In a Global Loop of Things? Newspapers as Vectors of Policy Models in Mid-19th-Century Brazil

Books and pamphlets have long been the go-to sources for histories focusing on the transmission of political ideas in Brazil. Yet, the logistic constraints of the book trade and the difficulties of tracing the private circulation of ephemera place these sources at a disadvantage with regards to newspapers, a more popular and frequent publication starting at the mid-nineteenth-century mark.

The launch in recent years of the Hemeroteca Digital by Brazil’s National Library is an incentive to reflect on the content, form and function of epochal newsprint now in digitized format. This presentation will focus on the publication of international news in “political economy” in the Brazilian press to examine how newspapers conveyed policy models deployed in political debates during the 1840s, 50s and early 60s. By specifically analyzing the circulation of news dealing with labor regimes and land distribution models, the presentation will zero-in on some of the research challenges involved in the use of Hemeroteca, including the limits of single-word searches, problems in translation, and the challenge of synchronizing political debates with serialized articles. The presentation will also draw comparisons with other “hemerotecas” as a way to sound the possibilities of future research strategies for scholars working on digitized newspaper collections.