Le Cap’s elite circulated news and ideas through newspapers and intellectual clubs
Evidence
Ships brought something else of great value: news. Residents gathered in houses near the port to speak to new arrivals or to pass along what they had heard to one another. Arriving news found its way into a newspaper called Affiches Américaines. Starting in 1788, where the wealthier residents of Le Cap could gather in a cabinet littéraire, a club whose members paid annual dues for access to an “elegantly furnished” room with a library containing “all the interesting newspapers” along with a billiard room. The same building was home to the Cercle des Philadelphes, the scientific society that supported Moreau’s work on his Description. Its members pursued a wide variety of intellectual pursuits, from botanical experiments to the ill-fated attempt by one plantation owner to introduce camels from Africa. — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 88
Categorization
- XREF: News circulation networks as revolutionary fuel resonates with how information moved in other revolutionary settings; also comparable to Bourbon-era transatlantic intellectual life generally. — connects to: Revolutionary French clubs combined public assemblies with newspapers and inner circles; Revolutionary clubs were media-centred assemblies held together by a newspaper’s clientele — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 962; Le Cap panicked as refugees poured in bearing news of the revolt.
- QUESTION: How did revolutionary news from France in 1789-1791 travel through this newspaper and club network to reach Le Cap’s free population?
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Revolutionary French clubs combined public assemblies with newspapers and inner circles; Revolutionary clubs were media-centred assemblies held together by a newspaper’s clientele — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 962; Le Cap panicked as refugees poured in bearing news of the revolt.