![]() Merchants needed to know which shipping routes were open and travellers needed to know when it was safe to sail. Shipping had gotten so dangerous that insurers charged up to 30 per cent to insure goods between India and Europe. ![]() The wars were disrupting trade and making it extremely dangerous to send goods. The British were fighting four wars on three continents: against the Americans, the French, the Spanish and the Marathas. News was never more in demand in Calcutta. Instead, he would print their ads for the whole city to see. People would no longer have to use the city's many advertising boards. The product of five years of research by Andrew Otis in the archives of India, UK and Germany, Hicky’s Bengal Gazette: The Story of India’s First Newspaper is an essential and compelling addition to the history of subcontinental journalism. He also promised his newspaper would act as a community bulletin board, where everyone could post and reply to advertisements. ![]() Now people could enclose snippets of his newspaper in their mail without having to recite events by hand. He would do away with the need for people to describe events themselves in letters. He would do away with the need for hircarrahs, the messengers who ran these newsletters from place to place. With his printing press, Hicky could print news quickly and cheaply, on a scale unimaginable for newsletters that had to be copied by hand hundreds of times over. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |