{ "id": "imprenta-de-la-habana-1735-1800", "type": "entity", "name": "The presses of Havana, the cedula that banned them, and the apprentices two public bodies paid for in 1800", "summary": "A press was licensed in Havana in 1735; a royal cedula of 1774 refused a second one and forbade any press but the government's; the Captains General did not enforce it and four offices were working by 1800. The trade had no compositors, so the economic society and the Real Consulado advertised paid apprenticeships - ten pesos a month, clothing and keep, three years, an examination every six months. Of five candidates, none met the conditions.", "locale": "en", "tags": [ "printing", "books", "cuba", "americas", "spanish-empire", "eighteenth-century", "education", "enlightenment", "colonial-institutions" ], "relations": [ { "rel": "related", "target": "papel-periodico-de-la-havana-1790" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "universidad-de-san-geronimo-de-la-habana" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "first-printing-press-americas" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "imprenta-de-las-misiones-guaranies" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "alzate-gacetas-de-literatura-1788" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "mercurio-peruano-1791" }, { "rel": "related", "target": "correos-de-las-indias" } ], "questions": [ "When was printing introduced in Havana?", "Did Spain restrict printing presses in colonial Cuba?", "How were printers trained in the Spanish Caribbean?", "What books were printed in eighteenth-century Havana?", "What was the Real Sociedad Patriotica of Havana?" ], "claims": [ { "id": "c1", "text": "The licence is dated and the tradition around it is not. On 4 June 1735 the governor Guemez Horcasitas granted Francisco de Paula licence to establish a press in the capital with the object of publishing books in general; Paula afterwards sold the press to Manuel Azpetia and he to Jose Bolona, who in 1785 was named printer to the navy in succession to Matias de Mora. The same page adds that it is traditionally said the press was known in Havana from 1700, while others suppose it was not known until 1747. Three datings are printed together and none is decided between; the claim carries the uncertainty rather than the earliest number.", "sources": [ "torre-habana-antigua-y-moderna-1857" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c2", "text": "The prohibition is on the record and so is its failure. By royal cedula of 20 January 1774 a request by Blas de los Olivos to establish a press was refused, although it went recommended by the Conde de Ricla, and it was forbidden that there should be any press other than that of the Captaincy General. The 1857 account states plainly that the said cedula was not complied with by the Captains General, and that by the end of the last century there were already four presses in Havana - those of Bolona, Mora, Palmer and Segui. A restrictive order and its quiet non-execution belong in the same sentence, which is how the source puts them.", "sources": [ "torre-habana-antigua-y-moderna-1857" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c3", "text": "What those presses did is described without flattery. Their occupation was to print some proclamations or dispositions of the Government, novenas of the saints with most clientele, some bad plates, and nothing of more consequence. Against that the same author names the most notable works he had seen printed in Havana in the previous century: the Reglamento de milicias of 1764, the Guia de forasteros of 1781, and the Historia natural de los peces y crustaceos de la Isla by Antonio Parra, with plates and engravings, of 1787.", "sources": [ "torre-habana-antigua-y-moderna-1857" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c4", "text": "The bottleneck was skilled labour, and two independent statements of it are transcribed in the 1859 Apuntes. In a report the Sociedad Economica commissioned from Dr Jose Agustin Caballero to promote the establishment of a press, he wrote: \"Ni aqui se trabajan letras, ni es facil hallar un compositor. Es preciso traerlos de fuera.\" And at the close of 1799 Veranes and Viana, reporting after a detailed examination, said that of the two presses, in the one \"encontraron prensas sin manos, y en la otra, estas sin aquellas\" - presses without hands in one office and hands without presses in the other.", "sources": [ "bachiller-apuntes-letras-cuba-1859" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c5", "text": "The remedy was a publicly funded apprenticeship, announced in the newspaper. The notice printed in the Papel Periodico of 17 April 1800 says that the Real Sociedad Patriotica, always disposed to promote and cultivate the useful arts, had taken upon itself to improve to the greatest degree possible the two presses of the city belonging to Francisco Segui and Esteban Bolona; that among other measures directed to furnishing both with good type and necessary utensils it had also determined that good workmen should be formed in them; and that it would therefore admit two young men, one for each press, whom the Real Consulado and the Society would assist with ten pesos a month and the said printers with clothing and keep.", "sources": [ "bachiller-apuntes-letras-cuba-1859" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c6", "text": "The entry conditions are those of a school rather than of a workshop. The candidates had to know how to read and write properly and the Castilian orthography, and if possible something of Latin; their age was not to pass fourteen years and the time of apprenticeship was three; a deputation of the Society would examine them from time to time to learn their progress and reward them according to merit, in such a way that the term of the apprenticeship would end early if they became expert before the three years designated. Applications were to be made within the month through the Society's secretary, Antonio de Viana.", "sources": [ "bachiller-apuntes-letras-cuba-1859" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c7", "text": "The scheme's first result was a failure that its own papers record. Five candidates presented themselves; the commission named to examine them reported, in a paper subscribed by Pablo Boloix on 4 June 1800, that they did not have all the qualities the Society had proposed, and that the two least backward might be admitted on condition of being examined every six months to grade their progress, \"y no reconociendose en ellos aplicacion se les despida\". Bachiller adds the sharper observation himself: if the agreement of the Royal Society had been observed to the letter, it would have been impossible to find a candidate with the necessary requisites.", "sources": [ "bachiller-apuntes-letras-cuba-1859" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c8", "text": "The subsidy was renewed once the first apprentices had finished, which is the part that turns a gesture into a policy. The Society reported the completion to the Junta of the Real Consulado, which by an official letter of 12 July 1805, signed by the Conde de Casa Bayona and Manuel Zavaleta, agreed to the continuation of its assistance, stating that it had not doubted a moment in resolving for its own part that the aid lent to the progress of the presses should be continued, the advantages obtained being unquestionable and it being still more necessary to carry them forward \"a fin de mejorar un arte tan esencial a la publica y general instruccion de los vecinos\", and asking that the competition be opened to applicants without delay.", "sources": [ "bachiller-apuntes-letras-cuba-1859" ], "confidence": 0.85 }, { "id": "c9", "text": "The trade being improved was also an instrument of the Holy Office and of the Treasury, and the same pages say so. Bachiller describes Esteban Bolona as \"familiar de la Santa Inquisicion y su impresor\" in the very sentence in which he credits him with bringing out memoirs and printed papers. On the other side of the ledger, Diego de la Barrera told the Society on 30 November 1793 that various royal orders had ordained the publication of the Calendario manual y Guia de forasteros, of which 156 copies were remitted to the Real Hacienda, which paid 156 pesos for them, and that a single workman could be spared for the Guia - which is what moved him to ask the Society to fix its attention on the state of the press.", "sources": [ "bachiller-apuntes-letras-cuba-1859" ], "confidence": 0.8 }, { "id": "c10", "text": "The verdict quoted by Bachiller is a contemporary one and is careful about what it claims. The Sociedad Patriotica and the Consulado, it says, two brilliant torches of the island of Cuba, knowing how much it suited them to have persons instructed in the noble art of printing, placed at the expense of their respective funds pupils distributed in the workshops of Segui and Bolona, who were instructed with perfection so as to propagate by this means an art so useful and necessary, and to obtain in time skilful typographers, \"cuyo resultado es uno de los bienes que ya experimentan\". The same writer declines to appraise the living printers by name, saying it is not well to make their apology before their death. A judgement given four or five years after the event, by a member of the body that paid for the scheme, is reported here as such and not as an outcome measurement.", "sources": [ "bachiller-apuntes-letras-cuba-1859" ], "confidence": 0.75 } ], "takeaways": [], "faqs": [], "evidence_tier": "secondary", "evidence": { "level": "industry_observation", "source_types": [ "paper" ] }, "moat_flag": false, "winning_edge": "The stock account of printing in the Spanish colonies is a licensing story told at one remove: presses were controlled, therefore little was printed. Both halves are tested here against Havana's own papers. The control is real and precisely dated - a cedula of 20 January 1774 refusing Blas de los Olivos and forbidding any press but the government's - and it is also recorded as having been ignored by the officials meant to enforce it, four offices standing by 1800. And the shortage turns out to be a shortage of trained hands, not of permission: an economic society and a merchant guild jointly advertising apprenticeships at ten pesos a month with clothing and keep, a fourteen-year age limit, a three-year term shortened for merit, an examination every six months and dismissal for idleness - then reporting that of five candidates not one met the conditions, and renewing the subsidy anyway in 1805. The cost sits in the same paragraphs: the master printer being subsidised was the familiar and printer of the Inquisition.", "confidence": 0.8, "last_verified": "2026-08-14", "canonical_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/imprenta-de-la-habana-1735-1800", "api_url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/api/k/imprenta-de-la-habana-1735-1800.json", "jsonld": { "@context": "https://schema.org", "name": "The presses of Havana, the cedula that banned them, and the apprentices two public bodies paid for in 1800", "description": "A press was licensed in Havana in 1735; a royal cedula of 1774 refused a second one and forbade any press but the government's; the Captains General did not enforce it and four offices were working by 1800. The trade had no compositors, so the economic society and the Real Consulado advertised paid apprenticeships - ten pesos a month, clothing and keep, three years, an examination every six months. Of five candidates, none met the conditions.", "url": "https://hispanic-legacy.com/k/imprenta-de-la-habana-1735-1800", "license": "https://spdx.org/licenses/CC-BY-4.0.html", "dateModified": "2026-08-14", "citation": [ { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Apuntes para la historia de las letras y de la instruccion publica de la isla de Cuba, por Antonio Bachiller y Morales", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=fn4CAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PA11" }, { "@type": "CreativeWork", "name": "Lo que fuimos y lo que somos, o La Habana antigua y moderna, por Jose Maria de la Torre", "url": "https://books.google.com/books?id=V_kdAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA122" } ], "@type": "Article", "headline": "The presses of Havana, the cedula that banned them, and the apprentices two public bodies paid for in 1800" } }