The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa

The British Press, Public Opinion and the End of Empire in Africa
Author: Rosalind Coffey
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2022-01-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 3030894568

This book provides fresh insights into how the British press affected both British perceptions of decolonisation in Africa and British policy towards it during the ‘wind of change’ period. It also reveals, for the first time, the extent to which British newspaper coverage was of relevance to African and white settler readerships. British newspapers informed the political strategies and civic cultures of African activists, nationalists, liberal whites in Africa, the staunchest of white settler communities, and the first governments of independent African states and their opponents. The British press, British public opinion and British journalists became etched into the lived experiences of the end of empire affecting Anglo-African and Anglo-settler relations to this day. Arguing that the press cast a transnational web of influence over the decolonisation process in Africa, the author explores the relationships between the British, African and settler public and political spheres, and highlights the mediating power of the British press during the late 1950s. The book draws from a range of British newspapers, official government documents, newspaper archives, interviews, memoirs, autobiographies and articles printed in African and white settler papers. It will be of interest to historians of decolonisation, Africa, the media and the British Empire.

Scotland and the British Empire

Scotland and the British Empire
Author: John M. MacKenzie
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2011-10-27
Genre: History
ISBN: 0199573247

Examines the key roles of Scots in central aspects of the Atlantic and imperial economies from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries, and demonstrates that an understanding of the relationship between Scotland and the British Empire is vital both for the understanding of the histories of that country and of many territories of the Empire.

Imperial Encore

Imperial Encore
Author: Caroline Ritter
Publisher: University of California Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2021-01-26
Genre: History
ISBN: 0520375947

In the 1930s, British colonial officials introduced drama performances, broadcasting services, and publication bureaus into Africa under the rubric of colonial development. They used theater, radio, and mass-produced books to spread British values and the English language across the continent. This project proved remarkably resilient: well after the end of Britain’s imperial rule, many of its cultural institutions remained in place. Through the 1960s and 1970s, African audiences continued to attend Shakespeare performances and listen to the BBC, while African governments adopted English-language textbooks produced by metropolitan publishing houses. Imperial Encore traces British drama, broadcasting, and publishing in Africa between the 1930s and the 1980s—the half century spanning the end of British colonial rule and the outset of African national rule. Caroline Ritter shows how three major cultural institutions—the British Council, the BBC, and Oxford University Press—integrated their work with British imperial aims, and continued this project well after the end of formal British rule. Tracing these institutions and the media they produced through the tumultuous period of decolonization and its aftermath, Ritter offers the first account of the global footprint of British cultural imperialism.