Overview

Contributors to nineteenth-century British periodicals perceived the press as the principal medium of public conversation. Convinced of its real or potential power, they examined it thoroughly. They discovered its roots in ancient Rome, Renaissance Amsterdam, or the English Civil Wars. They described its adolescence in the eighteenth-century western world and delineated its maturity in Britain, if not the empire and foreign realms, during the Victorian epoch. They attested, not always with enthusiasm, to the evolution of the domestic press from an aristocratic to a democratic institution and emphasized its standing internationally, supposedly due to accurate and impartial news gathering and thoughtful commentary. Discussion ranged broadly, but persistent motifs were the nexus between the press and government; changes in newspapers, magazines, and reviews; the definition of journalist and its consequences for training and reward; how these circumstances compared or contrasted with those in other places.

The Impact of Government

Serials of all persuasions noticed Parliament's history of interference with the press. Pieces surfaced on the stamp duty passed in 1712, the subsequent imposts on advertising and paper, the resistance of Members to admitting reporters, the press curbs in 1819, and the ongoing prosecutions for seditious or blasphemous libel and subventions from cabinets. Writers simultaneously and retrospectively protested or celebrated these actions and similar ones of colonial governors and Continental governments. In this discourse, taxes either inhibited “news” papers for the poor and fattened the treasury, or deterred uprisings; Ireland consistently typified prosecutions and Russia, censorship; India and France inconsistently typified both.

Forebear of the Home and Foreign Review and beacon for enlightened Catholics, the Rambler displayed devotion to its church's journalism.

1. [?Capes, J. M]. “Preface.” 3 (1848–49): iii–vi.

Recommitted the Rambler to political impartiality, the “strictest decorum of language,” and a resistance to “offensive” personalization.

2. Our Own Correspondent [J. S. Northcote]. “Roman Intelligence: Agitation in the City – Attempted Assassination of Father Hearne, of Manchester.” 3 (1848–49): 39–41.

Selected the Epoca, Contemporaneo, and Giornale Romano as the “radical journals” of Rome.

3. [Capes, J. M.]. “The Duties of Journalists – Catholic and Protestant Education.” 3 (1848–49): 325–31.

Confessed that no periodical was always accurate in its facts, judgments, taste, and even “positive morality.”

4. “Barham's Life of Theodore Hook.” 3 (1848–49): 365–67.

Review of R. H. Barham's book recollected that Hook's “daring and witty personalities in the John Bull newspaper made even its hopeless Toryism brilliant and entertaining.” John Bull was “a phenomenon in the annals of newspapers.” It was selling 10,000 copies weekly by its sixth number and in its first year realized a profit of 4,000 pounds.

5. [?Capes, J. M.]. “Macaulay's History of England.” 3 (1848–49): 420–33.

Paralleled T. B. Macaulay's style in the captioned work and his Edinburgh Review essays.

6. [Capes, J. M.]. “The Fourth Estate.” 3 (1848–49): 471–77.

Maintained that the nineteenth-century press, notably in England, France, Germany, and the United States, was the “supreme authority” because it had the “practical power to control every other authority in a state.”

Antedating the Modern Review, the Unitarian Theological pointed out the religious press in Western Europe.

1. [Gordon, John]. “Scotch Religious Liberality.” 1 (1864): 180–98.

Observed that Good Words, though published in Scotland, was a religious magazine that circulated “over the whole island.” With Norman Macleod as editor, it carried religious instruction and “literature of a generally attractive kind.”

2. [Cobbe, Frances Power]. “Religion in Italy in 1864.” 1 (1864): 198–214.

Synopsized Italian religious journalism: Turin's Catholic Pace, a daily, and Rome's Mediatore, a weekly, edited by Carlo Passaglia. In Naples the Protestant Coscienza had “no great merit,” and Civiltà Evengelica had no attention. In Florence the Waldensian Eco della Verità, with a circulation of 750, was “a very respectable controversial paper of a popular character, its tone good, and the ability of some of the articles very fair.” The Florentine Scuola della Domenica sold 2,500 copies for children, and Letture di Famiglia, which spoke for evangelicals, sold 500. This “moral and literary periodical” was akin to Leisure Hour. Appended that in Britain, religious information about Italy came from News of the Churches, Evangelical Christendom, and Voice from Italy, which was “privately distributed.”

3. [Beard, Charles]. “Ecclesiastical Chronicle.” 1 (1864): 236–54.

Bowed to the British Catholic Home and Foreign Review, “ably and honestly conducted,” and the French Protestant Lien, edited by Athanase and Etienne Coquerel.

4. Un Pasteur de l'Eglise Réformée de Paris [Athanase Coquerel]. “Protestantism in France: 1789–1864.” 2 (1865): 353–78.

Introduction

This chapter diagnoses Indonesia's experiences with decentralization. The historical focus is on the period from the commencement of “big bang” decentralization reforms in 1999 until early 2010. The policy focus is on the medium-term period of 2010–2015. The study of decentralization in any country typically involves a complex mix of historical, political, administrative, financial, economic, and governance elements. The study of decentralization in Indonesia in many ways involves even more than the usual range of complexities, because of the volatilities of recent history and politics, the country's highly regulated and complex administrative systems, the widely dispersed geographic nature, and large population of about 235 million people. Indonesia's complexities can lead to generalized national assessments of how decentralization is progressing, but the reality is widely differing experiences across the archipelago.

Much of the emphasis in this chapter is on fiscal and economic aspects of decentralization. However, the chapter also touches on political, administrative, and governance elements that, taken together with financial and economic matters, comprise an attempt to address the broader political economy of decentralization in Indonesia. Commonly stated higher level objectives for decentralization in Indonesia include improved local-level delivery of government services and better social and economic development outcomes (higher regional growth, reduced poverty, increased employment, etc.). While some of these objectives may be beyond the scope and capacities of regional governments (RGs) to deliver, they provide a broad framework as to what this diagnosis covers.

The classificatory order for the visual arts and art history has long been rigorous in its demand for juxtapositions and comparisons – notwithstanding the fact that there is really no such thing as a disciplinary domain called ‘comparative visuality’ that can parallel comparative literature. In regards to cultural comparisons, there is a vast difference between approaches to visual art and to literature when it comes to analysis of their objects of expression. Historically, the endeavour of comparing the visual arts was an enlightenment practice, established by historian-critics such as Johann Winckelmann who in 1764 made the case for judging the ‘highest beauty’ achieved by Classical Greek artists in contrast to the ‘arrested growth’ of the artistic development of Egyptian and Persian art. His politic of comparison simply extended the broader notions about cultures from Kantian ‘observations’ which were later incorporated with Hegelian philosophies of history.

Planned as light reading by William Ainsworth, who oversaw the New Monthly Magazine after 1845, Ainsworth's press coverage had an international flavor.

1. [Ainsworth, W. H.]. “Preliminary Address.” 1 (1842): i–iv.

Pledged that Ainsworth's, with “real responsibility in literary hands,” would “give greater freedom to writers.” Papers with “bold and original inquiry” and without politics and “scandal” would evidence that Ainsworth's goals were “a higher tone of literary speculation” and “a more steadfast moral endeavour.”

2. Cruikshank, George. “A Few Words to the Public about Richard Bentley.” 1 (1842): verso, i.

Cruikshank denied that he was the illustrator of Bentley's Miscellany but acknowledged that it had one of his etchings every month and promoted his nephew, an engraver, as an illustrator.

3. [Ainsworth, W. H.]. “To the Subscribers to Ainsworth's Magazine.” 1 (1842): recto, i.

Justified a price rise to two shillings to pay for more engravings as articles increased. Sales were “large,” and press approval of the magazine was “unequivocal and emphatic.”

4. [Ainsworth, W. H.]. “To Our Readers.” 2 (1842): i–ii.

Excused a switch to smaller typeface, which writers and readers disliked, because commissioned articles were so numerous.

5. “A Paper on Puffing.” 2 (1842): 42–47.

Classed many current book reviews as “preliminary,” “negative,” “mysterious,” “deprecatory” or “pugnacious,” unfortunate because the ‘reading,’ not ‘thinking’ public adopted press opinion. Evening papers “boldly fling off every trammel of respectability and truth.”

While discussing Rosa Luxemburg's views on socialism and democracy, it has been a standard practice to refer to her political texts, i.e. Social Reform or Revolution, The Mass Strike, The Russian Revolution, the famous pieces which she wrote in Rote Fahne on the eve of the failed German Revolution of 1918, that is, writings specifically political-ideological and programmatic in orientation. In comparison, her letters, the vast range of which is now accessible mainly due to the publication of the Gesammelte Briefe (Collected Letters) in six volumes under the very able editorship of Annelies Laschitza and Guenter Radczun (vols 1 to 5) and Annelies Laschitza (vol. 6) respectively, have commanded little attention. Rosa Luxemburg, however, is not an exception. In the intellectual history of Marxism the emphasis, for obvious reasons, has been traditionally on texts which are explicitly political, the letters occupying a position of secondary importance. Thus, except a few letters like Engels to J. Bloch (21–22 September 1890), Marx to L. Kugelmann (12 April 1871), Engels to H. Starkenburg (25 January 1894), the enormous Marx-Engels correspondence has remained largely unexplored. In the Collected Works of Lenin his correspondence is covered by a large number of volumes but has remained mostly neglected except perhaps such well-known pieces as his “Letters to the Congress” which he dictated in the last days of his life. One possible reason is that letters are largely personal and subjective, in comparison with other writings, specifically meant for serving a distinct political purpose (i.e. Lenin's What is to be Done? or Rosa Luxemburg's Organizational Questions of Russian Social Democracy).

1975: ‘Whatever You Say, Say Nothing’

Heaney talks of a Northern Ireland that is parochial and divided – a place of silence and fear where it is safer to keep quiet than to say the wrong thing. Heaney's poem speaks of a provincial people hemmed in by the past and silenced by the conflict. This was certainly reflected in the limited film culture of 1970s Northern Ireland and in my own experiences of the times. I was brought up in Northern Ireland during the worst period of these Troubles – a teenager in the 1970s. Although technically an outsider, my Polish background ensured I was subsumed into the Catholic Nationalist community even though I lived in a predominantly Protestant area. It was a time when people were forced to take sides to line up with one point of view or another.

2011: Now I am asking is Northern Irish Film finally, after nearly three decades of development, beginning to find its voice? I am going to argue here that it has come of age because of its ability to accommodate the demands of the cinematic popular form while investigating the controversial. I believe that this new confidence has been achieved over the past thirty years through the creation of a whole series of interesting if not always commercially viable feature film experiments.

To understand why I am being so optimistic it is first necessary to set out some of the history and filmmaking practice that has led Northern Ireland Screen in 2009 to suggest: ‘The screen agency's profile is at an all time high amongst the global filmmaking community.’

Year: April 1937

Place: A clinic in Rome

Antonio Gramsci, engaged in writing his Prison Notebooks, awaits death in a hospital, following the terrible years of confinement in Mussolini's prison. Gramsci dies on 27 April 1937, unsung and virtually unnoticed, leaving behind, however, a precious gift for twentieth-century Marxism, namely, his Prison Notebooks. Many years later, this voluminous work finally comes to the knowledge of the outside world and is acclaimed as a fundamental contribution to Marxism's glorious heritage.

Year: February 1937

Place: Moscow's Lubyanka prison

Nikolai Bukharin, once considered the “darling of the Party” by Lenin, a key figure in the Bolshevik revolution and regarded as a leading theoretician, awaits trial. He is accused of having betrayed the revolution, joined the bandwagon of capitalism and counterrevolution and is branded as a “Right deviationist.” He has been arrested following the charges levelled against him at the fateful plenary session of the Central Committee of the CPSU during 27 February–5 March 1937. After one year Bukharin is sentenced to death by the highest authorities of the USSR and he faces the firing squad on 15 March 1938.

These are not new facts. Completely new, however, is the fact—unknown till very recently—that Bukharin during this one year of prison life, like Gramsci, was engaged in writing what has now come to be known as his Prison Manuscripts, comprising several volumes dealing with problems of philosophy, politics and culture, an unfinished autobiographical novel, a book of 187 poems and a short manuscript the contents of which are not yet known.

Grounded originally in Benthamite radicalism, the Westminster incorporated the London Review molded by John Stuart Mill in the 1830s and the Foreign Quarterly Review in the 1840s. Before and after these amalgamations, the Westminster broadcast insightful appraisals of the newspaper, of eminent periodicals, and of the status of journalists.

1. [Fox, W. J.]. “Men and Things in 1823.” 1 (1824): 1–18.

Estimated that two-penny magazines, “some of them respectably got up,” were “circulating to the amount of several thousand weekly.” “Periodical literature has enlarged its boundaries,” so it attracted those of “higher talent.”

2. [Bowring, John]. “Politics and Literature of Russia.” 1 (1824): 80–101.

Hoped that the intellectual progress of Russian women, already evidenced by those active in the country's periodical writing, might diminish despotism. See Foreign Quarterly Review 16: 445.

3. [Mill, James]. “Periodical Literature: Edinburgh Review.” 1 (1824): 206–49; [John Stuart Mill], 505–41; [James Mill]. “Quarterly Review.” 2 (1824): 463–503.

The senior Mill limited his essays to criticism, notably in the Edinburgh and Quarterly, because the scope of periodical literature was so wide. Periodicals that aimed for “immediate effect” echoed “opinions in vogue,” usually those of the powerful. The Edinburgh and Quarterly addressed the “aristocratic classes” from different perspectives. Although Edinburgh authors were people of “higher intellect,” the Review seemed unwilling to take a stand on press freedom (22: 72) but was ready to pander to prejudice.

Edited by Charles Dickens and followed by All the Year Round, the popular six-penny Household Words assessed the French press and petitioned for inexpensive reading rooms for the British “unknown public” described in its pages by Wilkie Collins.

1. [Dickens, Charles and W. H. Wills]. “Valentine's Day at the Post Office.” 1 (1850): 6–12.

Announced that 70 million newspapers passed annually through the post office because some were sent more than once. Demand came from press coverage of births and deaths, crimes and accidents, current vanities and social changes.

2. [Forster, John]. “Francis Jeffrey.” 1 (1850): 113–18.

Reminisced about the start of the Edinburgh Review, intended by founders Jeffrey, Francis Horner, Sydney Smith, and Henry Brougham to stimulate serious thinking on serious subjects. Editor Jeffrey inaugurated the “forcible style of criticism” by paid contributors (10 guineas a sheet, later 20), setting “the all-important principle of a perfect independence of his publisher'scontrol.”

3. [Crowe, Joseph Archer]. “A Paris Newspaper.” 1 (1850): 164–67.

Chose the Constitutionnel (40,000 copies daily) as the prototype of Paris newspapers. Their offices were neater than London ones cluttered with foreign gazettes, parliamentary reports, and reference books. The French preferred to sell their tribunes by subscription, so forms were available in the post office. The Advertising Company of Paris bought the last page of every paper of any consequence.

The aim of this collective volume of essays has been to combine some new contemporary analyses of two subjects of current ongoing research in the humanities: the cinema and the visual arts. The early origins of cinema involved the positioning and projection of a number of photographs in sequence by Eadweard Muybridge in Galloping Horse (1878) – to prove for a bet that all four hooves of a horse came off the ground when it ran – followed in 1889 by the development of the motion picture camera by Thomas Edison and William Dickson. The first recorded sound was a song recorded in 1860 to accompany the first ever moving picture, which was footage of a horseback rider (1878) followed by the first film ever made, which consisted of a silent film depicting four figures in a courtyard (1888). Ever since the date film was born, it has been an increasingly popular genre and cinema and filmmaking have been sources of admiration, fascination and particularly a rising trend towards critical analysis. The range and breadth of studies that exist in relation to film eras, genres, a nation's cinema, film theory or film culture is truly breathtaking. Many volumes of literary criticism have been written on the general subjects of what constitutes cinema, film theory, how to interpret a film, film narration, psychoanalysis, and many critical editions focus on a particular country's films, or a specific filmmaker, or a specific genre or era, such as censored films, silent films or early cinema.

More than fifty years have passed since the tragic death of Antonio Gramsci in Mussolini's Italy in 1937. It is, however, this death that has crowned him with glory, since in detention he wrote his magnum opus, the Prison Notebooks, a work that has given post-war Marxism a real facelift. Indeed, this posthumous recognition has placed Gramsci on a high pedestal; but the repository of his ideas has also been the target of intense attack and criticism simultaneously from the far Right and the extreme Left. While the Right alleges that Gramsci was a staunch Leninist, an exponent of the cult of the party and, therefore, no sympathizer of democracy, the charge levelled by the Left is that of reformism. Gramsci, the latter argues, twisted Marxism to the Right, advocated class compromise and virtually set the theoretical foundations of Eurocommunism.

The Gramsci phenomenon becomes more complex if some other factors are taken into consideration. In the first place, Gramsci continues to be left out of the discussions of revolutionary strategy in the international communist movement in the sense that in the programmatic documents of the communist and workers' parties his name is scrupulously avoided. On the other hand, the advocates of Western Marxism greet his name with enthusiasm and appreciation. Gramsci, thus, turns out to be essentially an intellectual and not a political figure. Secondly, several shifts have taken place within the Italian Communist party (PCI) in regard to the evaluation of Gramsci. At one time, Togliatti described him as an ardent Leninist.

The Modern, the offshoot of the Theological Review, opened with a thoughtful essay on periodical literary criticism.

1. The Editor [Richard A. Armstrong]. “The Story of Nineteenth Century Reviewing.” 1 (1880): 1–33.

Commenced with Daniel Defoe's Review, “the father of the Tatler and the Spectator ” but not the Gentleman's Magazine. The last was “the first great literary review” even though it was initially a serial summary of newspapers. Soon MPs brought their speeches for publication, which Edward Cave printed at the risk of ‘fearful penalties.’ Between the Gentleman's and the early nineteenth century's “great outburst of Review literature,” a few other periodicals started. The Monthly Review was its “only respectable English rival.” The Scots Magazine was as good but not other Scottish productions. The intellectual Monthly Magazine had some “pleasant banter.” Other periodicals, 1760–1800, were “trivial to a degree that now would be intolerable.”

Recounted the birth of the Edinburgh Review, attributing its success to the “splendid ability” of early writers and its reflection of audience political interests. The Edinburgh pioneered reviewing as an “independent essay” rather than as a recitation of contents. Editor Francis Jeffrey “slashed” articles as circulation grew, from 750 at birth to 12,000 in 1813. The Review had “extraordinary influence over policy and letters,” but its literary criticism could be “not only unjust, but sometimes pernicious.” It shot “stinging sarcasm against all things mean and base” making enemies in the process.

Perestroika has lately become almost a catchword. As the advocates and opponents of socialism are vociferously struggling over this expression in defence of their respective positions, a large segment of the Left, quite understandably, seems to be almost awe-struck. The confusion has been made worse by the fact that many critics of socialism have started enthusiastically appreciating perestroika, hoping that the signal of dismantling of socialism in the Soviet Union is at last evident; on the contrary, we come across voices in the socialist world itself which also are unambiguously critical of perestroika, the argument being that the so-called process of restructuring would ultimately usher in the complete destruction of the gains of socialism. Along with this one witnesses the unmistakable phenomenon that perestroika has generated an overwhelming response and support from the masses in the Soviet Union.

Perestroika, then, is a complex question demanding an objective and dispassionate exposition. Time has perhaps not yet come for passing a final judgement. Any such attempt to either eulogize or condemn perestroika in absolute terms would not, after all, sharpen one's understanding of the phenomenon. A deeper exploration of the meaning of perestroika involves inquiry into quite a number of important issues: What was its historical necessity? What is the theoretical-ideological rationale underlying perestroika? What are the main directions of this process? What is the significance of perestroika for socialism?

With a Christian outlook and a low price, James Hogg's Instructor, the forerunner of Titan, neatly profiled press scribes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

1. “Thoughts at Starting.” 1 (1845): 1–3.

Proclaimed that Hogg's “motive” was “purer and better” than being distinguished or profitable. Driven by religion that other journalism ignored and aware that “nameless contributions in a cheap weekly miscellany” did not make a reputation, it planned to print solid literature and information.

2. “Biographical Sketches: Thomas Campbell.” 1 (1845): 83–86, 98–102.

Swore that while Campbell edited the New Monthly Magazine, “it became the most popular of the monthlies.”

3. “Biographical Sketches: Robert Nicoll.” 1 (1845): 114–16.

Headlined Nicholl as an editor of the Leeds Times, a writer for newspapers and magazines, and a friend of publisher William Tait.

4. “Biographical Sketches: Sydney Smith.” 1 (1845): 130–32.

Deemed Smith a “witty” critic who neither produced a master work nor created a school of literature.

5. “Eminent Living Authors: Thomas Noon Talfourd.” 1 (1845): 210–12.

Reminded that Talfourd was the theatre critic for the New Monthly Magazine and a writer for the Edinburgh Review, London Magazine, and other serials.

6. “Portrait Gallery: Thomas Hood.” 1 (1845): 275–76.

Centered on Hood's humor.

7. “Biographical Sketches: Joseph Addison.” 1 (1845): 307–10.

Claimed that Addison's best work was in the Tatler making it more popular in 1709 than any prior paper. Its successor, the Spectator, was an “immense success.”