Plagiarists, enthusiasts and periodical geography: A.F. Busching and the making of geographical print culture in the German Enlightenment, c. 1750-1800

This article contributes to recent scholarship on the geography and history of the book by arguing for greater attention to ‘periodical geography’, which refers to the geographical knowledge contained in periodicals, and the geographies that shaped the ways periodicals were produced, circulated and read. To illustrate the potential for such work, the article discusses geographical periodicals in the context of the German Aufklarung (Enlightenment). It focuses in particular on the Wochentliche Nachrichten von neuen Landcharten und geographischen, statistischen und historischen Buchern und Schriften (Berlin 1773–87), edited by the prominent geographer Anton Friedrich Busching. The story of Busching’s periodical merits attention because it throws valuable light on the practical making of geography’s print culture and moral economy of knowledge in the Enlightenment. Busching’s story reveals that there were competing geographies of trust, authority and credibility at work within Enlightenment geography. It reveals that Busching’s periodical played a central role in reshaping geography’s moral and epistemological order in the later 18th century. In recounting this story, my broader agenda is to argue that the very periodicity and materiality of periodicals transformed the character of geographical print culture in the later 18th century.