Agnes Gehbald

This volume provides a wholly original social history of books in late
colonial Peru. From the second half of the eighteenth century onward,
workshops in Lima and transoceanic imports supplied the market with
unprecedented quantities of print publications. By tracing the variety
of printed commodities that were circulating in the urban sphere, as
well as analysing the spatiality of the trade and the materiality of the
books themselves, Agnes Gehbald assesses the meaning of print culture
in the everyday lives of the viceroyalty. She reveals how books permeated
late colonial society on a broad scale and how they figured as
objects in the inventories of diverse individuals, both women and men,
who, in previous centuries, had been far less likely to possess them.
Deeply researched and profound, A Colonial Book Market uncovers
how people in Peruvian cities gained access to reading material and
participated in the global Enlightenment project.

This article examines unpublished manuscripts and failed printing projects in the languages of the former Inca empire up to the beginning of the 19th century. Although the original reason for establishing a printing press in Lima in 1584 was to publish texts in indigenous languages, the colonial context would restrict such printing in various ways. After an initial period which saw numerous pastoral and linguistic publications, a bibliographical analysis reveals that printing in indigenous languages declined considerably from the mid-17th century onwards. Besides publications in Quechua and Aymara, we know of only few printed texts in Mochica (Yunga) and Puquina from the colonial era, whereas further linguistic material dedicated to these languages circulated in manuscript form. Only between 1810 and 1822 would bilingual publications increase again, in the form of political proclamations written in the context of the independence movements. In contrast, the spread of Spanish contributed to the linguistic cohesion of the various viceroyalties and formed a key part of the geopolitics of colonisation and evangelisation. After the shift towards a more monolingual language policy – which intensified after rebellions in the Andes in the late 18th century – there were almost no more new publications in indigenous languages in Lima. As a case study, the failed publication project of a Quechua grammar by José Manuel Bermúdez in Lima in 1793 demonstrates how the attempt to renew the publication of indigenous-language texts, and thus to diversify the range of works available, ultimately proved unfeasible. By examining unpublished manuscripts and focusing on such failed printing projects like that of Bermúdez, this article enhances our knowledge of the printing culture in the past.

Satire was a flourishing literary genre in colonial contexts with the specific mode of city criticism subverting the official order. At the turn of the century, the idea of a city in the Iberian Atlantic world would comprehend a notion of an ordered locus and society. Critiques of the capital of Lima thus included several stereotypes about urban social chaos criticizing the changing reality of late colonial Peru. This article explores the itinerary of a specific book, Lima por dentro y fuera by the Spaniard Esteban Terralla y Landa, published first in 1797, and which offers a rare opportunity to study contemporary judgement and transatlantic censure history. Tracing the processes of printing, reprinting, and re-collection at both sides of the Atlantic – in Lima and Madrid – it tells a story of reception and rejection, and of how Spanish colonial authorities tried to prevent the circulation of censorious literature about the viceregal capital.

Aus ideellen, politischen und kommerziellen Gründen beanspruchte die spanische Krone die Hoheit über die Textzirkulation im gesamten spanischen Reich, die Besitzungen in Amerika miteinschließend. Von Anfang an unterlag der Buchmarkt im Kolonialreich somit strengen Regularien. Im Fokus dieses Aufsatzes stehen nicht die Regelverstöße oder die Zirkulation verbotener Literatur, sondern das komplexe System aus handelspolitischen und rechtlichen Rahmenbedingungen für die Kontrolle des Buchmarktes und der Druckproduktion in Hispanoamerika zwischen dem 16. und frühen 19. Jahrhundert. Im Folgenden wird am Beispiel zweier Genres – der Andachtsbüchlein (Ramilletes) und der Kalender (Calendarios) – das exklusive Buchhandelssystem zwischen Spanien und den überseeischen Vizekönigreichen diskutiert. Das Ramillete de divinas flores war eines der meistgedruckten Büchlein zur religiösen Andacht, welche aus Spanien über den Atlantik exportiert wurde. Die Calendarios hingegen wurden alljährlich auf den hispanoamerikanischen Druckerpressen produziert und unterlagen dafür einem Privileg. Die spanische Krone kontrollierte gemeinsam mit der Inquisition den Buchhandel in den verschiedenen Etappen von Produktion über Verkauf zum Lesekonsum, um die Hoheit über das gedruckte Wort zu garantieren.

En los pies de imprenta de los libros producidos en Lima durante la epoca del Virreinato del Peru solo se encuenrran los nombres de impresores masculinos. Los aportes de asistentes en el caller y de miembros de la familia no son recordados, aunque su trabajo fuera imprescindible para
la operaci6n. En varios casos, las mujeres asumieron una serie de tareas
asociadas con la gesti6n de los talleres que fueron claves para la existencia
de un taller de familia y garantizaron la continuidad de la producci6n impresa. Pese a que sus nombres no son famosos y sus tareas han permanecido inexploradas, estas mujeres asumieron desafios y manejaron talleres en Lima, asi fuera momend.neamente. No cabe duda de que sin ellas hubiera habido menos continuidad en el oficio de imprimir.

The chapter addresses the unique constellation of three parties on the book market with their respective reasoning of printing privileges: the Spanish Crown, charitable institutions, and printers. The special constellation could be found first in Spanish America and then in Spain and extended from the early privileges from the sixteenth well into the nineteenth century. Several cases demonstrate this peculiar privilege constellation, ordered into two different sections of educational genres: first, the privilege for school primers granted to hospitals and orphanages in Spanish America, with cases from Mexico, Lima, and Buenos Aires and, secondly, the privilege for the Latin grammar by Nebrija granted to hospitals on the Spanish peninsula, in Madrid, Pamplona, and Zaragoza. The financial management of the privilege was to procure funds for the institutes of poor relief, yet printers defied the regulatory intervention on the market through protest and contraventions. The educational genres with the "cartilla" and the "arte" offer an outstanding object of study, as their production continuously concerned the administrators of welfare establishments and printing masters, providing a multitude of sources about the contexts of production. As a collective analysis, the chapter brings together examples from a long chronological and wide geographic coverage to enquire into the causes and consequences of this customary kind of cross-financing in the publishing trade.