The Role of Newspapers in the History of the State

I was very inspired and influenced by PhD thesis about the history of the public sphere in Nepal, which similarly was looking at government newspaper. The newspapers published in Maori language in 19th century New Zealand also provided a space in which people were reflecting on what political society could look like. Now, of course, none of this fits into a normative idea of what a free press might look like or civil society as a space independent from the state to hold power to account. And both of those things we can see in the pages of these newspapers and periodicals.