Liberty/Égalité/Independencia: Print Culture, Enlightenment, and Revolution in the Americas, 1776–1826

Abstract

Reviewed by: Liberty/Égalité/Independencia: Print Culture, Enlightenment, and Revolution in the Americas, 1776-1826 Elise Bartosik-Vélez (bio) Liberty/Égalité/Independencia: Print Culture, Enlightenment, and Revolution in the Americas, 1776–1826 History of the Book Conference: American Antiquarian Society Worcester, Massachusetts 16–18 June 2006 As a comparatist studying the Americas in the revolutionary period, I was struck by the announcement for this conference. I was also intrigued by the fact that "the Americas" appeared in the plural, a rare instance even with the increasing vogue of hemispheric and Atlantic approaches. But it was the schedule of 13 speakers, organized by Mariselle Meléndez, David Shields, and Karen Stolley, that had me writing out my registration check on the spot. The conference did not disappoint. This intimate conference showcased some of the most interesting work being done in the field of early American and Atlantic studies. The forthcoming volume of the conference proceedings will surely be considered cutting-edge work in the comparative scholarship of the Americas. Particularly groundbreaking were the papers presented by David Geggus on print culture in the Haitian revolution, Michel Ducharme on Canada's participation in the Atlantic tradition of republicanism, and Karen Stolley on Juan Pablo Viscardo y Guzmán. Many of the participants, conscious that they were treading new territory, mentioned previous conferences that recently have helped define the field: the 2002 Tucson Ibero/American summit, its 2004 sequel in Providence, "Beyond Colonial Studies: An Inter American Encounter," and the 2004 symposium at the Newberry Library, "In Comparable Americas: Colonial Studies after the Hemispheric Turn." The American Antiquarian Society (as part of its "History of the Book in American Culture" program) provided a singularly appropriate venue for this conference. Participants not only browsed the AAS's formidable collections from the time period in question but they also learned from James [End Page 189] Moran's "Introduction to the Isaiah Thomas Printing Press" (the press is housed in pristine condition at the American Antiquarian Society library) about the challenging logistics of printing in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. David Shields opened the conference with the 24th annual James Russell Wiggins Lecture, "We Declare You Independent Whether You Wish It or Not: The Print Culture of Early Filibusterism." Shields explored the politics of public print and manuscript writing in the literature of filibusterism. The mode of communication opted for by those seeking to export revolution from the early United States to other areas abroad, he contended, depended on their values. "American nationalist adventurers," he contended, relied on publicity and regularly invoked the rich textual legacy of the founding of the United States in printed documents. "Conspiratorial adventurers" working for the benefit of Old World imperial powers, in contrast, tended to employ secret correspondence and the force of verbal rumor, which often escapes scholarly attention. The issues of publicity, secrecy, and the relationship between print and liberty, and between print and political action, also arose in Elizabeth Maddock Dillon's "Caribbean Revolution and Print Publics: Leonora Sansay and the Secret History of the Haitian Revolution." The dynamic interaction between print and revolution was explored by Eric Slauter, who considered the role of print in the naturalization of rights in "Written Constitutions and Unenumerated Rights." The question he posed, "Do books make revolution?" resonated in discussions that followed. Indeed, the meaning of "revolution" in the Atlantic world and how that meaning was transmitted and revised by the written and printed word was one of the main issues discussed at the conference. Meléndez considered how the idea of revolution, based on the French and U.S. models, was interpreted in Peruvian newspapers from 1791 to 1824. At the beginning of this period, when newspapers were strictly censored, Meléndez found that they often just republished European texts and promoted a conservative notion of revolution as a frightening source of chaos. Later, however, and especially after the greater freedom of the press introduced in 1812 with the Cortes of Cádiz, Peruvian creole newspaper publishers began to interpret revolution as a restoration of order. The majority of the papers probed the reach, articulations, and effects of transatlantic connections in the Americas. David Armitage presented...