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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.
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

Sujets

History of Asia

19th century

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Publié par	State University of New York Press
Date de parution	01 juillet 2021
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781438484143
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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EMPIRE NEWS
SUNY series in the History of Books, Publishing, and the Book Trades

Ann R. Hawkins, Sean C. Grass, and E. Leigh Bonds, editors
EMPIRE NEWS
THE ANGLO-INDIAN PRESS WRITES INDIA
PRITI JOSHI
Cover Image: Kohinoor by Mita Mahato.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Joshi, Priti, 1967– author.
Title: Empire news : the Anglo-Indian press writes India / Priti Joshi.
Description: Albany : State University of New York, [2021] | Series: SUNY series in the history of books, publishing, and the book trades | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021000806 (print) | LCCN 2021000807 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438484136 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438484143 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Press—India—History—19th century. | Government and the press—India—History—19th century. | English newspapers—India—History—19th century. | Press and politics—India—History—19th century. | Great Britain—Colonies—Asia—Administration—History—19th century.
Classification: LCC PN5373 .J67 2021 (print) | LCC PN5373 (ebook) | DDC 079/.5409034—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000806
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021000807
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Contents
L IST OF I LLUSTRATIONS
N OTE ON U SAGE AND T RANSLITERATION
A CKNOWLEDGMENTS
I NTRODUCTION
Circulating Crisis: Colonial Newspapers and Print Culture
C HAPTER 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
C HAPTER 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
C HAPTER 3
The Uprising in the Anglo-Indian Press
Editorial Turbulence
Extracting News: Improvisation and Chaos
The Hindoo Patriot in the Balance
C HAPTER 4
Wanderings and Textual Travels
House Rules
Indigenizing Brand Dickens
Independent Wanderings
C ONCLUSION
Mofussil News
A PPENDIX
Press Regulations and Significant Events in Indian Press History, 1780–1857
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations Figure 1.1 Mofussilite 1845 masthead . Figure 1.2 Mofussilite 1847 masthead . Figure 1.3 Friend of India 1854 masthead . Figure 1.4 Bombay Times 1857 masthead . Figure 1.5 Bengal Hurkaru and Chronicle 1829 masthead . Figure 1.6 Hindoo Patriot 1859 endcap . Figure 1.7 Editors of the Mofussilite , 1845–60 . Figure 4.1 The Geographic and Linguistic Journey of the Magistrate’s Tale of Pillage . Figure 4.2 “Wanderings in India” in Household Words , November 1857 . Figure 4.3 Wanderings in India and Other Sketches of Life in Hindostan , 1859 . Figure 4.4 Wanderings in India title page and frontispiece . Figure 4.5 Wanderings in India frontispiece . Figure 4.6 “Nana Sahib” from Illustrated London News , September 1857 .
Note on Usage and Transliteration
Throughout this book, I use “Anglo-Indian” as it was in the nineteenth century: for Britons resident in India (not in its twentieth-century designation for mixed-race or Christian Indians). While some have rejected the use of “Anglo-Indian” for Britons living in India as it implies greater integration than pertained, I use the term because it marked an identity distinct from both Britons and Indians. As this book details, the hyphen signals not hybridity, but a transactional relation.
The transliteration and Anglicization of Indian names and words is notoriously messy, and a scholar is continually toggling between clarity and fealty to non-Anglicized sounds. In chapter 2 , I discuss the many variants on the name of the Indian businessman whose legal case lies at the center of the chapter. In this volume, except when quoting, I have opted for transliterations that are current among scholars writing in English. Thus, Awadh, not Oude; Ambala, not Umballah. The exception is that when referred to in the nineteenth century, Bombay and Calcutta are not altered to Mumbai and Kolkata as the latter are name changes effected in the last two decades, not orthographical corrections of Anglicizations.
I have not altered proper names either: thus, the Serampore Press is not corrected to Srirampur for the simple reason that the proper name of the press is Serampore Press notwithstanding that the spelling is an Anglicization of the town’s name. Similarly, I spell Harish Chandra Mukherjee’s Hindoo Patriot as he elected to in the masthead of his newspaper, as well as refer to the Calcutta daily as the Bengal Hurkaru (not “Harkaru,” as one prominent scholar does, notwithstanding the masthead).
Acknowledgments
T his book has been a long time in the making, and for long I was eager to get to this page; now here, it feels like the hardest writing of all, my words inadequate to the task.
I am grateful for the funding I received over the years from my institution, the University of Puget Sound, including summer funds to travel to London and, most preciously, a Lantz sabbatical year that allowed me the headspace and time to develop the argument and write a draft. I stumbled upon this project when I discovered that our library had a microfilm of the full run of Household Words . The acquisition was no doubt thanks to my predecessor at Puget Sound, Rosemary VanArsdel, who all those years ago gifted me, a “novel person,” a copy of the volume she co-edited, Periodicals of Queen Victoria’s Empire . Rosemary followed my work and always encouraged me; I am only sorry that I cannot present her with the fruits of my work in periodicals of the empire that she seeded.
The Research Society for Victorian Periodicals (RSVP) supported this project, both financially and in that more intangible but essential of ways: with fellowship and a community of like-minded scholars. A Curran Fellowship allowed me to spend several weeks in the British Library during which time much of the archival work that appears here was collected and this volume started to take shape. RSVP was also one of the first places I presented work on the Mofussilite and I am thankful for the support of scholars like Laurel Brake, Margaret Beetham, Patrick Leary, Brian Maidment, Jim Mussell, Catherine Waters, and many others. A special shout-out to Patrick Leary who, one day in 1992 or thereabouts, out of thin air it seemed, conjured VICTORIA, that community of scholars who share, collaborate, discuss, and exchange, always generously, always insightfully.
No institution has been more fundamental to my intellectual development since I left grad school than the Dickens Universe, that remarkable portal into all things nineteenth century that John Jordan keeps conjuring up year after year and balletically managing. In that universe, my profound gratitude goes to Helena Michie, who took seriously my remark at the lunch line at NAVSA one year about A Tale of Two Cities and the Indian “Mutiny” and invited me to give a keynote at the Universe. Helena was instrumental in helping me revise that talk into a publication; as I was putting the final touches on that paper, I did a quick check in Household Words , where I discovered a series called “Wanderings in India,” penned by an Australian who edited a newspaper in India. The rest is … this book. Helena’s incisive questions continued over the years and the “Form and Reform” group she led was formative as my ideas were gelling.
Over seventeen summers at the Dickens Universe, I have had brilliantly enriching conversations with many folks who have taught me how to think deeply and offered equally deep friendship. My suitemates and co-teachers, Sara Hackenberg and Susan Zieger, not only stocked the fridge and arranged mood lighting in our institutional suite, but kept me continually thinking about institutional politics and gender and race in and out of Victorian studies. Co-editing a special issue of a journal with Susan was both energizing and painless. I have learned gallons from another co-teacher, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner: about restaurant-review limericks, expiring frogs, musicals, Middlemarch , and finding the courage to write in new media. If I were a better student, this acknowledgment would be in the form of a clever rhyme, set to a reggaeton beat no less. It was another co-teacher, John Jordan, from whom I first learned to pay attention to seriality when he brought in part-publications of David Copperfield to our class. The three J’s—Jim Adams, John Bowen, and Jim Buzard—welcomed me into that strange universe that coalesces and disbands every summer and made me feel like I belonged. The meals, meandering conver