Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1 Origins
- 2 The ‘great gulf of all undone beings’
- 3 The Bengal Journal
- 4 An Indian World
- 5 ‘Tribe of Editors’: Censorship and the Indian Press, 1780–99
- 6 London Interlude
- 7 Mythical Homeland Made
- 8 Jeffersonian Victory
- 9 Towards 1812
- 10 The Later Years: 1815–35
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
4 - An Indian World
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1 Origins
- 2 The ‘great gulf of all undone beings’
- 3 The Bengal Journal
- 4 An Indian World
- 5 ‘Tribe of Editors’: Censorship and the Indian Press, 1780–99
- 6 London Interlude
- 7 Mythical Homeland Made
- 8 Jeffersonian Victory
- 9 Towards 1812
- 10 The Later Years: 1815–35
- Conclusion
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
The Foundation of the Indian World
William Duane re-entered the Calcutta press scene with a newspaper called The World. It is unclear how he secured funds for this new venture although a loan from one of the Indian bankers he had had dealings with is not out of the question. The World's printing office was on Cossitollah Street, 790 m to the south-east of the Old Fort and the Hoogly River. Duane took his lead from the better-known London newspaper of the same name which had been started by Robert Merry and Mary Wells in the 1780s. Duane was the proprietor and editor, but hired a printer. It was a weekly paper printed on Saturdays. By 1794 ‘the out and inward passage’ of the business ‘paid on average £20 Sterling a month to Government’. Duane had a probable subscription of 300 or above (given the Bengal Journal's) in the beginning but soon was advertising for a staff of five printers. This means the subscription list of 300, recorded for the Bengal Journal, was to become much larger with his publication of The World. If we include the private sharing of newspapers and the reading of them in coffee houses, his readership would have been larger again. His subscription numbers at The World begin to look like those of a larger provincial newspaper in the British Isles. At its inception Duane tried to demonstrate his compliance with government attitudes towards an unwanted press by stating his desire for a newspaper which eschewed dangerous political topics. Instead of following his own advice, however, Duane and his newspaper became a platform for the discontented and pro-revolutionary. Before considering Duane's newspaper and the EIC officers’ push for the same rights as those enjoyed by the King's army, the formation of The World itself needs to be examined. Continuity can then be measured between his Indian period and those of London and Philadelphia.
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- Information
- Transoceanic Radical: William DuaneNational Identity and Empire, 1760–1835, pp. 67 - 78Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014