Print, Politics and Trade in the French Atlantic : The Labotti?e Family as Eighteenth-Century Cultural Brokers

The Labotti?es were the largest printing and bookselling dynasty in eighteenth-century Bordeaux. From the 1680s to the sale of their business in 1794 three generations of this family acted as major cultural brokers in this booming Atlantic port, serving the rapidly expanding commercial and legal sectors with books, pamphlets, and newspapers. The lives and businesses of this family are heavily entwined with the histories of the Enlightenment, French colonialism in the West Indies, and the French Revolution. We find the final generation, welcoming the Revolution, printing a pro-revolutionary newspaper that framed the revolts in Haiti and Martinique in pro-revolutionary terms. They would come to establish their shop as a Jacobin centre and, along with their workers and journalists, navigated the forces of popular censorship and state control. However, despite these activities, the Labotti?e printing and bookselling enterprise would, eventually, be destroyed by the very Revolution it had supported. Through this lively microhistory of the Labotti?es, Jane McLeod presents the important role played by the flourishing Atlantic port economy in supporting the expansion of printing and bookselling. Furthermore, from McLeod's extensive archival research into over thirty members of the Labotti?e family, emerges a new understanding of the role played by printers and booksellers in the spreading of the ideas and concerns that underpinned some of the landmark social, cultural and political changes of the eighteenth century.

Author: Jane McLeod

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Publication Date: Jul 09, 2024

Number of Pages: 363 pages

Language: English

Binding: Hardcover

ISBN-10: 1837650861

ISBN-13: 9781837650866