1 - Introduction

Summary

THE CHAPTERS IN THIS volume share the conviction that the acceptance and influence of ideas is importantly related to the modes of their conveyance. Thirteen contributors examine how the material production and circulation of different textual objects affected the ways in which information and knowledge were formulated, transmitted and received in different parts of the world between the mid-seventeenth and the mid-nineteenth centuries. The chapters address connected concerns: the relationship between developing textual forms and the subjects of publication, the origins and effects of changing operations of long-distance communication and the consequences of differing modes of reception.

The physical and communicative forms by which ideas reach their listeners and readers, in all their great variety and in so many different locations, can reinforce, qualify, question and undermine ideological confidence and trust. That materiality (which might be loosely but not exhaustively termed ‘media’), the conditions for it and the deciphering and discursive practices that proceed from it, present, filter and influence the reception of messages and knowledge. Effects range from supporting and questioning conviction to exposing or complicating falsity and propaganda. The unfamiliarity of material forms of books, pamphlets and the like to recipients in newly accessible regions of the globe added to the problematic and unpredictable manner in which knowledge was received (a complexity involving materials coming to Europe as much as from Europe).

The two hundred or so years covered by this volume were years of recurrent European wars and revolutions. The conveyance of ideas and information took on unprecedented importance. Profound social, religious, cultural, economic and technological change accompanied conflict and disorder and the formation of new habits of mind associated with the Enlightenment and Romanticism. It was also a period of unprecedented overseas exploration and invasion, of brutal conquest and enslavement and of a re-evaluation of the human. The technological advances brought increasing possibilities for knowledge transfer and exchange between peoples in different parts of the world, many of whom, for better or worse, were in contact with each other for the first time.