Communications, Media and the Imperial Experience

About this book

Over the course of the twentieth century, the British Raj successfully combined military force and coercion, with modern methods of persuasion, publicity and media manipulation - imperial public relations - in its strategies to engage with the increasingly challenging task of governing its Indian empire. This book focuses on the media environment of empire as a conceptual tool to investigate its political culture and role in shaping the imperial experience. The British national press, Reuters, the BBC, US newspapers and international news agencies such as the Associated Press and the United Press, as well as the Indian media, had a seminal role to play in this process. The interaction of imperial and media cultures is undertaken through in-depth case studies utilising hitherto unseen primary sources and examining the grand pageant of the Coronation Durbar 1911, Gandhian strategies of mass civil disobedience during the 1930s, the new technological revolution of broadcasting and the birth of All India Radio, as well as the endgame of empire and decolonisation in 1947.--