Newspapers and War: The Low Countries

Cambridge University Press eBooks, pp. 65–100

Abstract

This chapter charts the emergence of the printed newspaper, and focuses on the Low Countries where the new genre first thrived. It provides a microhistorical study of transatlantic coverage in the Dutch Republic and the Spanish Netherlands for the year 1630, when both enemies had good and bad news from the Americas to digest. Amsterdam corantos eagerly followed developments in Brazil, where forces of the Dutch West India Company captured Pernambuco, the heart of the Atlantic sugar industry, while the Antwerp newspapers, with just as much zeal, covered the impending arrival of the first Spanish treasure fleet from New Spain and Tierra Firme in more than two years. The detailed comparison of two competing newspapers operating in the same linguistic market demonstrates that the partisan press on either side of the border preferred to follow mainly good news that was waiting to happen. Yet, whereas the newspapers in the authoritarian regime of the Southern Netherlands discounted bad news altogether, the ‘free press’ in Amsterdam covered all stories arriving from across the Atlantic Ocean, thus setting a new standard of credibility that would be replicated in other European media landscapes.

Authors 1

1. Michiel van Groesen corresponding Aachen

   Leiden University

   Affiliation as printed

   Universiteit Leiden