Wiring the nation : telecommunication, newspaper-reportage, and nation building in British India, 1850-1930 / Michael Mann.

News today is understood as the most recent information available from places all over the world. It was the telegraph which gave birth to this understanding by profoundly transforming the global press landscape at the turn of the nineteenth century. Select information bought from agencies like Reuters, Wolff, Havas, and Associated Press made their way into newspapers-'news' became a commodity and journalism as we know it was born. In British India, after the Great Rebellion of 1857-8 and with the end of the Mughal dynasty, the concept of a shared cultural community was lost. In the decades that followed, telegraphically disseminated news played a leading role in shaping an all-India public sphere, in the process resurrecting the idea of a unified nation-an idea that formed the basis of the anti-colonial struggle launched soon after. As Wiring the Nation traces the social, cultural, and political consequences of the telegraph in colonial India, this new mode of communication emerges not merely as a technological marvel, but also as a force with the power to influence the imagination of an entire nation.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-292) and index.

Generally, the history of telegraphy has been written from a technological perspective. In contrast, this book specialises on the social, cultural, and political consequences of the telegraph. British India between 1850 and 1930 serves as an example in how far and to what extent telecommunication influenced, shaped and transformed the British Indian multiple public spheres as to the emergence of an all-India public sphere after the turn of the nineteenth century. As an intrinsic part of this transformation, newspaper reportage in British India underwent massive changes as that was the case in many other countries of the world in the Age of Globalisation. It is this global context which places the study not just in an Indian national context, but in an international setting. Against this background it is also argued that the emergence of the Indian national movement took place in a worldwide connected and entangled communication context that deeply influenced the press landscape of British India as it did the imagination of an Indian nation in an internationally organised world.