The Great Exchange: Making the News in Early Modern Europe

News moves. It is a battle, a scandal, a disaster. It is a letter, a newspaper, a proclamation. News is a material thing, but also something between us, something we take into us and feel.

This book tells the story of news from the sunset of the Middle Ages to the rise of mass media in modern times. It begins in Renaissance Italy, with the envoys and merchants who drew in and disseminated news across Europe, establishing its channels and conventions. Following the beat of news around the continent, it uncovers a vast, invisible network traversing the boundaries of geography and politics, religion and language.

Joad Raymond Wren allows the reader to see news - of the battle of Lepanto, the siege of Vienna - spreading around this network in real time. Dispelling the tenacious myth that news was until the printing press scarce and unreliable, and until the telegraph slow and provincial, he opens up windows onto a world buzzing with news from faraway. News brought the distant closer, and provided the means for Europe to know itself. The continent was, for a time, held together by that most essential of human acts: communication.<>

About the author

Joad Raymond is a writer and historian of early modern Europe who has taught at the universities of Oxford, Aberdeen, East Anglia, Paris-Sorbonne and Queen Mary University of London. His previous books include The Invention of the Newspaper, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern Britain, Milton's Angels and, as editor, Making the News, The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture: Cheap Print in Britain and Ireland to 1600, News Networks in Early Modern Europe and The Complete Works of John Milton: Latin Defences.

Product details

• Authors: Joad Raymond Wren
• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 05.06.2025
• EAN: 9780241188538
• ISBN: 978-0-241-18853-8
• No. of pages: 624
• Dimensions: 164 mm x 241 mm x 39 mm
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Media Studies, History of Ideas, Europe, European History, HISTORY / Europe / General, SOCIAL SCIENCE / Media Studies, HISTORY / Modern / 16th Century, HISTORY / Modern / 17th Century, HISTORY / Modern / 18th Century, 18th century, c 1700 to c 1799, Communication Studies, 17th century, c 1600 to c 1699, News media and journalism, 16th century, c 1500 to c 1599