Chapter 1. Spreading the words

Abstract

From the sixteenth century on, a vast amount of cheap print offering instruction in the basics of literacy and religion was published, much of it intended primarily for the use of children. Alphabets, primers, catechisms, and other similar texts circulated widely in Europe, but this chapter considers their distribution around the globe via emerging mercantilist and missionary networks. Ranging from 1500 to 1850, and taking examples from Mexico, Tranquebar, and New England, and from nineteenth-century Bengal, Malacca, and the United States’ “Indian Territory”, an overarching (though inevitably incomplete) history of the global circulation of cheap children’s print is attempted. The chapter concludes that, even though these texts must be understood as contributing to processes of colonization, coercive evangelism, and cultural and linguistic loss, they also produced many fascinating hybrid formats, fusing indigenous, colonialist, and missionary practices.