Communications, Media
and the Imperial Experience:
Britain and India in the Twentieth Century
by Chandrika Kaul (Author)
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.
