“Our own Correspondent from Greece”; Covering Diplomatic War and Conflict in Early-Victorian Britain (1835–1857)

Abstract

In the years 1835–1857 the British diplomatic mission in Athens did not confine its activity to carrying out British policy but built up a straightforward and carefully cultivated relationship with the English press. Several episodes revealed its intention of using the papers as a vehicle in order to vindicate the conduct and the opinions of its personnel on Greek politics. This article argues that in early-Victorian Britain statesmen were fully conscious of the implication of supervising the information on foreign affairs that reached the public and of exerting diplomatic pressure on other states through the daily press. As international developments gradually made interesting reading, the scarcity of communication from a faraway country such as Greece lent authority to the reports published in the London papers, which were heavily “influenced” by British international considerations. In this context the columns of a daily newspaper and the brevity of journalistic contributions enabled members of the British Legation in Athens to present their severe censor of successive Greek governments to a wider section of the British political body.

Keywords

• Britain
• Greece
• Victorian newspapers
• conflict
• war
• blockade of 1850