| Description |
1 online resource (287 pages) : illustrations, maps |
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text file PDF |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-273) and index. |
| Contents |
What: Making sense of La Florida, 1560s-1670s -- Paths and power -- Information contests -- Rebellious news -- Who: The many faces of information, 1660s-1710s -- Informers and slaves -- Information race -- How: New ways of articulating power, 1710-1740 -- Networks in wartime -- Dissonant connections. |
| Summary |
Informed Power maps the intricate, intersecting channels of information exchange in the early American South, exploring how people in the colonial world came into possession of vital knowledge in a region that lacked a regular mail system of a printing press until the 1730s. Challenging the notion of early colonial America as an uninformed backwater, Alejandra Dubcovsky uncovers the ingenious ways its inhabitants acquired timely news through largely oral networks. Information circulated through the region via spies, scouts, traders, missionaries, and other ad hoc couriers - and by encounters of sheer chance with hunting parties, ship-wrecked sailors, captured soldiers, or fugitive slaves. For many, content was often inseparable from the paths taken and the alliances involved in acquiring it. The different and innovative ways that Indians, Africans, and Europeans struggled to make sense of their world created communication networks that linked together peoples who otherwise shared no consensus of the physical and political boundaries shaping their lives. Exchanging information was not simply about having the most up-to-date news or the quickest messenger. It was a way of establishing and maintaining relationships, of articulating values and enforcing priorities - a process inextricably tied to the region's social and geopolitical realities. At the heart of Dubcovsky's study are important lessons about the nexus of information and power in the early American South. -- from dust jacket. |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Language |
In English. |
| Subject |
Communication -- Southern States -- History.
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|
Communication. |
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Southern States. |
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History. |
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Power (Social sciences) -- Southern States -- History.
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Southern States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775.
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Power (Social sciences) |
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HISTORY / United States / Colonial Period (1600-1775) |
| Chronological Term |
1600-1775 |
| Genre/Form |
History.
|
| Other Form: |
Print version: Dubcovsky, Alejandra, 1983- Informed power. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2016 9780674660182 (DLC) 2015031060 (OCoLC)919068240 |
| ISBN |
9780674968783 (electronic book) |
|
0674968786 (electronic book) |
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9780674660182 (hardback) |
|
0674660188 (hardback) |
| Standard No. |
10.4159/9780674968783 |
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