Caught Between Business, War and Politics: Late Medieval Roots of the Early Modern European News Networks

• In Event: Nation, Narrative, and Histories of News

Abstract

This essay challenges the notion that the early modern news-gathering practices and networks in Europe crystallized only in the late fourteenth century, corresponding with the emergence of permanent embassies and state-run postal systems. Inspired by an article published in 2005 by Georg Christ that for the first time problematized this notion, the author offers additional evidence conveyed in the experience of the late medieval Venice and Florence, while relying on contemporary chronicles, merchant letters and diplomatic dispatches. Mainly through the analysis of three historical case studies, the essay argues that the existing networks of lower-tier diplomatic representatives, sea captains and military liaisons were already functioning as nodal points of an intelligence-gathering mechanism. But it was the merchant circles that decisively shaped the whole news-gathering network by lending it its own matter-of-factly writing style, as well as allowing it to rely on its own scarsella system of couriers.

Author

• Juraj Kittler, St. Lawrence U