Business News in the Atlantic World, 1620-1763

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

The concept of 'news' is something that we are all familiar with, and in today's society it exists in many forms. 'News' as we recognise it began to emerge in the early modern period, bolstered by the proliferation, availability, and affordability of printing. Previous studies of the history of news have, quite rightly, emphasised the 'print revolution' as essential in explaining the emergence of a variety of news conduits, including the newspaper.This project focuses on a specific sub-type of news - business news. Many recent studies of the development of 'news' have considered news as one coherent genre, incorporating political, business, cultural and social news. Business news, however, was distinct in a number of ways; in its form and in how it was created, disseminated and used. Scholars know that commercial agents took advantage of the increasing availability of printed news to make decisions about their business, but although the rise of print encouraged the circulation of 'public' news, early modern commercial agents continued to exchange information through private letters, oral conversation and communications networks. Manuscript forms of business news proliferated throughout the seventeenth century and beyond despite the rise of print, in part because an increase in printed news led to conflicting data, issues of trust, and the need to deal with 'bad' or out-of-date information.This project builds on my previous successful research, taking it in significantly expanded directions. I have published extensively on merchant networks and business in Britain, Europe and the Atlantic World in the early modern period, with my first monograph (2014) demonstrating that commercial agents - the merchants, manufacturers and consumers involved in trade - played significant roles in shaping international exchange. Further, I have shown that local conditions influenced the opportunities open to commercial agents. This fellowship project expands my work by looking specifically at the information used by commercial agents to make their decisions. The research to be undertaken during this fellowship has relevance for a broad range of scholarly enquiry. It will demonstrate the importance of understanding commercial and business news as a specific sub-type of news, it will emphasise the importance of manuscript circulation, and it will show that the production, reception, and use of business news varied depending on the societal and cultural context in which it was made and circulated.The project's findings will be disseminated to a range of audiences, including scholars, students, school pupils and public audiences in the UK and the USA. The project showcases innovative methodological approaches to business and information history, generating a new sub-field of historical enquiry. In addition to producing high quality academic outputs, an international and interdisciplinary group of experts will discuss, test and disseminate the methodological and conceptual approaches developed during this fellowship, exploring the project's key questions from diverse perspectives. Understanding the strategies that previous generations adopted to share, customise, and profit from information will allow for intervention in public debates regarding freedom of the press, the role of consumers of news in circulating and producing news - a 'communications circuit' - and the tension between writing business news and the extent to which the audience can trust or understand it - 'business literacy'. The fusions between these issues in the historical past and the ways in which they relate to current debates on information overload and information anxiety - the consequences of living in an 'information age' - will be explored and disseminated through a programme of impact activities.