News and secrecies of the New World in the Media of the Old during the Early Modern Period
Research Question
How and which news were distributed within Europe about economic issues in Spanish America? Which role played secret information? Was there a difference in the use of the media and information networks? Where there areas in Europe which had easier access to news than others?
Project Description
Different information media will be compared by analysing news about economic issues such as the mining industry and the arrival of precious metals in Europe. Diplomatic and merchant correspondence, handwritten and printed newsletters as well as pictures and material remainings offered images about the riches of the New World. These information media circulated all over Europe. Nonetheless, not all parts of the Old World were attached to the same extent to specific information networks which were formed by the different media. Thus in Protestant Europe which relied to an increasing extent on printed news technical information disseminated through the networks of handwritten media might not have been easily accessible and this favoured the impression of secrecy. The project aims to show the linkages between media, the kind of information distributed and the changing geography of information and knowledge networks.
Selected Publications
News from the New World: Spain’s Monopoly in the European Network of Handwritten Newsletters during the Sixteenth Century, in: Joad Raymond, Noah Moxham (ed.): News Networks in Early Modern Europe, Leiden/Boston (Brill), pp. 495-511, ISBN13 9789004277175 and E-ISBN 9789004277199
Between India and the Indies: German mercantile networks, the struggle for the imperial crown and the naming of the New World, in: Culture & History Digital Journal 3(1), June 2014, e003 eISSN 2253-797X doi:10.3989/chdj.2014.v3.i1 doi: dx.doi.org/10.3989/chdj.2014.003
From Cultural Exchange to Cultural Memory: Spanish American Objects in Spanish and Austrian Households of the Early 18th Century, in: Veronika Hyden-Hanscho, Renate Pieper, Werner Stangl (ed.), Cultural exchange and consumption patterns in the age of Enlightenment: Europe and the Atlantic World, Bochum (Winkler), pp. 213-234, ISBN 978-3-7795-0474-0