Business News in the Atlantic World, 1620-1763

“新闻”这个概念我们都很熟悉，在当今社会它以多种形式存在。正如我们所认识到的，“新闻”在近代早期开始出现，受到印刷的扩散，可用性和负担能力的支持。以往对新闻史的研究都非常正确地强调了"印刷革命"对于解释包括报纸在内的各种新闻渠道的出现至关重要。本项目侧重于新闻的一个特定子类型--商业新闻。近年来，许多关于新闻发展的研究都认为新闻是一种连贯的体裁，包括政治、商业、文化和社会新闻。然而，商业新闻在许多方面是独特的;在其形式以及如何创造、传播和使用方面。学者们知道，商业代理人利用印刷新闻的日益普及来做出关于他们业务的决定，但是尽管印刷品的兴起鼓励了“公共”新闻的流通，早期现代商业代理人继续通过私人信件，口头交谈和通信网络交换信息。在整个世纪，尽管印刷品的兴起，但商业新闻的手工形式在整个17世纪及以后激增，部分原因是印刷品新闻的增加导致了相互矛盾的数据，信任问题，以及处理"坏"或过时信息的需要。我在英国，欧洲和大西洋世界的商业网络和商业上发表了大量文章，在现代早期，我的第一本专著（2014）表明，商业代理商-商人，制造商和消费者参与贸易-在塑造国际交流中发挥了重要作用。此外，我已经表明，当地条件影响了商业代理人的机会。这个奖学金项目扩展了我的工作，特别是在商业代理人使用的信息，使他们的决定。在这个奖学金期间进行的研究与广泛的学术调查有关。它将展示理解商业和商业新闻作为新闻的一个特定子类型的重要性，它将强调手稿流通的重要性，它将表明商业新闻的生产，接收和使用取决于它被制作和传播的社会和文化背景。学校学生和公众观众在英国和美国。该项目展示了商业和信息历史的创新方法，产生了一个新的历史调查子领域。除了产生高质量的学术成果，一个国际和跨学科的专家组将讨论，测试和传播在此研究金期间开发的方法和概念方法，从不同的角度探索该项目的关键问题。了解前几代人通过分享，定制和从信息中获利的策略，将允许在有关新闻自由的公共辩论中进行干预，新闻消费者在传播和制作新闻中的作用-“通信电路”-以及撰写商业新闻和受众可以信任或理解它的程度之间的紧张关系-“商业素养”。将通过一项影响活动方案，探讨和传播这些问题在历史上的融合，以及它们与目前关于信息过载和信息焦虑-生活在"信息时代"的后果-的辩论的关系。

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part because an increase in printed news led to conflicting data, issues of trust, and the need to deal with 'bad' or out-of-date information.This project builds on my previous successful research, taking it in significantly expanded directions.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.