Catholic Transnational Repertoires in the Nineteenth-CenturySignatures, Newspapers and Organisation

Laburpena

The nineteenth-century Catholic campaigns for Pope Pius IX, which span from 1848 to 1878, comprise about one hundred thousand addresses containing more than thirty-eight million signatures, and are some of the first and wider transnational drives on record. The campaigns are interesting by themselves, as they highlight the Catholics’ engagement with, and contribution to, modern politics. From a methodological perspective, the unique feat of having clerical and lay activists from different countries participating in consecutive campaigns allows for a comparative historical approach to change and development of the mobilisation techniques and the repertoires of collective action. This chapter begins such a comparative exploration by analysing the contrasting role played by Catholic newspapers in each instance of mobilisation. Newspapers linked local sentiment to transnational processes and also, sometimes, became hubs of activism supplying impulse and logistical resources to the campaigns.