Science from Abroad. Counterfeit Publishing and Scientific Culture in the Low Countries, 1790-1890

The history of counterfeit publishing traces the different forms of literary ‘piracy’ – the reprinting of texts without permission from the original publisher or author – in the past. It has been written mostly as a counterpart to the history of intellectual property, revealing the ‘copyright wars’ that led to international copyright legislation. This project draws attention to the overlooked, more productive functions of the copy, as a tool in the circulation of knowledge, by shifting focus from the well-studied literary field to the scientific field. I will study the reprinting of foreign scientific texts in the Low Countries between ca. 1790, when state privileges for books and journals were abolished, and ca. 1890, when a first form of international copyright was introduced. Three sets of research questions will scrutinize (I) the development of a cultural politics surrounding scientific reprints, (II) the debates on counterfeit publishing in scientific circles and (III) the practices of counterfeit publishing by publishers and editors. Together, these will allow me to uncover the conventions of international knowledge circulation that underpinned attitudes towards copying in science. Besides studying general policies, I will compare the publishing cultures in two scientific disciplines (medicine and history) and study the interaction between scholars and publishers from the Low Countries and their colleagues in two publishing centers abroad: Paris and Leipzig.