ABSTRACT
This volume explores how early modern Europeans and European powers dealt with the problem of credibility in a world in which the speed of global information transfer rapidly increased. The introduction lays out themes, concepts, and problems in the history of information and the history of early globalization that the book addresses, and outlines the key contributions it has to offer to these fields. It argues that the tension between distance and credibility was one of the key factors in the European response to encounters in the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds. What constituted “truth” beyond the horizon remained a topic of contention at home throughout the early modern era. How did notions of doubt and error develop in relation to intercultural encounters? Who were in the position to use misinformation or censorship in their favour, and how did this affect trust? How, in other words, did distance affect credibility, and which intellectual, epistemological, and practical strategies did early modern Europe devise to cope with the problem of verifying and authenticating information?
