Print markets and political dissent: publishers in Central Europe, 1800-1870

German publishers transformed the political culture of central Europe. Their presses, bookshops, and commercial networks promoted oppositional politics, especially those of liberalism and democratic radicalism. Adapting a centuries-long legacy of marketing forbidden literature to the modern era, the book trade vigorously contested the censorship regimes of Prussia and Austria with an array of legal and illegal tricks. Driven by profit and political conviction, publishers became cultural brokers and political actors, and their achievements are many. Alongside the smuggling of banned books, they promoted a broad spectrum of legal dissent—from highbrow journals to middlebrow lexica to flyers. They circulated Western political ideas through extensive translation, devised new formats to widen the reception of commentary, and designed marketing schemes to broaden the reading nation. But the aspiration of popularizing political dissent had mixed results. If the book trade established liberalism as an inexorable political force, democratic radicalism never achieved mainstream status. Between the Carlsbad Decrees of 1819 and the Imperial Press Law of 1874, governments criminalized republicanism and other democratic doctrines, denying them necessary access to broader audiences. Recounting the triumphs and setbacks of marketing political dissent, James Brophy’s study brings alive the turbulent world of publishing. This sweeping narrative redefines the political public sphere in nineteenth-century central Europe.