‘The Precious Tool and Often also the Weapon That We Know it to Be’: Itinerant Showpeople’s Periodicals as Socio-Economic Platforms (1880s–1920s)

Itinerant showpeople periodicals (ISPs) were sprouting up all across Europe in the long nineteenth century. Between 1883 and circa 1920, at least thirty-six journals were launched across France, Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy and Austria-Hungary. This upsurge was part of a larger process of professionalization, specialization, and unionization in a variety of professions and trades, which was no different for itinerant showpeople. Yet, the existence of this type of journal has not been researched before. ISPs’ absence from historical research is due to itinerant showpeople’s social invisibility and stigmatization in nineteenth-century society, in combination with their itinerant lifestyle, which leaves few traces behind. Moreover, scholarly attention has largely favoured professional journals, especially in the natural sciences and medicine, which has overshadowed periodicals related to many other occupations. While ISPs are a type of class journal and share traits with professional and trade (union) journals, and even with the general press and leisure periodicals, their distinct features set them apart from other periodicals, warranting examination. ISPs catered to a specific group of people and their content, function and distribution methods diverged from sedentary professional/trade journals. In this article I conduct an analysis of ISPs’ defining characteristics in France and Belgium. I explore their goals and priorities, the agency of editors, contributors, readers and publishers, and issues of accessibility. By tracing key aspects of the production process, prices, publication frequency, circulation, content and editorial practices, I aim to illustrate ISPs’ ambiguity and specificity. Moreover, focusing on this set of characteristics helps uncover how these journals operated as socio-economic communication and exchange platforms, underscoring the significance of ISPs in the fairground community and deepening our understanding of communication practices in general.