Alejandra Dubcovsky, “Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South” (Harvard UP, 2016)

New Books in Indigenous Studies · Apr 26, 2016 · 43m

Informed Power: Communication in the Early American South (Harvard University Press, 2016) 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 or 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…