Messengers of empire: Print and revolution in the Atlantic World
By Francesco A. Morriello
Messengers of Empire examines how news and information moved across the Atlantic world during the Age of Sail. It provides a ground-breaking look at how the French Revolutionary Wars impacted the development of communication channels, such as the creation of regular postal services in the Caribbean and increased reliance on local printers to produce print matter faster and more effectively.
Exciting new perspective on the publication and circulation of print material in the Atlantic world.
Fascinating glimpse at how print shops operated in areas far removed from the metropoles.
Uses rare sources from 15 separate archives in the UK, US, and France.
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Table of Contents :
Preface
List of Illustrations
List of Archival Abbreviations
Introduction: The Interconnected Atlantic World
PART I: THE POST: MAIL CIRCULATION IN THE BRITISH AND FRENCH CARIBBEAN
1: Interception, Corruption, and Revolution: The Emergence and Expansion of the British and French Caribbean Postal System
2: Mail Couriers in the Revolutionary Caribbean
PART II: THE PRESS: PRINTERS, PRINT SHOPS AND NEWSPAPERS IN THE EARLY MODERN CARIBBEAN
3: The Founding, Staffing, and Operation of Early Modern Caribbean Print Shops
4: “Apply to the Printer”: Colonial Printers as Nexuses of Information
5: New World Newspapers: The Emergence and Proliferation of the British and French Colonial Papers in the 18th and Early 19th-Centuries
6: Restricting the Flow of News: Censorship and Early Newspaper Reports of the Haitian Revolution
PART III: PRINT MATERIAL: THE BOOK TRADE AND LITERARY CULTURE OF THE COLONIAL WORLD
7: The Colonial Almanac: Instruments of Information in the Caribbean
8: Iconography in Early Modern Caribbean Print Culture
9: Reading Salons, Enlightenment, and Rum: The World of the Early Caribbean Book Trade and its Booksellers
Conclusion: Communication Networks Across the Caribbean and Wider Atlantic World
Bibliography
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Francesco A. Morriello holds a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge and a specialized MTS degree in Religion from Harvard University. His main areas of research are print and cultural history. His next book is a world history of human suffering from antiquity to the present day.
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The Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment series, previously known as SVEC (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), has published over 500 peer-reviewed scholarly volumes since 1955 as part of the Voltaire Foundation at the University of Oxford. International in focus, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment volumes cover wide-ranging aspects of the eighteenth century and the Enlightenment, from gender studies to political theory, and from economics to visual arts and music, and are published in English or French.