How India’s first newspaper exposed the corrupt British East India Company

In 1776, an entrepreneurial Irishman who had come to India to make his fortune ended up in the horrifying squalour of an 18th century Calcutta prison.

In 1776, an entrepreneurial Irishman who had come to India to make his fortune ended up in the horrifying squalour of an 18th century Calcutta prison.

A one-time surgeon whose attempt to launch a shipping business in the city had gone wrong, James Augustus Hicky had been labelled a debtor and forced to go to jail as bankers seized all his belongings. But they didn’t quite get everything: Hicky was a smart one, and he had squirreled away Rs2,000 with a trusted friend, which he later used to order types and pay carpenters to construct a printing press for him. While still stuck in jail, Hicky embarked on his newest venture, working from six in the morning till one or two at night, printing handbills and advertisements to make a little more money.

A few years after he was finally released from prison, printing would go on to become Hicky’s most successful and controversial business when he decided to start publishing India’s first newspaper.

In Hicky’s Bengal Gazette (Westland Books), American researcher Andrew Otis $OTIS -2.28% dives into the lively history behind this pioneering paper, which started out at a time when Indians mostly got their news through word-of-mouth, while Europeans living in the region relied on ou