Essays in Librarianship and BibliographyGarnett, Richard
Science
Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography
Garnett, Richard
Bibliography -- Methodology; British Museum; Library science
and the numerous broadsides attesting the impression at first produced
in the colonies by Napoleon's invasion of the mother country. Eight
proclamations by General Beresford during the brief occupation of the
city by the British forces in 1806 are of especial interest to
Englishmen. In one Beresford endeavours to conciliate the good-will of
the inhabitants by promising deliverance from the financial oppression
of the Spanish colonial system. They soon afterwards took the matter
into their own hands: the publications for the last months over which
Señor Medina's labours extend are chiefly proclamations by the Junta and
similar revolutionary documents. Among them, duly facsimiled by Señor
Medina, is the proclamation of the Junta, with the date of May 23, 1810,
announcing the virtual deposition of the Viceroy, the first document of
Buenos Ayrean independence, although the authority of Ferdinand the
Seventh is still acknowledged in name, and the autonomy of the country
was not proclaimed until 1816. Another curiosity, also facsimiled, is a
proclamation in Spanish and Quichua, "from the most persecuted
American," Iturri Patiño, to the inhabitants of Cochabamba in Upper
Peru, more than a thousand miles from Buenos Ayres, exhorting them to
welcome their deliverers. The interest is greatly enhanced by Señor
Medina's industry in tracing out other works of the writers, published
in other parts of South America.
The story of the introduction, expulsion, and revival of printing in
Monte Video is one of the most curious—we might almost say
dramatic—episodes in the history of the art. The city, which had
existed nearly two hundred years without any more typographical
implement than a stamping machine, was taken by an English expedition in
February 1807. With the invaders came an enterprising Briton whose name
is unfortunately not recorded, but who, before leaving England, had
invested in a printing-press and types, and brought them with him with
the view of earning an honest penny by dissipating South American
darkness. He received every encouragement from the English military and
naval authorities, but most probably had to train native compositors,
who could not be extemporised in a city destitute of a printing-press.
At all events he did not get to work till May, when the first production
of his press was a proclamation, from which it appears that General
Whitelock, whose expedition was to end so disastrously, at the time
considered himself entitled to exercise authority over the whole of
South America. And whereas it has been asserted that wherever an
Englishman goes the first institution he creates is a public-house, be
it noted that the next official announcement imposes a swinging tax
upon the public-houses already existing, without any loophole for local
option. On May 23, an eventful date in Argentine history, appeared the
first numbers of _The Southern Star, La Estrella de Sur_, a journal in
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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