Business News in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Library of the Written Word / Library of the Written Word - the Handpress World, 121)

This volume explores the creation, dissemination, and consumption of 'business news' in the early modern Atlantic World. Through a series of case studies from scholars at all career stages, a variety of methodological and theoretical approaches to 'business news' are showcased. Contents Contents 6 Acknowledgements 8 Figures and Tables 9 Abbreviations 11 Notes on Contributors 13 Chapter 1 Business News in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Contexts, Connections, and Methodologies 16 Part 1 Trust, Credit, and Business News Networks 38 Chapter 2 The Provision and Circulation of Credit in the British Atlantic Trading World, 1739–1775 40 Chapter 3 Spreading Information in Eighteenth-Century Mercantile Networks: Experiments in Historical Social Network Analysis 63 Chapter 4 Trust and Credit: Merchants’ Roles in Puritan News Networks 97 Part 2 Information Flows and Spaces 120 Chapter 5 Betting on News: (Mis)information and Public Opinion in Early Modern England 122 Chapter 6 Newspapers, Profit, and Business in Colonial America 142 Chapter 7 ‘I Should Be Glad of a Little Conversation with Thee’: Business Letters and the Oral Exchange of Information in the Early Modern Atlantic World 167 Chapter 8 Postmen of the Atlantic World: Captains Transmitting Epistolary Business News 198 Part 3 Business News beyond the North Atlantic 220 Chapter 9 Edward Northey and News of Catholic Estate Forfeitures in the Leeward Islands, 1700–1723 222 Chapter 10 The East India Company in West Africa and Information Networks in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World 247 Chapter 11 The Atlantic Correspondence of the Royal African Company, 1678–1681 271 Bibliography of Secondary Works 292 Index 320 Business News in the Early Modern Atlantic World explores the creation, dissemination, and consumption of a specific type of news, 'business news', within early modern commercial news networks. The volume contains eleven case studies, written by scholars from a range of disciplines, which span the breadth of the early modern Atlantic from the first appearance of serial corantos in the seventeenth century to the United States' Declaration of Independence in the late eighteenth century.These expert contributions showcase the range of innovative methodological and theoretical approaches which can be used to study business news, including social network analysis, textual analysis, and qualitative methods