Paper short abstract:

Newspapers became commodities in colonial Kenya fra around 1910, providing local and internation infrastructure for trade, relying on income from ads. Post WW II the commodities advertised in Asian newspapers were related to domesticity. What do they tell about the rise of an Asian middle class?

Paper long abstract:

Abstract

Newspapers and the printing industry were among the pioneering capitalist enterprises in colonial Kenya. Newspapers moved away from being the voice of government to becoming market commodities, relying on income from advertising. From the early 20th century onwards, newspapers were a key commodity that enabled local and transnational communication, commerce and consumption. In Kenya the entrepreneurial Asian community were central in trade and in the production of newspapers. The advertisements played along with the journalistic urgency of regularly printing what is new - buying and selling was a matter of life and death. In a 1907, the E.A. Advertiser urged readers, 'Advertise! Advertise!! Advertise!!! Let people know you are alive, that you have something to sell and mean to sell it'. With the rise of an Indian middle class in Kenya, advertisements in the Asian newspapers expanded from servicing enterprises related to finance, commerce and travel, to addressing individual and household consumption. A range of commodities came to signal a desired modernity that was in tune with the secularist and non-sectarian drive of the the press. It was a move to including a female audience, highlighting commodities relating to leisure, beauty, cleanliness and health. In a discussion of a selection of ads from Indian Kenyan newspapers from the 1940s and early 1950s, I want to trace the role of newspaper advertising in the movement from commerce to consumption - and speculate what features of an Asian middle class it may illuminate.