The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe

319 Pages·2001·2.212 MB·English

by  Edited by Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A. Baron

The Politics of Information in Early
Modern Europe
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 a 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
(cid:127) the role of censorship mechanisms
(cid:127) effects of politics on reading and publishing
(cid:127) 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.
Brendan Dooley, Research Coordinator at the Medici Archive Project, has
taught Cultural History and Media History at Harvard University and the
University of Chicago. His most recent book is The Social History of Skepticism:
Experience and Doubt in Early Modern Culture. Sabrina A. Baron is Visiting
Associate Professor of History in the Department of History at the University
of Maryland, Baltimore County. She was previously Visiting Associate
Professor in History at George Washington University and a Fulbright Lecturer
in World History at Tirana University in Albania.
Routledge Studies in Cultural History
1. The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe
Edited by Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A. Baron
The Politics of
Information in Early
Modern Europe
Edited by Brendan Dooley and
Sabrina A. Baron
London and New York
First published 2001
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Editorial material and selection © 2001 Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A. Baron; individual
contributors, their contribution.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photo-
copying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
The politics of information in early modern Europe/edited by Brendan Dooley and Sabrina A. Baron.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Contents: Eyes, ears, news, and plays/Stuart Sherman – Manuscript news/printed news : the two
faces of dissemination in early seventeenth-century England/Sabrina A. Baron – News and
pamphlet culture of mid-seventeenth-century England/Michael Mendle – News, history, and the
construction of the present in early modern England/Daniel Woolf – The origins of the German
press/Thomas Schröder – Newspapers in the Netherlands/Otto Lankhorst – Instruments of
political information in France/Jean-Pierre Vittu – Policy and publishing in the Habsburg
Netherlands/Paul Arblaster – Politics and press in Spain/Henry Ettinghausen – The war, the news,
and the curious : Italian Military gazettes during the Holy League/Mario Infelise – The politics of
information in seventeenth-century Scandinavia/Paul Ries – News and doubt in early modern
culture/Brendan Dooley.
1. Press and politics–Europe–History–17th century. I. Dooley, Brendan Maurice, 1953– II. Baron,
Sabrina A., 1959–.
PN4751 .P62 2001
070.4'449324'09409032–dc21 00-059231
ISBN 0-203-99185-0 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0–415–20310–4(Print Edition)
Contents
Notes on contributors vii
Introduction 1
BRENDAN DOOLEY
PART I
The English model 17
1 Eyes and ears, news and plays: the argument of
Ben Jonson’s Staple 23
STUART SHERMAN
2 The guises of dissemination in early seventeenth-century
England: news in manuscript and print 41
SABRINA A. BARON
3 News and the pamphlet culture of mid-seventeenth-century
England 57
MICHAEL MENDLE
4 News, history and the construction of the present in early
modern England 80
DANIEL WOOLF
vi Contents
PART II
The Continent 119
5 The origins of the German press 123
THOMAS SCHRÖDER
6 Newspapers in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century 151
OTTO LANKHORST
7 Instruments of political information in France 160
JEAN-PIERRE VITTU
8 Policy and publishing in the Habsburg Netherlands,
1585–1690 179
PAUL ARBLASTER
9 Politics and the press in Spain 199
HENRY ETTINGHAUSEN
10 The war, the news and the curious: military gazettes
in Italy 216
MARIO INFELISE
11 The politics of information in seventeenth-century
Scandinavia 237
PAUL RIES
PART III
Pan-European trajectories 273
12 News and doubt in early modern culture: or, are we
having a public sphere yet? 275
BRENDAN DOOLEY
Postscript 291
BRENDAN DOOLEY
Index 298
Contributors
Paul Arblaster teaches in the Literature Department of the Katholiek
Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium and recently finished his Ph.D. at Oxford
University wth a thesis on the newspapers of the Low Countries. Forthcoming
publications include contributions to A European Court in Brussels: Albert and
Isabella, 1599–1621.
Sabrina A. Baron teaches in the History Department at University of
Maryland, Baltimore County. She has published essays on seventeenth-
century English history and is completing a book on licensing for the press in
early seventeenth-century England.
Brendan Dooley, Research Coordinator at the Medici Archive Project, has
taught in the History Department at Harvard University. His publications
include Science, Politics and Society: The ‘Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia’ and its World
(Garland, 1991), Italy in the Baroque: Selected Readings (Garland, 1995), and
articles in numerous journals, including Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales, Rivista
storica italiana, Journal of Modern History, European History Quarterly, Journal of the
History of Ideas, Società e storia and Révue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine.
Henry Ettinghausen teaches in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and
Latin American Studies at the University of Southampton. He is the editor of
La Guerra dels Segadors a través de la premsa de l’epoca (Curial, 1993) and Noticias del
siglo XVII: relaciones de sucesos naturales y sobrenaturales (Puvill, 1995). In addition,
he has published articles in European History Quarterly, Etad de Oro and Anthropos.
Mario Infelise teaches at the University of Venice. He is the author of
L’Editoria veneziana nel Settecento (Angeli, 1989); I Remondini di Bassano: stampa e
industria nel Veneto del Settecento (Tassotti, 1980). He has also edited, with Paola
Marini, L’Editoria del ‘700 e i Remondini: atti del Convegno, Bassano, 28–29 settembre
1990 (Ghedina & Tassotti, 1992) and Remondini, un editore del Settecento (Electa,
1990).
Otto Lankhorst works for the University Library of Nijmegen (the Nether-
lands). His publications include Reinier Leers, 1654–1714, uitgever & boekverkoper
te Rotterdam: een Europees ‘libraire’ en zijn fonds (APA-Holland Universiteits Pers,
1983); with H.H.M. van Lieshout, Eleven Catalogues by Reiner Leers, 1692–1709:
viii Contributors
a Reproduction (HES Publishers, 1992); with Jan Roes, De Gezegende pers: aspecten
van de katholieke persgeschiedenis in Nederland tijdens de 19de en 20ste eeuw onder redactie
van Mechteld de Coo-Wijgerinck (Kerckebosch, 1989); and, with P.G. Hoftijzer,
Drukkers, boekverkopers en lezers in Nederland tijdens de Republiek: een historiografische en
bibliografische handleiding (Sdu Uitgevers, 1995).
Michael Mendle teaches at the University of Alabama. His books include
Dangerous Positions: Mixed Government, the Estates of the Realm, and the Making of the
Answer to the XIX Propositions (University of Alabama Press, 1985) and Henry
Parker and the English Civil War: The Political Thought of the Public’s Privado (Cam-
bridge University Press, 1995).
Paul Ries is a fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge, and has held a lectureship
in the faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages at Cambridge. He is
currently working on an edition of Den Danske Mercurius, 1666–77.
Thomas Schröder teaches in the Neuphilologische Fakultät of the University
of Tübingen. He is the author of Die ersten Zeitungen: Textgestaltung und
Nachrichtenauswahl (G. Narr, 1995).
Stuart Sherman teaches at Fordham University. His publications include
Telling Time: Clocks, Diaries, and English Diurnal Form, 1660–1785 (University of
Chicago Press, 1996).
Jean-Pierre Vittu teaches at the University of Orleans, France. He is the
editor, with Henriette Asséo, of Problèmes socio-culturels en France au XVIIème siècle
(Paris, 1974), and has published articles in Révue d’histoire moderne et contempo-
raine, Dix-huitième siècle, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, Les Cahiers de
Tunisie, IBLA (Tunis), as well as in many collections of essays.
Daniel Woolf teaches in the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University,
Canada. He is the author of The Idea of History in Early Stuart England: Erudi-
tion, Ideology, and ‘The Light of Truth’ from the Accession of James I to the Civil War
(University of Toronto Press, 1990). He has also edited, with John Morrill and
Paul Slack, Public Duty and Private Conscience in Seventeenth-Century England: Essays
Presented to G.E. Aylmer (Clarendon Press, 1993); and, with Thomas Mayer, The
Rhetorics of Life-Writing in Early Modern Europe: Forms of Biography from Cassandra
Fedele to Louis XIV (University of Michigan Press, 1995)
Introduction
Brendan Dooley
Information: the very term itself seems to suggest electronic blips on a computer
screen rather than quill pens; or the soft click of fingers on a keyboard rather
than the heavy pounding of the hand press. Instead of renouncing the term in
this book, however, we surround it with qualifications. And we call political
information whatever may be thought or said about events connected with the
government of states and with cities and their peoples. The fresher it was, the
more it deserved to be called ‘news.’ Can opinion be information? It can, no less
than information may be opinion. The interchangeability of the terms is part of
politics. And information concerning politics, politics concerning information:
these expressions, in brief, define our subject matter. In bringing together a
kaleidoscopic sampling of what recent scholarship has discovered about the first
century of news, we hope to make a unique interdisciplinary contribution to a
growing field.
The contributors to this book reflect the culmination of twenty years of
media studies that have finally begun investigating seventeenth-century political
information from a historical point of view. We recognize our debt to the many
scholars on both sides of the Atlantic who have made our work possible. As
historians of the book, we are riding the crest of the wave first made by Henri-
Jean Martin, Elizabeth Eisenstein, Roger Chartier and Robert Darnton, among
others.1 As media historians we have benefited from the efforts of Jeremy
Popkin, C. John Sommerville, Joad Raymond, Michael Harris, Jean Sgard,
Pierre Retat and many more.2 What both of these disciplines can offer in a
broad comparative context we hope our readers will discover in this volume.
Indeed, the seventeenth century has been called many things: an age of
genius, an age of gold, an age of Galileo; a century of revolution, a century of
challenge, a century of change. Our book in no way seeks to steal from it any of
the glory accruing from the accomplishments that have earned it such striking
characterizations. Rather than subtracting from the current picture of the age, if
anything, we hope to add to it one more feature. By bringing the creation of a
political information business closer to the centre of early modern urban life,
where it was experienced at the time, we hope to illuminate an aspect that only
blunted hindsight has been able to obscure – an age of nascent information
media, a century of emerging public opinion.