The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

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in the colonies has been theorized by T. H. Breen and others as a critical
development prefacing Revolution. In colonial Virginia, this evolution is evident in
the public prints of the 1760s. Extending Breen’s recognition of newspapers as an
essential part of new marketing techniques, this research also sees evidence of that
consumer growth within the Chesapeake colonies’ print and finds that the
newspapers are one important driver of that growth. The printing process—the first
form of mass production—was an integral part of and intrinsic to the beginnings of
an important consumer revolution that helped bring competition and new press
freedom to Virginia. The newspapers themselves as items to buy or sell, plus the
advertisements within their pages—which were taking up an increasing percentage
of column inches—helped to drive that very economy. Newspapers were a crucial
vehicle for the new marketing techniques, which not only drove business, but also
helped to drive social changes. Newspapers were a commodity made available for
sale and the advertisements within their pages were an important driver of the move
toward consumer consumption. The relevance here is that this increasing market
economy led to a commonality that brought together residents throughout the
British-American colonies, a key to the Revolutionary political changes in the
period. In an astute analysis, Breen noted that, “advertising copy might best be seen
as fragments of cultural conversations linking ordinary colonists to a larger Atlantic
economy.” This economy of consumption connected the Chesapeake colonists
through trade and merchandise and a sense of commonality to both London and
the other British colonies. Referring to it as “a consumer public sphere,” Breen also
noted that such marketplace choice also had the tendency to undermine the status
and class lines that marked society, in essence undermining subordination and
deference. In a larger sense, the rise of printing and its influence in Virginia was part
of a wider transatlantic rise of mercantile capitalism and the consumer revolution
that begin in sixteenth-century Europe. For Breen, this marketplace was a necessary
precedent for a new American national unity and Revolution: “trust [was]
established across space, impersonally, a product of a print culture.” Increased