From Ghent to Aix ― How They Brought the News in the Habsburg Netherlands, 1550-1700

"Sixteenth-century Brussels and Antwerp in combination formed the northern linchpin of an international communication network that covered Western and Central Europe. In the seventeenth century both cities saw the rise of newspapers that compare revealingly with those produced in Germany, the Dutch Republic, England and France. In From Ghent to Aix, Paul Arblaster examines the services that carried the news, the types of news publicized, and the relationship of these newspapers to Baroque Europe's other methods of public communication, from drums and trumpets, ceremonies and sermons, to almanacs, pamphlets, pasquinades and newsletters. The merchant's need for information and the government's desire to influence opinion together opened up a space in whicha new social force would take root: the media"--

Paul Arblaster, D.Phil. (Oxford), is a freelance translator who teaches at the Maastricht School of Translation (Faculty of International Business and Communication, Zuyd University of Applied Sciences). He has published a History of the Low Countries and work on Early Modern translation, communication, exile and martyrdom.