Printers and Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Mexico

FAIN: FT-259974-18

Corinna Zeltsman
Princeton University (Statesboro, GA 30458)

A book-length study of political printers in Mexico between 1821 and 1910.

My book project examines the political and social struggles surrounding the making and consuming of print in Mexico to offer a new analysis of the emergence of liberalism across the long nineteenth century. It argues that Mexico City printers galvanized and shaped post-independence political discussion and conflict by giving material form to competing ideas and reform projects. The book also demonstrates how Mexico City printers and collaborators from across the social spectrum ushered in a new political culture in which print served as an incendiary element in rollicking and ruthless struggles over the fledgling nation’s future. The project significantly revises our understanding of the role of print in the formation of Mexico’s public sphere, and offers insight into how imprints functioned as key objects that linked intimate urban communities, larger patronage networks, and spurred political action in a post-colonial society with low literacy rates.

Associated Products

Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico (Book)
Title: Ink under the Fingernails: Printing Politics in Nineteenth-Century Mexico
Author: Corinna Zeltsman
Abstract: During the independence era in Mexico, individuals and factions of all stripes embraced the printing press as a key weapon in the broad struggle for political power. Taking readers into the printing shops, government offices, courtrooms, and streets of Mexico City, historian Corinna Zeltsman reconstructs the practical negotiations and discursive contests that surrounded print over a century of political transformation, from the late colonial era to the Mexican Revolution. Centering the diverse communities that worked behind the scenes at urban presses and examining their social practices and aspirations, Zeltsman explores how printer interactions with state and religious authorities shaped broader debates about press freedom and authorship. Beautifully crafted and ambitious in scope, Ink under the Fingernails sheds new light on Mexico's histories of state formation and political culture, identifying printing shops as unexplored spaces of democratic practice, where the boundaries between manual and intellectual labor blurred.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: http://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520344341/ink-under-the-fingernails
Primary URL Description: Ink Under the Fingernails
Publisher: University of California Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780520344341
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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