Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T18:34:47.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Webs, Networks, and Systems: Globalization and the Mass Media in the Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century British Empire

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 December 2012

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cooper, Frederick, Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History (Berkeley, 2005), 91Google Scholar.

2 Price, Richard, “One Big Thing: Britain, Its Empire and Their Imperial Culture,” Journal of British Studies 45, no. 3 (July 2006): 602–27, esp. 607–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 The Newspaper Press Directory (London, 1857), 8Google Scholar.

4 This Is the CBC: Your National Radio System (n.p.: n.d., ca. 1946).

5 Typescript address to the National Club, Southport, Queensland, 25 February 1977, Talbot Duckmanton Papers, title 0510150, National Film and Sound Archive, Canberra.

6 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London, 1991), 35Google Scholar. Anderson built on the arguments deployed by McLuhan, Marshall in, e.g., The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (London, 1962)Google Scholar.

7 Thompson, John B., The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media (Cambridge, 1995), 8Google Scholar.

8 See ibid., particularly 4–13, 26, 32–36, 75. For an earlier discussion of the transnational role of the media, see Innis, Harold A., Empire and Communications (Oxford, 1950)Google Scholar.

9 For a fascinating example of this, see Lewis, Su Lin, “Echoes of Cosmopolitanism: Colonial Penang's ‘Indigenous’ English Press,” in Media and the British Empire, ed. Kaul, Chandrika (Basingstoke, 2006), 233–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Held, David, McGrew, Anthony, Goldblatt, David, and Perraton, Jonathan, Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture (Cambridge, 1999), 127, 327–35, quotes at 15, 19Google Scholar.

11 Ibid., 1–27, 327–35, quote at 335.

12 Herman, Edward S. and McChesney, Robert W., The Global Media: The New Missionaries of Corporate Capitalism (London, 1997), 12Google Scholar.

13 Standage, Tom, The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's Online Pioneers (London, 1998)Google Scholar. The idea of dynamic and fluid networks of interconnection has also been deployed in work on past and present advocacy campaigns. See Keck, Margaret E. and Sikkink, Kathryn, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Ithaca, NY, 1998)Google Scholar.

14 See, e.g., Hopkins, Anthony G., “Back to the Future: From National History to Imperial History,” Past and Present, no. 164 (August 1999): 198243CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Bayly, C. A., The Birth of the Modern World, 1780–1914 (Oxford, 2004)Google Scholar.

15 Ballantyne, Tony, “Rereading the Archive and Opening Up the Nation-State: Colonial Knowledge in South Asia (and Beyond),” in After the Imperial Turn: Thinking With and Through the Nation, ed. Burton, Antoinette (Durham, NC, 2003), 104Google Scholar. For earlier work touching on links between different sites of colonization, and between Ireland and India in particular, see, e.g., Dewey, Clive, “Celtic Agrarian Legislation and the Celtic Revival: Historicist Implications of Gladstone's Irish and Scottish Land Acts, 1870–1886,” Past and Present, no. 64 (August 1974): 3070CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cook, S. B., Imperial Affinities: Nineteenth-Century Analogies and Exchanges between India and Ireland (New Delhi, 1993)Google Scholar.

16 Ballantyne, Tony, Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (Basingstoke, 2002), quotes at 12 and 195CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Lester, Alan, Imperial Networks: Creating Identities in Nineteenth-Century South Africa and Britain (London, 2001), 68Google Scholar.

18 Lester, Alan, “British Settler Discourse and the Circuits of Empire,” History Workshop Journal 54, no. 1 (Autumn 2002): 25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 Ibid. 31. See also Lester, Alan, “Historical Geographies of British Colonization: New South Wales, New Zealand and the Cape in the Early Nineteenth Century,” in Imperial Communication: Australia, Britain and the British Empire, ed. Potter, Simon J. (London, 2005), 91120Google Scholar.

20 Lester, Alan, “Imperial Circuits and Networks: Geographies of the British Empire,” History Compass 4, no. 1 (January 2006): 124–41, quote at 124CrossRefGoogle Scholar. It has also been argued that the idea of networks can usefully be applied to eighteenth-century imperial history (Glaisyer, Natasha, “Networking: Trade and Exchange in the Eighteenth-Century British Empire,” Historical Journal 47, no. 2 [2004]: 451–76)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 For another very specific case study that uses the idea of imperial networks, see Ridden, Jennifer, “Britishness as an Imperial and Diasporic Identity: Irish Elite Perspectives, c. 1820–1870s,” in Victoria's Ireland? Irishness and Britishness, 1837–1901, ed. Gray, Peter (Dublin, 2004), 88105Google Scholar.

22 Aspinall, Arthur, Politics and the Press, c. 1780–1850 (London, 1949)Google Scholar; Lee, Alan J., The Origins of the Popular Press in England, 1855–1914 (London, 1980), 4954Google Scholar; Barker, Hannah and Burrows, Simon, “Introduction,” in Press, Politics and the Public Sphere in Europe and North America, 1760–1820, ed. Barker, Hannah and Burrows, Simon (Cambridge, 2002), 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Damen Ward, “Colonial Communication: Creating Settler Public Opinion in Crown Colony South Australia and New Zealand,” in Potter, Imperial Communication, 7–46.

23 Chalaby, Jean K., The Invention of Journalism (London, 1998), 931CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Hannah Barker, “England, 1760–1815,” in Barker and Burroughs, Press, Politics and the Public Sphere, 94.

25 Mills, J. Saxon, The Press and Communications of the Empire (London, 1924), 103Google Scholar.

26 Thomas, J. Paul, “The British Empire and the Press” (D.Phil. thesis, Oxford University, 1982), 107Google Scholar.

27 Williams, Francis, Dangerous Estate: The Anatomy of Newspapers (London, 1959), 102Google Scholar.

28 Manning, Stephen, “Foreign News Gathering and Reporting in the London and Devon Press: The Anglo-Zulu War, 1879, a Case Study” (D.Phil. thesis, Exeter University, 2005), 52Google Scholar.

29 Potter, Simon J., “Empire and the English Press, c. 1857–1914,” in Newspapers and Empire in Ireland and Britain: Reporting the British Empire, c. 1857–1921, ed. Potter, Simon J. (Dublin, 2004), 3961Google Scholar; Manning, “Foreign News Gathering,” 174–77.

30 Peter Putnis, “The British Transoceanic Steamship Press in Nineteenth-Century India and Australia: An Overview,” Journal of Australian Studies (forthcoming).

31 Potter, “Empire and the English Press,” 43–47.

32 Peter Putnis, “The Indian Uprising of 1857 as a Global Media Event” (paper presented at the International Association for Media and Communication Research, Cairo, July 2006). See also Jill C. Bender, “Mutiny or Freedom Fight? The 1857 Indian Mutiny and the Irish Press,” in Potter, Newspapers and Empire, 92–108.

33 Lee, Origins of the Popular Press, 54–63; Brown, Lucy, Victorian News and Newspapers (Oxford, 1985)Google Scholar; Chalaby, Invention of Journalism, 32–52; Beaven, Brian P. N., “Partnership, Patronage, and the Press in Ontario, 1880–1914: Myths and Realities,” Canadian Historical Review 64, no. 3 (September 1983): 317–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sotiron, Minko, From Politics to Profit: The Commercialization of Canadian Daily Newspapers, 1890–1920 (Montreal, 1997)Google Scholar; Vann, J. Don and VanArsdel, Rosemary T., “Introduction,” in Periodicals of Queen Victoria's Empire: An Exploration, ed. Vann, J. Don and VanArsdel, Rosemary T. (Toronto, 1996), 10Google Scholar; Mayer, Henry, The Press in Australia (Melbourne, 1964), 188–90Google Scholar; Scholefield, Guy H., Newspapers in New Zealand (Wellington, 1958), 121Google Scholar; Day, Patrick, The Making of the New Zealand Press: A Study of the Organizational and Political Concerns of New Zealand Newspaper Controllers, 1840–1880 (Wellington, 1990), 45, 116–36Google Scholar. For the impact of these changes on British thinking about the role of the press in politics and society, see Hampton, Mark, Visions of the Press in Britain, 1850–1950 (Urbana, IL, 2004)Google Scholar.

34 James, R. A. Scott, The Influence of the Press (London, 1913), 218Google Scholar.

35 “Cable Press Rates,” Manchester Guardian, 1 July 1909.

36 Potter, “Empire and the English Press,” 50–51.

37 Richard Jebb to Sandford Fleming, 7 June 1905, Sandford Fleming Papers, 24/173, Library and Archives Canada (LAC), Ottawa.

38 Richard Jebb to Alfred Deakin, 23 May 1907, Alfred Deakin Papers, 1/1686, National Library of Australia (NLA), Canberra.

39 Fabian Ware to Deakin, 22 May 1907, 7/40, Deakin Papers, NLA.

40 See Potter, Simon J., “Richard Jebb, John S. Ewart, and the Round Table, 1898–1926,” English Historical Review 122, no. 495 (February 2007): 105–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Boyd-Barrett, Oliver and Rantanen, Terhi, eds., The Globalization of News (London, 1998), 15Google Scholar.

42 Read, Donald, The Power of News: The History of Reuters, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1999), 49, 5565CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Read, , “Reuters: News Agency of the British Empire,” Contemporary Record 8, no. 2 (Autumn 1994): 195212CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43 Putnis, Peter, “Reuters in Australia: The Supply and Exchange of News, 1859–1877,” Media History 10, no. 2 (August 2004): 6788CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and How the International News Agency Business Model Failed—Reuters in Australia, 1877–1895,” Media History 12, no. 1 (April 2006): 117CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Potter, Simon J., News and the British World: The Emergence of an Imperial Press System, 1876–1922 (Oxford, 2003), 87105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Potter, News and the British World, 142–50.

45 Lester, “Imperial Circuits and Networks,” 134–35.

46 Laidlaw, Zoë, Colonial Connections, 1815–1845: Patronage, the Information Revolution and Colonial Government (Manchester, 2005), 5Google Scholar.

47 Herman and McChesney, The Global Media. The terms “webs” and “system” are also used to describe relationships among book publishers and sellers, “purity activists,” and censorship authorities in Deana Heath, “Purity, Obscenity and the Making of an Imperial Censorship System,” in Kaul, Media and the British Empire, 160–73.

48 C. M. Bell to L. S. Amery, 27 October 1899, MLB22/289–90, Times Newspapers Limited Archives, London; Shaw, Gerald, Some Beginnings: The Cape Times, 1876–1910 (Cape Town, 1975), 110Google Scholar; H. Currey to J. A. Hobson, 27 September 1899, 122/155; and J. E. Taylor to C. P. Scott, 15 February 1900, 130/114, both in Manchester Guardian archive, University of Manchester, John Ryland's Library, Manchester.

49 W. H. Atack to Cape Times, 18 January 1900; and Atack to A. J. Fraser, 25 January 1900, both in New Zealand Press Association archive, box 78, Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand Te Puna Matauranga O Aotearoa, Wellington, New Zealand.

50 Manning, “Foreign News Gathering,” 5, 192.

51 This tendency drove, for example, the New World Information and Communication Order campaign of the 1970s. See Herman and McChesney, The Global Media, 22–25. We should not assume, however, that print was not used by indigenous peoples to pursue their own interests. See Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race, 146–68.

52 Nalbach, Alex, “‘The Software of Empire’: Telegraphic News Agencies and Imperial Publicity, 1865–1914,” in Imperial Co-histories: National Identities and the British and Colonial Press, ed. Codell, Julie F. (Madison, WI, 2003), 6894Google Scholar.

53 Letter from E. Sassoon, The Times, 13 August 1901.

54 Boyce, Robert W. D., “Imperial Dreams and National Realities: Britain, Canada and the Struggle for a Pacific Telegraph Cable, 1879–1902,” English Historical Review 115, no. 460 (February 2000): 3970CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Potter, News and the British World, 56–86.

56 Ibid., 132–59.

57 Read, Power of News, 93; Roderick Jones to H. de Reuter, 23 and 30 March 1910, Roderick Jones Papers, sec. 1, box 6, Reuters Archive, London.

58 Department of External Affairs prepared answers for Postmaster General, ca. July 1912, A1 1916/24780, National Archives of Australia (NAA), ACT branch, Canberra.

59 “Weekly International Returns, Pacific Cable Board,” n.d., RG3, vol. 681, file 112159, LAC.

60 Keith Murdoch to Theodore Fink, 20 September 1920, Sir Keith Murdoch Papers, box 4, ser. 3, file 5, NLA; Murdoch to Fink, 19 April 1921, Sir Keith Murdoch Papers, box 5, ser. 3, file 6, NLA.

61 Chalaby, Invention of Journalism.

62 Lee, Origins of the Popular Press, 19.

63 Curran, James, Media and Power (London, 2002), 166–82Google Scholar.

64 Price, “One Big Thing,” 607–9.

65 For the classic study of the origins and early days of the BBC, see Briggs, Asa, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, vol. 1, The Birth of Broadcasting (Oxford, 1961)Google Scholar. For an alternative overview, see Curran, James and Seaton, Jean, Power without Responsibility: The Press, Broadcasting and New Media in Britain, 6th ed. (London, 2003), 109–25Google Scholar.

66 Inglis, K. S., This Is the ABC: The Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1932–1983 (Carlton, Victoria, 1983)Google Scholar; Day, Patrick, A History of Broadcasting in New Zealand, 2 vols. (Auckland, 1994 and 2000)Google Scholar; Peers, Frank W., The Politics of Canadian Broadcasting, 1920–1951 (Toronto, 1969)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vipond, Mary, The Mass Media in Canada (Toronto, 1989)Google Scholar; Sinha, Nikhil, “India: Television and National Politics,” in Public Broadcasting for the 21st Century, ed. Raboy, Marc (Luton, 1996), 212–29Google Scholar.

67 On Jamaica, see “North American Representative's Report on Activities of BBC New York Office during the Past Year,” 6 July 1939, E1/113/3, BBC Written Archives Centre (WAC), Caversham Park, Reading. On Newfoundland, see C. G. Graves, “Report on Broadcasting in Newfoundland Submitted to the Commissioner for Finance,” June 1935, E18/43/4, WAC. On South Africa, see entries on Reith's South African tour, Sir John Reith Diaries, S60/5/4/1, WAC. On Canada, see Simon J. Potter, “Britishness, the BBC, and the Birth of Canadian Public Broadcasting, 1928–1936,” in Communicating Canada's Past: Approaches to the History of Print and Broadcast Media (provisional title), ed. Gene Allen and Daniel Robinson (forthcoming).

68 Briggs, Asa, The History of Broadcasting in the United Kingdom, vol. 3, The War of Words, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2000), 448Google Scholar.

69 See Potter, Simon J., “The BBC, the CBC, and the 1939 Royal Tour of Canada,” Cultural and Social History 3, no. 4 (December 2006): 424–44Google Scholar.

70 “Empire Broadcasting—Proposals Submitted by the British Broadcasting Corporation of the United Kingdom in November, 1929,” printed as annex A, app. V of Imperial Conference 1930: Extract from Appendices to the Summary of Proceedings, Cmd. 3717, 140.

71 Sir Ian Jacob to Sir Richard Boyer, 10 December 1959, Sir Richard Boyer Papers, box 1, file 12, NLA.

72 Potter, Simon J., “The Imperial Significance of the Canadian-American Reciprocity Proposals of 1911,” Historical Journal 47, no. 1 (2004): 81100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 “Cable Press Rates,” Manchester Guardian, 1 July 1909.

74 Mills, Press and Communications, 103–4.

75 See, e.g., Scholefield, Newspapers in New Zealand, 16–19; Sinclair, Keith, A Destiny Apart: New Zealand's Search for National Identity (Wellington, 1986), 6164Google Scholar; Livingston, K. T., The Wired Nation Continent (Melbourne, 1996)Google Scholar; Rutherford, Paul, The Making of the Canadian Media (Toronto, 1978), 3863Google Scholar.

76 Cutting of “The Censorship,” Christchurch Press, 14 August 1944, J. T. Paul Papers, MS-0982/163, Hocken Library (HL), Dunedin, New Zealand.

77 Cuttings of “Case That Demands Answer,” Wellington Evening Post, 12 August 1944; and “The Use and Abuse of Censorship,” Nelson Evening Mail, 15 August 1944, both in MS-0982/163, HL. See also “Papers Re: Debate Contrasting Censorship in New Zealand and Britain,” MS-0982/682, HL.

78 “Visit to Australia—L. W. Brockington,” control symbol 353/2/63, NAA, ACT branch, Canberra; and “Brockington, L. W., Visit of,” control symbol M98, SP112/1, NAA, ACT branch, Canberra.

79 “Talk by Mr. L. W. Brockington K.C., to Be Radio-Telephoned to BBC,” 23 March 1943; “Talk for the BBC by Mr. L. W. Brockington K.C.,” 27 April [1943], both in SP300/1, box 11, NAA, NSW branch, Sydney. See also Sydney Morning Herald, 12 April and 11 May 1943. Brockington's Canadian broadcasts were also heard by, and would have been partly aimed at, audiences in the United States.

80 Leonard Brockington, “Calling Australia,” 20 June 1943, SP300/1, box 11, NAA, NSW branch, Sydney. To some extent, Brockington drew on the theme of a “people's empire” discussed in Webster, Wendy, Englishness and Empire, 1939–1965 (Oxford, 2005)Google Scholar.

81 “A Good Service to Canada,” Toronto Telegram, 28 February 1907.

82 “The Nation and the Press,” Transvaal Leader, 1 October 1908.

83 Memo by Geoffrey Robinson, 3 March 1909, A17 G. Fowlds Papers, 20/2/91, University of Auckland Archives and Manuscripts, Auckland.

84 Senate Report of the Select Committee on Press Cable Service (Melbourne, 1909), 4956Google Scholar. For more on these issues see Potter, News and the British World, 91–105, 139–41, 154–56.

85 Clair, William St., The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge, 2004), esp. 433–37Google Scholar.

86 Zaller, John R., The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (Cambridge, 1992), 89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

87 Ballantyne, Orientalism and Race, 14.