The Rio de Janeiro Typographic Office: Political uses of a colonial press

Abstract

Different than the Spanish colonization, the Portuguese occupation did not encourage the creation of typographies in America. The only proven attempt to found a colonial printing workshop took place in Rio de Janeiro between 1746 and 1749. The initiative of the typographer Antônio Isidoro da Fonseca received support from part of Rio de Janeiro’s elite of that period, but was promptly opposed by the Crown and the Portuguese Inquisition. Despite this colonial typography being widespread, some documents that it produced were only situated 260 years later – and they can have an impact not only on the way historiography explains the episode, but also make even more complex the reasons why the typographies were not present in the Portuguese America story. The article analyzes one of this documents and rescues its historical context to present some questions that the existence of this print raises. We seek to examine the political uses of a typography in Portuguese America and propose an interpretation that replaces traditional and anachronistic paradigms by a perspective that prioritizes: documental analysis, historical context, development of current historiography on literate culture and censorship in the Ancient Regime. Finally, we will make notes on the possibilities of historiographical renewal when we propose to evaluate the opposition of Portugal to typographies in America from the conditions of production and the real political uses of the prints produced in Rio de Janeiro in the mid-eighteenth century.