How can we analyze the content and influence of a lost world of sound? How were broadcasts received in various cultural settings, whether communally in public spaces, in the family space of home, or in secret? The Leverhulme Trust Research Network and several additional scholars of radio history gathered in Denver in June 2018 to consider these questions from across the globe.

The workshop opened with presentations by network member Andrea L Stanton, Isabel Huacuja Alonso, and James Brennan. Stanton focused on the impact of a Bahrain-based listeners group on the BBC’s Arabic Service from the late 1930s through the middle of World War II. This group, whose translated meeting minutes were sent to London regularly by the Political Agent in Bahrain, offers a rare example of direct, unmediated listener responses and audience opinions to which the BBC had access. The group – with 6-7 members - had a disproportionate influence on BBC Arabic programming in its early years, as well as on the British government’s decision to start a Bahrain broadcast – in part because it was the only group whose views reached the BBC and which continued to meet so regularly for so many years. It also suggests greater interest in radio listening from Bahrain and, by extension the rest of the Gulf, than has often been assumed for the pre-war period.

Huacuja Alonso laid out a compelling argument that India during the colonial era offers a case study in radio serving as a vehicle for talking – whether that meant people talking about what they had heard on the radio or talking while listening. Radio should be understood as a catalyst for social engagement. Her paper focused on the radio work of Indian nationalist Subhas Chandra Bose – the only major Indian nationalist figure to use radio. A Nazi supporter, he received training and support from Berlin, raising questions of whether resistance can be regressive as well as anti-colonial. She noted that less than 5% of the urban populations of India had access to a radio receiver during World War II, asking whether this meant that radio broadcasts were unimportant. They were important, as catalysts to information and rumor sharing. Radio must be understood as a way to anchor conversations and provide nodes for news and information to circulate. Radio’s influence extended well beyond those who actually listened to its broadcasts, to those who talked about and around them.

James Brennan spoke about radio broadcasting and radio listening in Tanzania from the 1930s through the 1960s. He noted that the major scholarly approaches to researching radio history took the form of institutional histories of radio production and broadcasting, with a focus on state and corporate archives. Quantitative studies of listening, based on government and market surveys and various sociological sources, formed a smaller basis for scholarship. Qualitative studies of listening, which might draw upon newspaper and magazine accounts, survey comments, memoirs, literary sources, and interviews, tend to provide supplemental evidence for radio histories – and yet, he suggested, there is much value in these kinds of sources, and especially fictional accounts and memoirs, if historians can develop a methodology for working with them.

Brennan surveyed the various radio stations operating or accessible in East Africa, which included external stations like the BBC Empire Service, and numerous local stations like Cable and Wireless or Nairobi 7LO, most of which addressed themselves to the white settler populations. As the mid-twentieth century wore on, more stations moved from a licensing model to a state-owned, state-financed model, and broadcasting reach expanded. The politics of regional radio broadcasting in the late colonial and early post-colonial period fell largely along colonial lines, with broadcasting split by racialization (European, Indian, Arab, and African), religion (Christian, often represented by white settler communities, and Muslim), and language (varieties of Swahili, “Hindustani” and other broadcasts). Radio listening also could be articulated across lines of race, class, and citizenship: should the broadcasts be oriented toward the populations more likely to own sets and pay licensing fees? In working to develop a richer historical picture of broadcasting and listening in this period, Brennan suggested, period and experience-based fiction could play a key role. How can historians make effective, appropriate use of fiction as a historical source? How can historians bridge the genres of fiction and scholarship

Alejandra Bronfman delivered the keynote address, reflecting on her current work on radio wars in the Caribbean during the late 1950s. 1958 and 1959 saw an eruption of radio voices across the Caribbean, commensurate with the eruption of shifting regimes, from Haiti to Cuba. Most were populist, whether rightist or leftist, and their leaders tended to dominate their national populations with a combination of charisma and control – including control of mass media. Meanwhile, numerous clandestine radio stations began broadcasting, in support or opposition to the various regimes. What did clandestinity mean in this context, Bronfman asked, and how might the story of radio wars in the Caribbean help reshape and decenter the standard Cold War narratives of radio broadcasting, which focus on Europe and the United States and their broadcasting efforts, or on the Cuba-United States issue. In reality, the Caribbean saw extensive resources poured into radio broadcasting - financial, infrastructural, personnel – within and between countries. She noted the saliency of Scales’ argument about radio in interwar France: that clandestine radio broadcasts reveal the limits of colonial hegemony. They also created lasting impact: the Caribbean developed a rich and powerful radio culture grounded in propaganda, anti-propaganda, and popular mobilization, which came from this era.

Bronfman noted that radio broadcasts in the Caribbean often used existing infrastructures for their purpose, highlighting the presence of a rich technological infrastructure there. She pointed out that clandestine broadcasting offered a way to think about “bad neighbors”, as radio was used to taunt or threaten the leadership of a neighboring or regional regime. But were these broadcasts promoting a national idea of their own? Not necessarily: for Castro, nation seems to have been a key organizing device. But for other broadcasters, transnational or local concerns may have been more foundational. Further, the questionable efficacy of clandestine broadcasting raises questions about its value as a political tactic. It was a risky way to practice politics, in terms of outcomes: most broadcasting was intermittent and not on a regular schedule, and because it was clandestine it had no regular outlet for advertising to reach and build a listening audience. For historians, clandestinity is difficult to study in large part because of the difficulty of identifying sources and archives.

The case of radio in the Caribbean offers two key takeaways. First, that the Cold War was a hot war in the Caribbean – a radio war in a revolutionary era. Cold War studies need to look beyond Europe to understand the power of radio broadcasting and develop a better understanding of how Cold War politics operated. Second, it offers the chance to problematize and theorize clandestinity. How clandestine were these broadcasts, if “everyone” knew that they were happening, and they were mentioned regularly in the local and international newspapers? What was the value of labeling these broadcasts as clandestine? Was this label assigned externally or did broadcasters self-define their work as clandestine? Was “clandestine” simply another word for “illegal”? Were these radio broadcasts expected to have an impact, or was it simply one tactic among many – something to try, even if it did little in terms of popular mobilization?