In the seventeenth century news was an investment in social relationships, a resource that concerned the interests of members of functional elites. Exchanging news entailed different forms of participation in functional elites and, thus, privilege. This business was part of the elites’ internal social structures; it constituted the fabric of all public institutions.

This book questions notions of a print-based public sphere in the seventeenth century. It is based on contemporary tracts on newspapers, the court culture, and letter-writers, as well as news correspondences and other material from archives in the Baltic Sea Region and beyond.



This book is a translation of: Das Geschäft mit Nachrichten: Ein barocker Markt für soziale Ressourcen (Bremen: edition lumière, 2018).

Translated by: Madeleine Hurd