The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe

In its various European contexts, the invention and spread of newspapers in the seventeenth century had a profound effect on early modern culture and politics. While recent research has explored the role of the newspaper in transforming information into ideology in various European countries, this book is the first to bring this work together into a comprehensive and comparative survey. The invention and spread of newspapers in the seventeenth century had a profound effect on early modern European culture and politics. The European pattern for the delivery and consumption of political information provided the model for the rest of the world. However, the transition to printed news was neither rapid nor easy and a greater circulation of news had widely varying effects. Recent research has revealed much about the origins and development of news publishing in each of its European settings. This book is the first to bring this research together in comprehensive survey. The international contributors to this volume study all of the most important information markets in Europe. Topics covered include: the relation between printed and manuscript news role of censorship mechanisms effects of politics on reading and publishing effects of reading on contemporary politics What emerges from this research is a new view of political information as an enterprise, and of the products of information as commodities circulating far and wide Book Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 4 Copyright......Page 5 Contents......Page 6 1 Eyes and ears, news and plays......Page 32 2 The guises of dissemination in early seventeenth-century England......Page 50 3 News and the pamphlet culture of mid-seventeenth-century England......Page 66 4 News, history and the construction of the present in early modern England......Page 89 5 The origins of the German press......Page 132 6 Newspapers in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century......Page 160 7 Instruments of political information in France......Page 169 8 Policy and publishing in the Habsburg Netherlands, 1585-1690......Page 188 9 Politics and the press in Spain......Page 208 10 The war, the news and the curious......Page 225 11 The politics of information in seventeenth-century Scandinavia......Page 246 12 News and doubt in early modern culture......Page 284 Postscript......Page 300 Index......Page 307 The invention and spread of newspapers in the seventeenth century had a profound effect on early modern culture and politics. This book is the first to bring together some of the innovative work in this burgeoning field.