The Edinburgh Companion to British Colonial Periodicals
Edited by David Finkelstein, David Johnson, Caroline Davis
- Presents 35 commissioned essays on British colonial periodicals by leading authorities
- Provides new insights into the role of periodicals in creating the many colonial public spheres during the rise and consolidation of the Empire, as well as the counter-public spheres serving anti-colonial agendas
- Contributes to recent scholarship by recovering overlooked or marginalised colonial and anti-colonial periodicals, as well as reassessing well-known titles
- Attends to the many different contexts of colonial periodicals—geographical and historical, but also social, political, economic, linguistic, cultural and technological
This Companion showcases the latest research into British colonial periodicals by leading scholars in the field. The first ever large-scale attempt to gather into one volume research on British colonial periodicals, the chapters in this volume analyse the fundamental role played by colonial periodicals in sustaining as well as contesting the economic, political and cultural hegemony of the British Empire from its inception to its fall. The volume considers both periodicals published in Britain for colonial consumption and those published in British colonies and dominions.
Introduction: British colonial periodicals in context, David Finkelstein and David Johnson
Section A: Creating and contesting the colonial public sphere
1. Authorship and collective self-fashioning in Pre-Confederation English Canada, Cynthia Sugars and Paul Keen
2. Early colonial periodicals in nineteenth-century Canada: The Literary Garland in context, Fariha Shaikh
3. The Afro-Caribbean press and the politics of place in Jamaica and Barbados: The Watchman and Jamaica Free Press and The Liberal, Candace Ward
4. Mofussil versus metropolis, subalterns versus seniors: the rise and demise of The Meerut Universal Magazine, Graham Shaw
5. Writing the ‘Wooden World’: periodicals and settler environmental knowledge in colonial New Zealand, Philip Steer
6. British missionary magazines at home and abroad: Southern Africa as topic and Southern Africans as readership, Lize Kriel, Annika Vosseler and Chantelle Finaughty
7. The Sydney Bulletin and the settler colonial subject, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth
8. Periodicals and Australian Federation, Sam Hutchinson
9. The South African News and the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902, Jonathan Derrick
10. The West Africa Weekly: commerce, empire and decolonisation, Jonathan Derrick
Section B: Women and colonial periodicals
11. Transnational reprinting and the colonial women’s magazine: The Montreal Museum, 1832–34, Honor Rieley
12. The birth of the Australian women’s magazine: The New Idea, 1902–1911, Michelle J. Smith
13. Women’s writing and reporting on women in the Ghanaian and Nigerian Press, ca. 1880–1930s, Katharina Oke
14. Indian women’s pre-independence periodicals in English: The Indian Ladies’ Magazine, Stri-Dharma, and the Indian New Woman, Deborah A. Logan
15. Marriage Hygiene and the internationalisation of eugenical sexology in the 1930s, Tanya Agathocleous, Ruwanthi Edirisinghe, Jessica Lu, Jaïra Placide and Sarah Schwartz
Section C: Language in colonial periodicals
16. Making Māori citizens in colonial New Zealand: the role of government niupepa, Lachy Paterson
17. Language and the making of the colonial modern: periodicals from late nineteenth-century Kerala, India, G. Arunima
18. Simple Letters?: British and Pacific literacies in the Victorian missionary periodical, Michelle Elleray
19. Interrogating the imperial factor and convoking black South Africa: the Cape African Newspaper Izwi Labantu, 1897–1909, Janet Remmington
20. Colonial government periodicals in 1920s East Africa: Mambo Leo and Habari, Emma Hunter
21. Print networks and linguistic interaction in the early Yoruba press, Karin Barber
22. Colonial entanglements: Black South African periodicals and the colonial printsphere, 1920s–30s, Corinne Sandwith and Athambile Masola
Section D: Trans-colonial connections in colonial periodicals
23. Melodee Wood, Samuel Revans and Company: colonial commercial trade newspapers in the age of Responsible Government
24. Colonial trade identity and labour information exchange in the international typographical trade press, 1840–1910, David Finkelstein
25. The Anglo-Zulu War in the Friend of India: mediation, meaning and authority, Andrew Griffiths
26. British anarchism and the colonial question: the case of Freedom, 1918–1962, Ole Birk Laursen
27. The Atlantic Charter in British colonial periodicals, David Johnson
28. Citation and solidarity: reporting the 1955 Asian-African Conference in African newspapers and periodicals, Christopher J. Lee
29. Non-alignment and Maoist China: Eastern Horizon in the era of decolonisation, 1960–1981, Alex Tickell and Anne Wetherilt
Section E: Anti-colonialism in the colonial and postcolonial public sphere
30. For illustrative purposes: Nana Sahib, Jotee Prasad, and representation in British and Anglo-Indian newspapers, Priti Joshi
31. The Indian Newspaper Reports of British India: ‘A Kind of Periodical Press’, Sukeshi Kamra
32. The anticolonial periodical between public and counterpublic: Beacon and Public Opinion in the interwar years, Raphael Dalleo
33. ‘Not a Newspaper in the Ordinary Sense of the Term:’ the geopolitics of the newspaper/magazine divide in the Nigerian Comet, Marina Bilbija
34. Africa in Jamaica: W. A. Domingo, George Padmore, and Public Opinion, Myles Osborne
35. Citizenship, responsibility and literary culture in the university periodical in Eastern Africa: spaces of social production in Busara and its networks, Madhu Krishnan
It is impossible in a brief review to do justice to the various approaches and the rich material – including well-chosen illustrations – assembled in this volume, whose merits are tied to the quality of its individual contributions as well as the insights to be gained across chapters... The Companion will be essential reading in (post)colonial and periodical studies for years to come.
The Edinburgh Companion to British Colonial Periodicals is a refreshing, comprehensive, and thoroughly researched collection. Its thirty-five essays explore multiple facets of a colonial public sphere that was richly shaped by journalists, technological advancements, and political, linguistic, and imperial agendas. The editors showcase an impressive range of new research, including contributions that unearth lesser-known figures and periodicals. For researchers and scholars of the British colonial press and periodicals, this will prove to be a work with immense critical depth and potential, widening existing banks of knowledge and pointing new directions for inquiry.
This is a book of incredible scope and ambition (in chronological, geographical and intellectual terms). It will make a key contribution to this vibrant field. There is cutting-edge scholarship in evidence, and the Handbook offers key contributions to the effort to decentre Victorian studies from a national frame.
This impressive volume brings together a range of colonial periodicals, produced both in Britain and across her colonies, to offer at a glance a multitude of positions on political, societal and economic matters. While commending the sheer scale of this enterprise, the real value of the book also lies in its pulling together of hugely different contexts that were yet linked through the imperial connection. The resulting insights on the colonial public sphere, women, language, trans-colonial networks and anti-imperialist movements as well as the actual processes of production and circulation of printed periodicals, are invaluable for anyone interested in colonial print and its dissemination across the globe. An additional attraction is the rich collection of images that embed the discussions in far more potent ways than a focus on text alone would have done.
