Description
Book SynopsisMessengers of Empire: Print and Revolution in the Atlantic World 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. With the onset of war between the British Empire and French overseas empire, improved communications became a critical factor for military success, prompting developments on both sides. This included the surge in Caribbean printing operations, as well as the copper plating of packet boats to decrease the time it took for mail to cross the Atlantic Ocean in either direction. This book provides a unique inter-imperial comparison, revealing key differences and similarities between Britain and France in terms of how information circulation was crucial to the operation of empire. It consults a range of archival sources that have rarely, if ever, been used before, including correspondence dispatches, newspapers, almanacs, public notices, and even documents detailing secret society meetings. In doing so, this book reveals how imperial communication networks functioned at the ground level, as well as who were the gatekeepers of information in areas far removed from the metropoles.
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgements
List of Illustrations
List of Archival Abbreviations
Dedication
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 (1791
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
