Business News in the Atlantic World, 1620-1763

新闻的概念是我们大家都熟悉的，在当今社会它以多种形式存在。正如我们所认识到的，“新闻”开始出现在早期现代时期，这得益于印刷的普及、可获得性和可负担性。以前对新闻史的研究非常正确地强调，在解释包括报纸在内的各种新闻渠道的出现时，“印刷革命”是必不可少的。这个项目专注于一个特定的子新闻类型--商业新闻。最近许多关于“新闻”发展的研究都认为新闻是一种连贯的体裁，融合了政治、商业、文化和社会新闻。然而，商业新闻在许多方面是不同的；它的形式以及它是如何创造、传播和使用的。学者们知道，商业代理商利用印刷新闻日益增多的机会来决定他们的业务，但尽管印刷媒体的兴起鼓励了公共新闻的传播，但早期的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。尽管印刷品的兴起，但商业新闻的手稿形式在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冲突的数据、信任问题，以及处理“坏”或过时信息的需要。这个项目建立在我之前成功研究的基础上，使其得到了显著的扩展。我发表了大量关于早期现代时期英国、欧洲和大西洋世界的商人网络和商业的文章，我的第一本专著(2014)表明，商业代理人-参与贸易的商人、制造商和消费者-在塑造国际交流方面发挥了重要作用。此外，我已经证明，当地条件影响了向商业代理开放的机会。这个奖学金项目扩展了我的工作，专门研究了商业代理在做出决策时所使用的信息。在此奖学金期间进行的研究与广泛的学术研究具有相关性。它将展示将商业和商业新闻理解为一个特定的新闻子类的重要性，它将强调手稿流通的重要性，并将展示商业新闻的生产、接收和使用因其制作和传播的社会和文化背景而异。该项目的发现将传播给一系列受众，包括英国和美国的学者、学生、小学生和公众受众。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查询子领域。除了产生高质量的学术成果外，一个国际和跨学科专家组将讨论、测试和传播在研究金期间制定的方法和概念方法，从不同的角度探讨该项目的关键问题。了解前几代人分享、定制信息并从中获利的策略，将允许干预有关新闻自由、新闻消费者在传播和生产新闻中的角色--一个“交流回路”--的公开辩论，以及撰写商业新闻与受众能够信任或理解它的程度之间的紧张--“商业素养”。将通过一个影响活动计划探讨和传播过去这些问题与当前关于信息过载和信息焦虑--生活在‘信息时代’的后果--辩论的方式之间的融合。

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part because an increase in printed news led to conflicting data, issues of trust, and the need to deal with 'bad' or out-of-date information.This project builds on my previous successful research, taking it in significantly expanded directions.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