ABSTRACT

In recent years, historians have paid increasing attention to the dissemination of political news in early modern Europe.1 One of the things that slowly becomes clear from these studies is that news dissemination was not restricted to major cities – such as Amsterdam, London or Rome – but also reached local towns, be it in many different ways. In France and England, for example, pedlars selling pamphlets and other wares travelled from town to town, whereas in other countries, such as Italy or the Dutch Republic, minor cities published their own news as early as the fteenth century.2