineteenth-century newspaper as a text, and indeed the concept of 'news' itself" (89). Jones contextualized the event within Chartist goals, but his positions changed as reports and events changed. Despite efforts to connect the Mutiny with domestic reform, Jones was undone by its failure, his own financial precariousness, and atrocity stories. While The Times insisted the rebellion demonstrated Indians' inherent irrationality and incapacity for self-government, Jones, writing India in "an increasing European image" (91), interpreted the revolt as evidence of Indians' desire for democracy, paralleling democratic movements in Britain. Jones used the revolt's failure to admonish British working classes about what not to do and to emphasize the importance of joining together despite differences, which he perceived as Indians' failure. He also stressed the importance of a strong leader—by which he meant himself. Like Jones, Winston Churchill was motivated by the desire for political leadership, even opposing his own Tory party. Ian St. John's essay analyzes Churchill's use of the press to convey his hostility to dyarchy (giving Indians more political participation) proposed by Stanley Baldwin's Conservatives in 1929 (104). St. John explores interdependencies between newsgathering as a system and personal relationships to understand why Churchill's public pronouncements found little press sympathy. Linked to Lord Rothermere's Daily Mail, which published his views, Churchill was marginalized not only for criticizing his own party and for his own credibility problems, but also for suggesting that Stanley Baldwin was attempting to wrench power from elected government. A compelling example of how the press was used to overcome and reverse government activities is the forced exile of King Seretse Khama of Bechuanaland after he married a white English woman, Ruth Williams. Bowing to behind-the-scenes pressure from South Africa but denying this influence, the government's position became increasingly untenable. Susan Williams lucidly traces how the Bangwato tribe and Seretse's use of media offered a counter-narrative to the official justification for removing Seretse and exposed the government's hypocritical promotion of racial equality in Africa. Seretse was eventually elected prime minister in 1966, as post-independence Bechuanaland became Botswana. Seretse's case can be compared to the Victorian press's debates over the Zulu Wars and the British removal of Zulu King Cetshwayo and of maharajas considered "unsympathetic" or "seditious" throughout the nineteenth century. Several essays examine the broader significance of specific events. Philip Woods explains how Viceroy Mountbatten controlled most press and newsreel depictions of India's...