Abstract
This paper examines the role of technologies of communication in the development of the newspaper press in nineteenth-century India, focusing particularly on electric telegraphy and its application to news reporting. The electric telegraph was introduced to India during the mid-nineteenth century and became celebrated as a device which could conquer both time and space by making possible the transmission of intelligence at speeds previously unheard of, both in India and between Britain and India. The global expansion of the telegraph network during the second half of the nineteenth century added a new dimension to the exchange of information between Asia and Europe; the newspaper press, along with the colonial administration and the mercantile community of India, was among the earliest and most enthusiastic users of telegraphy. This paper traces the construction and development of the telegraph network during the second half of the nineteenth century and uses examples from a selection of English-language newspapers to discuss the role of technologies of communication in shaping news reporting in colonial India. It argues that the nineteenth century was a period of transition in the history of English-language news reporting, in the sense that changes were gradual rather than revolutionary and depended on a host of technological, social and political factors.
