Shortlisted for the 2022 George A. and Jeanne S. De Long Book History Book Prize presented by the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing
Winner of the 2021 Robert and Vineta Colby Scholarly Book Prize presented by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals
In
Empire News, Priti Joshi examines the neglected archive of English-language newspapers from India to unpack the maintenance and tensions of empire. Focusing on the period between 1845 and 1860, she analyzes circulation—of newspapers and news, of peoples and ideas—and newspapers’ coverage and management of crises. The book explores three moments of colonial crisis. The sensational trial of East India Company vs. Jyoti Prasad in Agra in 1851 as the Kohinoor diamond is exhibited in London’s Hyde Park is a case lost but for colonial newspapers. In these accounts, the trial raises the specter of Warren Hastings and the costs of empire. The Uprising of 1857 was a geopolitical crisis, but for the Indian news media it was a story simultaneously of circulation and blockage, of contraction and expansion, of colonial media confronting its limits and innovating. Finally, Joshi traces circuits of exchange between Britain and India and across media platforms, including Dickens’s
Household Words, where the empire’s
mofussil (margin) appears in an unrecognized guise during and after the Uprising. By attending to these fascinating accounts in the Anglo-Indian press, Joshi illuminates the circulation and reproduction of colonial narratives and informs our understanding of the functioning of empire.
Spis treści
List of Illustrations
Note on Usage and Transliteration
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Circulating Crisis: Colonial Newspapers and Print Culture
1. Bibliographical, Periodical, and Imperial Codes
An Archive—With Many Gaps
Materiality: Communicating through Form, Format, and Organization
In Good Company: Colonial Critique and Imperial Certitude in the
Mofussilite
2. Through a Glass Darkly: The Great Exhibition and the Great Indian Contractor
Rocks in Paxton’s Glass Palace
’Full of Novelty and Interest’: The Great Exhibition Overtaken
The Trial in Many Mirrors
3. The Uprising in the Anglo-Indian Press
Editorial Turbulence
Extracting News: Improvisation and Chaos
The
Hindoo Patriot in the Balance
4. Wanderings and Textual Travels
House Rules
Indigenizing Brand Dickens
Independent
Wanderings
Conclusion: Mofussil News
Appendix: Press Regulations and Significant Events in Indian Press History, 1780–1857
Bibliography
Index
O autorze
Priti Joshi is Professor of English at the University of Puget Sound.