As the book concentrates on Western news and its spread and perception beyond Europe, it necessarily starts by first reconstructing the development of early modern news and newspaper production and circulation itself. Stressing the long medieval history of letter writing, it emphasizes the importance of the emergence of postal relay systems and then the early modern diplomatic state system and the Sforza diplomacy around 1450. Around 1550, the first professional and anonymously composed, copied, and diffused handwritten newspapers (avvisi) appear in Venice and Rome, the Italo-German (imperial) connection is crucial for first spreading both the infrastructural and media innovation of postal relay system and newspapers, establishing a steady flow of news between Antwerp through Germany to Rome and Naples. Printed periodical (weeklies) newspapers are first produced in Germany starting in 1608/1609. France did not participate in a committed way in this development throughout the sixteenth century, only starting in 1598, and permanently only with Théophraste Renaudot’s Gazette did it emulate the German form of printed newspapers. England reconnected with the Italo-German-Dutch mode of handwritten newspaper circulation as early as 1580. After a transition period of printed newsbookes and short-lived periodicals, the London (first shortly: Oxford) Gazette emerged during the Restoration in parallel to the French gazette. Levant and other company merchants after the largely synchronic Colbert and Cromwell/Restoration reforms would have access mostly to the French, the English (London), and some Italian handwritten or printed newspapers after 1650.