scholarly journals Information and Disinformation in Late Colonial New Granada

1997 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Earle
Keyword(s):  
Spanish America ◽  
Unusual Feature ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
New Granada ◽  
Alexander Von Humboldt ◽  
The Press ◽  
Printed Word ◽  
Precise Role ◽  
Printing Presses ◽  
The Revolution

In 1814, Alexander von Humboldt, the great traveller and explorer of the Americas, drew attention to an unusual feature of the movement for independence in the Viceroyalty of New Granada: the establishment of printing presses and newspapersfollowedrather thanprecededthe outbreak of war. Humboldt was struck by the contrast New Granada's war of independence offered with the two more famous political revolutions of the age. A great proliferation of printed pamphlets and periodicals had preceded the outbreak of revolution in both the Thirteen Colonies and France. How curious, Humboldt commented, to find the process reversed in Spanish America. Humboldt is not alone in viewing the newspaper as the expected harbinger of change in the age of Atlantic revolution. While the precise role played by the printed word in the French and American revolutions remains a subject of debate, many historians acknowledge the importance of print in creating a climate conducive to revolutionary challenge. Were newspapers and the press really latecomers to the revolution in the Viceroyalty of New Granada, as Humboldt suggests? What does this tell us about late colonial New Granada? How, in the absence of a developed press, did information, revolutionary or otherwise, circulate within the viceroyalty? Moreover, what means were available to either the Spanish crown or the American insurgents to create and manipulate news and opinion? What, indeed, does it mean to speak of the spread of news in a society such as late colonial New Granada? This article seeks to address these questions.

Conclusion: Legal and Constitutional Legacies

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
William E. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
American Revolution ◽  
Constitutional Change ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Military Life ◽  
American States ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
British Military ◽  
Reign Of Terror ◽  
Property Destruction ◽  
The Revolution

The conclusion makes two arguments. First, it takes the position common in the historical literature that the American Revolution was a comparatively placid one, with few killings of civilians, little property destruction, and no reign of terror. It argues that the placidity was a consequence of legal continuity—the same courts, judges, and juries that had governed the colonies in 1770 in large part continued to govern the new American states in 1780. During the course of the War of Independence itself, legal and constitutional change occurred almost entirely at the top, and, except in the few places occupied by the British military, life went on largely as it always had. The conclusion also argues that old ideas of unwritten constitutionalism persisted during and after the Revolution, but that a new idea that constitutions should be written to avoid ambiguity emerged beside the old ideas.

Political Causes

1960 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles W. Arnade
Keyword(s):  
Spanish America ◽  
Social Revolution ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
War Of Independence

It is not easy to distinguish between cultural, economic and political causes of the War of Independence in Spanish America and separate them into three closed compartments. Then there are psychological obstacles. There is a feeling among many Latin Americanists that this topic is exhausted and further research will add nothing new. Others want a complete revision of the usual causes cited and demand more documentary study. They believe that the standard causes are based on too scanty research, mostly done in the last century from incomplete sources. Furthermore, there are the rising nationalists and indigenistas of our century, most of them poor historians, who insist that the role of the Indians and mestizos was much more important than historians have accepted. They consider past historians racially and economically prejudiced. Such a trend is especially strong in Mexico, Bolivia, and Cuba, the three countries that have faced a real social revolution. And, unfortunately, history often follows the flag.

The Counter Revolution of Morillo and the Insurgent Clerics of New Granada, 1815–1820

1976 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 597-617
Author(s):  
Brian R. Hamnett
Keyword(s):  
New Spain ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
The Political ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
Large Measure ◽  
New Granada

The desire to see a restoration of full corporate privilege for their estate encouraged a group of New Granada’s clergymen to support the attempt of leading Creole families to replace the political predominance of the Spanish peninsulares. This political revolution contained both traditionalist and radical aspects. Most clerics strongly opposed the policies of Charles IV’s ministers, and singled out for especial criticism the favourite, Godoy. A particular cause of resentment in New Granada, as elsewhere in Spanish America, was the Consolidación de Vales Reales legislated on 28 November and 26 December 1804. Grievances extended generally to the metropolitan government’s fiscal policies, for a large measure of taxation fell upon the clergy. As in New Spain the defence of the fuero eclesiástico provided a rallying cry.

Political Censorship of the Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Europe

1987 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 220-241
Author(s):  
Robert Justin Goldstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
European Country ◽  
European Countries ◽  
World War ◽  
The Press ◽  
Printed Word ◽  
End Stage

Censorship of the stage, like censorship of the printed word, was widespread and well-established in Europe in 1815. However, while prior censorship of the press was eliminated throughout Europe by 1914, European countries almost universally retained prior censorship of the stage until (and sometimes well after) World War I. England became the first major European country to abolish censorship of the press in 1695, yet Parliament systematized a formerly haphazard theatre censorship in 1737, and did not end stage censorship until 1968. Most other European countries did not eliminate press censorship until about the middle of the nineteenth century, while maintaining theatre censorship throughout the century, and typically exercised much harsher controls over the stage than over the printed word. As John Allen has noted, ‘In many times and places the drama has been subject to far greater censorship than any other form of literature or art’, reflecting governmental feelings that ‘the theatre, with its power of affecting an audience with possibly subversive emotions and ideas, is more to be feared’.

Problems of the Development of Hungarian Industry, 1900–1944

1964 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 204-228 ◽  
Author(s):  
György Ránki
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
World War I ◽  
Manufacturing Industry ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Capitalist Development ◽  
War Of Independence ◽  
Agricultural Produce ◽  
Revolution Of 1848 ◽  
Favorable Conditions ◽  
The Revolution

The revolution of 1848, by ending the system of serfdom, had created the basic conditions of Hungary's industrialization; however, since the revolution had remained incomplete and the War of Independence had been lost, the ensuing suppression by Austrian absolutism and the considerable feudal survivals proved a strong barrier to the way of social and economic progress. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy, a product of the Compromise of 1867, offered somewhat more favorable conditions for economic development. Nevertheless, the structure of the dual monarchy kept Hungary's industrialization within rather narrow limits: the absence of independent statehood and the existence of a common customs area with Austria exposed the Hungarian market to devastating competition from Austria's more advanced manufacturing industry; and since these circumstances helped to consolidate the political and economic power of the large landowners, the capital accumulating within the country served above all the capitalist development of agriculture. So towards the end of the nineteenth century, nearly half a century after the bourgeois revolution, Hungary was still a wholly agrarian country whose major exports were foodstuffs and agricultural produce. The rapid development of manufacturing industry began as late as the last decade of the nineteenth century and continued until the beginning of World War I, over a span of some twenty-five years.

Chinese press accounts of the 1911 Revolution: Seeing ‘revolution’

2011 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 233-256
Author(s):  
Peter Zarrow
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
The Press ◽  
The 1911 Revolution ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Political Time ◽  
The Republic ◽  
The Revolution

By examining how a particular story of events from October 1911 through to the abdication of the Qing imperial house in February 1912 was constructed, it is possible to suggest the effects of that story both as events unfolded and on subsequent historical consciousness. This article examines the coverage of the revolution in two newspapers, Shenbao, founded in Shanghai in 1872, and Dagongbao, founded in Tianjin in 1902. They were not necessarily representative of the press as a whole, much less public opinion, but they demonstrate different versions of the same essential narrative. The Shenbao story of ‘1911’ told of struggle and triumph, culminating in the election of Sun Yat-sen as provisional president on 1 January 1912, which marked the founding of the republic. Dagongbao lacked triumphalism and was almost tragic in its reading of the revolution. Nonetheless, Dagongbao as much as Shenbao was quick to present a story of the transformation of ‘chaos’ into ‘revolution’ and finally into the republic (with the imperial abdication of 12 February). Both newspapers traced the revolution from the Wuchang Uprising, and the resulting narrative structure divided political time into before and after. That division is probably the essence of ‘revolution’.

“This England and This Now”: British Cultural and Intellectual Influence in the Spanish American Independence Era

2010 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 423-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen Racine
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Spanish America ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Jeremy Bentham ◽  
Cultural Model ◽  
The Press ◽  
Conscious Choice ◽  
Intellectual Influence ◽  
Independence Era ◽  
Early Republican

Abstract This essay argues that Great Britain provided the strongest and most relevant contemporary model for the Spanish American independence leaders. Over the course of two eventful decades, 1808 to 1826, over 70 patriot leaders made the long and difficult journey to London to seek political recognition, arms, recruits, and financial backing for their emancipation movements. Countless others remained at home in Spanish America but allied themselves with Britain through their commercial ventures, their ideological affiliation, or their enthusiastic emulation of British institutions, inventions, and practices such as the Lancasterian system of monitorial education, trial by jury, freedom of the press laws, steam engines, and mining technology. This generation of independence leaders carried on a purposeful correspondence with famous British figures such as abolitionist William Wilberforce, prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, utilitarian philosophers Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, scientist Humphrey Davy, and vaccination proponent Edward Jenner. Their conscious choice to draw closer to Great Britain, rather than Napoleonic France or the early republican United States, reveals much about the kind of cultural model the Spanish American independence leaders admired and their vision of the countries they wanted to create.

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