Summary of Andrew Pettegree's The Invention of News

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor between 1493 and 1519, was not the most astute of rulers. He spent a lot of money on projects that never really went anywhere, like an imperial postal service. But he did have imagination, and he harnessed the power of the printing press more effectively than any other ruler.
#2 The Roman postal service was an achievement of breathtaking imagination and administrative ambition. The service was not generally open to the public, but it was used to transport a large amount of military freight along the roads.
#3 The wooden tablets found in the Vindolanda excavation have transformed what is known of the writing culture of the northern Empire. Britain was as far away as it was possible to be from the production centers of papyrus, which was the most common writing material in Roman times.
#4 The Romans were very good at exercising power, and the postal service was a reflection of that. The Romans understood that control of information was essential to the government of widely dispersed and thinly garrisoned possessions.

Sujets

• Media Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 20 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9798350015836
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Andrew Pettegree's The Invention of News
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8 Insights from Chapter 9 Insights from Chapter 10 Insights from Chapter 11 Insights from Chapter 12 Insights from Chapter 13 Insights from Chapter 14 Insights from Chapter 15 Insights from Chapter 16 Insights from Chapter 17
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor between 1493 and 1519, was not the most astute of rulers. He spent a lot of money on projects that never really went anywhere, like an imperial postal service. But he did have imagination, and he harnessed the power of the printing press more effectively than any other ruler.

#2

The Roman postal service was an achievement of breathtaking imagination and administrative ambition. The service was not generally open to the public, but it was used to transport a large amount of military freight along the roads.

#3

The wooden tablets found in the Vindolanda excavation have transformed what is known of the writing culture of the northern Empire. Britain was as far away as it was possible to be from the production centers of papyrus, which was the most common writing material in Roman times.

#4

The Romans were very good at exercising power, and the postal service was a reflection of that. The Romans understood that control of information was essential to the government of widely dispersed and thinly garrisoned possessions.

#5

The Church was one of the great estates of medieval Europe. Its institutions had played a crucial role in the preservation of learning after the collapse of the Roman Empire. As the Church consolidated its reach across the whole of western Europe, it would also be in the forefront in the transition from a culture where inherited wisdom was preserved by memory to one of written record.

#6

Bernard was a monk who lived during the 12th century. He was extremely well informed, but there was still a large element of chance in the individuals who passed by and the news they brought him.

#7

The medieval chroniclers were the first historians of western Christendom. They were religious priests who were often secular laymen, and they had close access to the centers of power in the royal courts. They recorded events that reflected the unfolding of God’s purpose, but they also recorded events that were credible and recognized as such.

#8

The medieval chroniclers were able to look back and draw the appropriate morals from events, as they were able to reflect on them with hindsight. They were able to link past, present, and future events in one organic whole.

#9

Medieval travel was never undertaken without purpose. The hardships and dangers of the road were well known, and there were few with the resources or leisure to undertake journeys not directly connected to their occupational needs.

#10

The medieval period was a difficult time for the reception of news. News had to compete with marvels, horrors, and deeds of valour in the travelogues and romantic epics of the time.

#11

The popularity of pilgrimage was beginning to attract criticism from more austere religious figures, who feared pilgrims like these might be a distraction for the more pious and aesthetic.

#12

The Roman Catholic Church was the first place where many states established their own representatives. The birth of diplomacy, a natural generator of news, gossip and intrigue, was partly accidental. The journey to Rome was long and papal business slow. But while travellers recuperated and waited patiently to conduct business, they became the first ambassadors.

#13

The papacy was similar to a royal court in the way it used a variety of mechanisms to receive and despatch news. The need to save money often led to delays, though, and efficiency and economy were in constant tension.

#14

The university postal service was developed by the students, who were a part of Europe’s clerical class. They were dedicated to training young men for the service of God, but they brought together groups of young men who stayed for a relatively short time.

#15

The letters that I have read are mostly boring. They mostly describe the student’s living arrangements, housemates, and the difficulties of travel. They do not offer much insight into the great events happening around them.

#16

The Church could rely on willing and trustworthy messengers travelling between communities or on pilgrimage. The universities identified sufficient demand to establish a regular paid messenger service. But only Europe's rulers could establish the Roman system of relay couriers.

#17

The need for news grew as the monarchical states began to see the need for more systematic systems of news gathering. The despatch of envoys to pursue particular tasks was extremely expensive. The English Crown believed that most could be achieved by correspondence.

#18

The courts of Europe's rulers were great news hubs, as they were constantly receiving and exchanging letters. Many city governments also maintained their own couriers.

#19

The Black Death, prolonged periods of warfare, and the Wars of the Roses all took a toll on the French and English Crowns and their ability to provide horses and hospitality for royal messengers. This made the need for reliable information all the more urgent.

#20

The first successful experiment of this sort was the postal relay established by Frederick III, then King of the Romans, in 1443. It was a system of post offices and royal postal couriers that allowed the king to access vital political information quickly.

#21

The French system, which was designed to be similar to the Habsburg imperial post, was overly ambitious and too expensive to be maintained for any length of time. The French post was scaled back and fell into disuse after the death of Louis XI.

#22

The Habsburg postal system allowed the imperial postal service to extend its range still further. The Tassis family, who were the main providers of the service, allowed private customers to use it. This was a major contrast with the English and French postal systems, which were closed royal networks.
Insights from Chapter 2

#1

The economy of Europe was transformed by the rise of the great merchant companies, trading between Italy and northern Europe, Germany, the Mediterranean and the Levant. The appetite for eastern luxuries, spices and costly fabrics, exchanged for northern wool and cloth, created a large and expansive marketplace.

#2

The Datini archive was exceptional only in its survival. It was contingent on another technological revolution, the introduction of paper, which was introduced via Moorish Spain in the twelfth century.

#3

The northern axis of European trade was Bruges, a vibrant Flemish city that was the hub of the trade in wool and cloth. It was also the largest money market in northern Europe.

#4

The fourteenth century saw the development of commercial courier services, which were run by independent entrepreneurs. The most important routes ran from Florence to Barcelona, and from Florence to Bruges.

#5

The courier service was extremely efficient. The most evidence for this comes from the Datini archive. They exchanged around 320,000 dated epistolary transactions in seventeen thousand letters between Florence and Genoa, and seven thousand letters between Florence and Venice.

#6

The merchants were often well informed, and they were used by Europe's rulers to send news and receive information. They were also used as diplomatic couriers, since it was easier for merchants to travel freely across national boundaries than it was for nationals of the belligerent states.

#7

The main purpose of merchant despatches was to provide information for the merchants themselves. The cost of maintaining these courier services was modest. The difficulty was knowing what news to believe.

#8

The development of an international European business network had a transformative effect on access to news in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The roots of this development lay in the emergence of major Italian consortia trading to every part of Europe.

#9

The sharing of news was costly, and therefore precious. It relied on a network of friends and correspondents, and trust was a critical issue. There were those who would attempt to steal a march on their competitors by reading their letters first.

#10

The Rialto market in Venice was a place where merchants shared news and rumors, and it was often the first place that news about faraway events reached. It was difficult to verify the news, but it was valuable to be ahead of the crowd.

#11

The early medieval tradition that word of mouth was more trustworthy than a written report lingered on in some of the correspondence. The Italians trusted their own trading apparatus, even though the sinews sometimes fell short.

#12

By the fifteenth century, Venice had achieved a position of primacy among the Italian trading cities. It played a pivotal role in three crucial areas of the international economy: the trade in cloth with London and Bruges, the trade in wool with Spain, and the exchange of cotton and spices with Egypt and the Levant.

#13

The Venetian economy was based on trade, and they had many agents who would go out and buy goods in foreign lands and bring them back to sell in Venice. This was how they got their goods so cheap.

#14

The news that the Portuguese had opened up a new spice route to India around the Cape of Good Hope in 1501 had a huge impact on the market in Venice. The price of pepper in Venice rose from 75 to 95 ducats in four days.

#15

The Venetian ambassador in Rome wrote every day, and couriers were despatched to