Paper short abstract:

In a short presentation we would like to launch the discussion upon the theoretical framework and the research strategies of building a project regarding Colonial Press.

Paper long abstract:

As convenors of the Panel "Democratic principles and cultures in the colonial press (19-20th centuries) we had the initiative of proposing it to the II CHAM International Conference, as an important step to the building of a project regarding the Colonial Press in the Portuguese Empire since the liberal Revolution (1820). This is a project we would like to be thought of, since its roots, as International; involving researchers from Portugal and from those countries that once integrated the Portuguese Empire, including Brazilian researchers for the lasting importance of the country in this web. The idea is to approach, in a multi and transdisciplinary perspective the role of periodical press in crafting and spreading Portuguese colonial ideology, which was profoundly marked both by the different political ideologies of the successive Portuguese regimes and by international colonial and anticolonial theorization and movements. On the other hand, the aim is to approach how the emergence and development of press is linked to the creation of local public spheres and of modern political and cultural thought in the different spaces of the Empire. Finally, by proposing to gather in a single project these different perspectives and spaces, and by analyzing the concrete modes of circulation of persons and ideas, we aim to launch the bases of a comparative history of modern political and cultural thought in the Portuguese Empire. In a short presentation we would like to launch the discussion upon the theoretical framework and the research strategies of such a project.