Business News in the Early Modern Atlantic World explores the creation, dissemination, and consumption of a specific type of news, ‘business news’, within early modern commercial news networks. The volume contains eleven case studies, written by scholars from a range of disciplines, which span the breadth of the early modern Atlantic from the first appearance of serial corantos in the seventeenth century to the United States’ Declaration of Independence in the late eighteenth century.
These expert contributions showcase the range of innovative methodological and theoretical approaches which can be used to study business news, including social network analysis, textual analysis, and qualitative methods.
Sophie H. Jones, Ph.D. (2018, University of Liverpool) is Lecturer in Modern British History at the University of Liverpool. Her research explores political identities during the American Revolution. She has published on a range of topics concerning the eighteenth-century British Atlantic.
Siobhan Talbott, Ph.D. (2010, University of St Andrews) is Reader in Early Modern History at Keele University. She has published extensively in commercial and business history, including the award-winning monograph Conflict, Commerce and Franco-Scottish Relations, 1560–1713 (Routledge, 2014).
Contents
Acknowledgements List of Figures and Tables Abbreviations Notes on Contributors
1 Business News in the Early Modern Atlantic World: Contexts, Connections, and Methodologies Sophie H. Jones and Siobhan Talbott
Part 1: Trust, Credit, and Business News Networks
2 The Provision and Circulation of Credit in the British Atlantic Trading World, 1739–1775 Kenneth Morgan
3 Spreading Information in Eighteenth-Century Mercantile Networks: Experiments in Historical Social Network Analysis Peter Buckles
4 Trust and Credit: Merchants’ Roles in Puritan News Networks Sarah Hall
Part 2: Information Flows and Spaces
5 Betting on News: (Mis)information and Public Opinion in Early Modern England Lena Liapi
6 Newspapers, Profit, and Business in Colonial America Jeremy Land
7 ‘I Should Be Glad of a Little Conversation with Thee’: Business Letters and the Oral Exchange of Information in the Early Modern Atlantic World Siobhan Talbott and Sophie H. Jones
8 Postmen of the Atlantic World: Captains Transmitting Epistolary Business News Hannah Knox Tucker
Part 3: Business News beyond the North Atlantic
9 Edward Northey and News of Catholic Estate Forfeitures in the Leeward Islands, 1700–1723 Eilish Gregory
10 The East India Company in West Africa and Information Networks in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World Edmond Smith
11 The Atlantic Correspondence of the Royal African Company, 1678–1681 David Brown
Bibliography of Secondary Works Index
This volume will be indispensable reading for scholars and students of early modern news and business, commercial and information history, and those interested in debates about printed and manuscript materials of the period. Keywords: business news, early modern news, early modern business, business history, printed news, merchants, commerce, information history, social history, economic history, Atlantic world, Atlantic history, print history, network theory, manuscript studies.