In:Transnational Books for Children 1750-1900: Producers, consumers, encounters
Edited by Charlotte Appel, Nina Christensen and M.O. Grenby
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 15] 2023
► pp. 18–45
Chapter 1Spreading the words
Global networks and the circulation of cheap instructional and religious children’s print
Published online: 8 August 2023
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.15.01gre
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.15.01gre
Abstract
From the sixteenth century on, a vast amount of cheap print offering instruction in the basics of literacy and
religion was published, much of it intended primarily for the use of children. Alphabets, primers, catechisms, and other similar texts
circulated widely in Europe, but this chapter considers their distribution around the globe via emerging mercantilist and missionary
networks. Ranging from 1500 to 1850, and taking examples from Mexico, Tranquebar, and New England, and from nineteenth-century Bengal,
Malacca, and the United States’ “Indian Territory”, an overarching (though inevitably incomplete) history of the global circulation of
cheap children’s print is attempted. The chapter concludes that, even though these texts must be understood as contributing to
processes of colonization, coercive evangelism, and cultural and linguistic loss, they also produced many fascinating hybrid formats,
fusing indigenous, colonialist, and missionary practices.
Article outline
- Exporting cheap children’s print
- Printing in colonial locations
- “Primers for the Indians” in New England
- Tranquebar
- European texts in local languages
- Hybridized forms and formats
- Conclusions
Note References
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