The reawakening of professional historiography after the Second World War was shaped by perceptions of globalization, in times of peace and war. Fernand Braudel wrote his Mediterranean under the influence of French and German geopolitical and geohistorical conceptions of the importance of time-space relations. In practice, this led to a focus on the historicization of travel and transportation distances and the circulation of news. Much the same was true of the Western history of early modern India, although the two historiographical fields were still largely unconnected. Holden Furber emphasized the importance of the so-called “overland route” through Persia and Arabia from Aleppo to India. The history of the circulation of handwritten newsletters (avvisi) and of the Western printed periodical press stands on the shoulders of this history of infrastructural development. While for Europe this is a history that tends to begin in the Late Middle Ages with the precursors of newsletters, the history of the press and of Western-style newspapers in India has concentrated for decades on the period after 1780, when the first privately owned newspaper was printed in Calcutta by James August Hicky. Only Mughal historians since the 1950s have added to this picture by pointing to the Persian akhbārāt newsletters, but usually without being explicit about the relationship or disclosure between Western and Asian news circulation. This book attempts to bring together the fields of the history of Early Modern Western news circulation, transportation, and travel between the Mediterranean and India, and the reception of Western news and newspapers between roughly the fifteenth century and 1800: On the one hand, it continues or resumes the perspectives established around 1950; on the other hand, it reverses the point of view, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between the mere connection (or the possibility of connections) and the semantic horizon and content of the news circulating in terms of the regions and events actually covered (and, mostly, not covered). The coexistence of multiple, more or less closed circuits of letters and news and the discrepancy between the simple geophysical radii of outreach and the selectivity of the contents reported and transported by “news” is a fact never taken into account by the aforementioned Braudelian social history; it applies to Europe itself and acquires a much greater dimension of complexity outside of Europe. To do so, the book starts from a tripartite scheme of spheres, the political and social framework, the media combination, and the epistemic framework existing in a given period and society, which makes it possible to assess the character and characteristics of a given situation of news circulation in a world-historical region and time. From time to time the chapters will return to this threefold scheme, which will be used in the conclusion for a tentative global comparison.

Introduction

章节
发表日期：

2025年

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Cornel Zwierlein

摘要

The reawakening of professional historiography after the Second World War was shaped by perceptions of globalization, in times of peace and war. Fernand Braudel wrote his Mediterranean under the influence of French and German geopolitical and geohistorical conceptions of the importance of time-space relations. In practice, this led to a focus on the historicization of travel and transportation distances and the circulation of news. Much the same was true of the Western history of early modern India, although the two historiographical fields were still largely unconnected. Holden Furber emphasized the importance of the so-called “overland route” through Persia and Arabia from Aleppo to India. The history of the circulation of handwritten newsletters (avvisi) and of the Western printed periodical press stands on the shoulders of this history of infrastructural development. While for Europe this is a history that tends to begin in the Late Middle Ages with the precursors of newsletters, the history of the press and of Western-style newspapers in India has concentrated for decades on the period after 1780, when the first privately owned newspaper was printed in Calcutta by James August Hicky. Only Mughal historians since the 1950s have added to this picture by pointing to the Persian akhbārāt newsletters, but usually without being explicit about the relationship or disclosure between Western and Asian news circulation. This book attempts to bring together the fields of the history of Early Modern Western news circulation, transportation, and travel between the Mediterranean and India, and the reception of Western news and newspapers between roughly the fifteenth century and 1800: On the one hand, it continues or resumes the perspectives established around 1950; on the other hand, it reverses the point of view, emphasizing the importance of distinguishing between the mere connection (or the possibility of connections) and the semantic horizon and content of the news circulating in terms of the regions and events actually covered (and, mostly, not covered). The coexistence of multiple, more or less closed circuits of letters and news and the discrepancy between the simple geophysical radii of outreach and the selectivity of the contents reported and transported by “news” is a fact never taken into account by the aforementioned Braudelian social history; it applies to Europe itself and acquires a much greater dimension of complexity outside of Europe. To do so, the book starts from a tripartite scheme of spheres, the political and social framework, the media combination, and the epistemic framework existing in a given period and society, which makes it possible to assess the character and characteristics of a given situation of news circulation in a world-historical region and time. From time to time the chapters will return to this threefold scheme, which will be used in the conclusion for a tentative global comparison.