Newspapers in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century O T TO LANKHORST

When did newspaper publishing begin in the Dutch Republic? Eugène Hatin, the mid-nineteenth-century French press historian, considered the collections of the Tydinghen uyt verscheyde quartieren and Courante uyt Italien ende Duytschlandt at the Bibliothèque Mazarine in Paris to be the oldest printed Dutch papers. These collections consist of a series of issues of both newspapers from 20 June 1637 to the end of 1643. Because the oldest issue in the archive bears the number 25, Hatin concluded that earlier issues must have been published.1