An Ocean of Rumours

News and Information in the Atlantic World
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-108-83838-2
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 300 Seiten, Gewicht: 500 g

Reihe: Cambridge Oceanic Histories

Across the early modern Atlantic world, there were commodities just as valuable as sugar, tobacco or cotton: news and information. However, crossing an ocean beset by wars, pirates and bad weather made transoceanic communications irregular at best, posing significant challenges to the weekly European news cycle. With infrequent access to information, publishers had to navigate between speculation and confirmation, printing everything they could without losing credibility or customers. Michiel van Groesen explores this 'culture of anticipation' across the Atlantic world in Spain, Portugal, France, the Low Countries and England and also in the urban information centres of Renaissance Italy and the Holy Roman Empire. He argues that news from the Atlantic world underpinned all transatlantic exchanges, giving newspapers their rightful place in Atlantic history, and the Atlantic world its place in the history of news.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Groesen, Michiel van

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements; Introduction: an ocean of rumours; 1. The rhythm of Atlantic news: Germany and Italy; 2. Newspapers and war: the low countries; 3. Newspapers and neutrality: France; 4. Advertising the Americas: England; 5. Africa and Africans in the European press: Portugal; 6. Towards Atlantic contemporaneity: Spain; Epilogue: on fragmentation, integration, and imagination; Bibliography.

Über Autor(innen)

Groesen, Michiel van
Michiel van Groesen is Professor of Maritime History at Leiden University and author of Amsterdam's Atlantic: Print Culture and the Making of Dutch Brazil (2017).