Palgrave Macmillan
Over 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 their strategies to engage with the increasingly challenging task of governing their Indian empire. The book focusses 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, American newspapers and international news agencies like 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 utilizing hitherto unseen or under-utilised primary sources examining, for instance, the grand pageant of the Coronation Durbar 1911, Gandhian strategies of mass civil disobedience during the 1931s, the new technological revolution of broadcasting and the birth of All India Radio, as well as the endgame of empire and decolonization in 1947.
