The Media and the Road to Modernity | 99had contracts. Early Chinese publishing houses developed out of the Chinese
editions of the Hong Kong Daily Press (1858–1919) and North China Herald
(1861–1872). Starting in the 1870s, several papers reached a circulation of
several thousand but there was no boom as there was in Japan. Because of the
ambiguous legal situation, newspapers existed mainly outside Chinese sover-
eign territory, such as in Hong Kong and the contract ports.
Nevertheless recent studies show that the new press system was not entirely
without influence on Chinese development. From the 1890s onwards news-
papers appeared in the Chinese hinterland, and a so-called reform press repre-
senting different political principles developed (Vittinghoff 2002a). The brief
phase of reform in 1898 was followed by a period of harsh intervention in
press matters, yet nevertheless the number of newspapers rose during the fol-
lowing years. Here, impelled by their self-image, the flagships of the Chinese
press sought an alignment with British journalistic principles: newspapers pre-
sented diverse viewpoints, yet various journalists banded together in order to
present a united front for more press freedom, and this led to the formation
of the first journalistic unions in China (Vittinghoff 2002b: 106). In 1908 a
press law was passed based on the Japanese model.
How necessary a long tradition of written culture was for the establish-
ment of the press becomes unmistakeably clear if one looks at Africa. Because
of low literacy and a strong oral tradition, Africa has still not developed a
strong press. Although twelve times as many people live in Africa today as in
Germany, there are only half as many newspapers. Consequently the history
of the mass media in nineteenth-century Africa must be considered primarily
as a part of colonial history, since colonists’ newspapers were dominant and
written in their own languages – with the exception of a few papers published
by missionaries and a very few by Africans.
In the sub-Saharan regions, media developments were very diverse and
characterised by their respective colonial configurations. Evidence shows
that the first newspapers appeared in Egypt, Sierra Leone and South Africa
around 1800. The colonial press developed most rapidly over the following
century in British-dominated regions and South Africa, as the British granted
greater freedom and supported the establishment of local newspapers. In this
way papers such as the Royal Gazette and the Sierra Leone Advertiser (1801)
appeared in West Africa as early as 1800. Distinctly slower on the other hand
was the spread of the media in the French territories, which preferred to
market French newspapers. In the German colonies created after 1884 the
colonial press likewise emerged slowly and haltingly. It was not until the turn
of the century that a total of eleven non-official newspapers appeared: five in
South West Africa, three in East Africa, and only one in Togo and Cameroon
where, as in the South Seas, official gazettes with advertisements and an edito-
rial section dominated (Osterhaus 1990: 46).