‘Learning from Abroad?’: Communities of Knowledge and the Monitorial System in Independent Spanish America

Abstract

The book trade between Western Europe and Spanish America increased dramatically during the first third of the nineteenth century. The various American independence movements (1808–24) generated a revolution in reading habits which coincided not only with the end of Spain’s commercial monopoly over the continent, but also with the consolidation of Britain and France as mass producers and exporters of print. Between 1815 and 1830, Britain and France were actively engaged in the export of printed materials, in various languages, to Spanish American countries, especially to Mexico, Argentina, Chile, the Colombian confederation (today’s Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela), Peru, and some of the Central American states. A significant amount of this was related to educational matters. France was to remain the chief exporter of French and Spanish literature to Spanish America during most of the nineteenth century, but Britain was, for a short period, the main centre from which instructive, political and economic texts arrived. These printed items, in addition to literature from other European countries published and sent by French and British entrepreneurs and philanthropists, had an eminently didactic role for Spanish Americans in their struggle for independence from Spain and in their efforts towards nation-building.1KeywordsMonitorial SystemMonitorial MethodBook TradeMutual MethodFrench ManualThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.