Print, in the early modern period, could make or break power. This volume addresses one of the most urgent and topical questions in early modern history: how did European authorities use a new medium with such tremendous potential? The eighteen contributors develop new perspectives on the relationship between the rise of print and the changing relationships between subjects and rulers by analysing print’s role in early modern bureaucracy, the techniques of printed propaganda, genres, and strategies of state communication. While print is often still thought of as an emancipating and disruptive force of change in early modern societies, the resulting picture shows how instrumental print was in strengthening existing power structures. Contributors: Renaud Adam, Martin Christ, Jamie Cumby, Arthur der Weduwen, Nora Epstein, Andreas Golob, Helmer Helmers, Jan Hillgärtner, Rindert Jagersma, Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba, Nina Lamal, Margaret Meserve, Rachel Midura, Gautier Mingous, Ernesto E. Oyarbide Magaña, Caren Reimann, Chelsea Reutchke, Celyn David Richards, Paolo Sachet, Forrest Strickland, and Ramon Voges.

What was the relationship between power and the public sphere in early modern society? How did the printed media inform this relationship? Contributors to this volume address those questions by examining the interaction of print and power in France and England during the 'hand-press period'. Four interconnected and overlapping themes emerge from these studies, showing the essential historical and contextual considerations shaping the strategies both of power and of those who challenged it via the written word during this period. The first is reading and control, which examines the relationship between institutional power and readers, either as individuals or as a group. A second is propaganda on behalf of institutional power, and the ways in which such writings engage with the rhetorics of power and their reception. The Academy constitutes a third theme, in which contributors explore the economic and political implications of publishing in the context of intellectual elites. The last theme is clientism and faction, which examines the competing political discourses and pressures which influenced widely differing forms of publication. From these articles there emerges a global view of the relationship between print and power, which takes the debate beyond the narrowly theoretical to address fundamental questions of how print sought to challenge, or reinforce, existing power-structures, both from within and from without.

Introduction: The Printing Press as an Agent of Power / Helmer Helmers, Nina Lamal and Jamie Cumby -- Part 1: Governing through Print -- Policing in Print: Social Control in Spanish and Borromean Milan (1535-1584) / Rachel Midura -- On Printing and Decision-Making: The Management of Information by the City Powers of Lyon (ca. 1550-ca. 1580) / Gautier Mingous -- Printing for Central Authorities in the Early Modern Low Countries (15th-17th Centuries) / Renaud Adam -- Rural Officials Discover the Printing Press in the Eighteenth-Century Habsburg Monarchy / Andreas Golob -- Part 2: Printing for Government -- Printing for the Reformation: The Canonical Documents of the Edwardian Church of England, 1547-1553 / Celyn Richards -- Newspapers and Authorities in Seventeenth-Century Germany / Jan Hillgärtner -- The Politics of Print in the Dutch Golden Age: The Ommelander Troubles (c. 1630-1680) / Arthur der Weduwen -- Part 3: Patronage and Prestige -- The Rise of the Stampatore Camerale: Printers and Power in Early Sixteenth-Century Rome / Paolo Sachet -- State and Church Sponsored Printing by Jan Januszowski and His Drukarnia Łazarzowa (Officina Lazari) in Krakow / Justyna Kiliańczyk-Zięba -- Ferdinando de'Medici and the Typographia Medicea / Caren Reimann -- Royal Patronage of Illicit Print: Catherine of Braganza and Catholic Books in Late Seventeenth-Century London / Chelsea Reutcke -- Part 4: Power of Persuasion -- The Papacy, Power, and Print: The Publication of Papal Decrees in the First Fifty Years of Printing / Margaret Meserve -- The Power of the Image: The Visual Prints of Frans Hogenberg / Ramon Voges -- Collecting 'Toute l'Angleterre': English Books, Soft Power and Spanish Diplomacy at the Casa del Sol (1613-1622) / Ernesto Oyarbide -- Prohibition as Propaganda Technique: The Case of the Pamphlet Lacouronne usurpee et le prince supposé (1688) / Rindert Jagersma -- Part 5: Relgious Authority -- Illustrating Authority: The Creation and Reception of an English Protestant Iconography / Nora Epstein -- Between Ego Documents and Anti-Catholic Propaganda: Printed Revocation Sermons in Seventeenth-Century Lutheran Germany / Martin Christ -- Learned Servants: Dutch Ministers, Their Books and the Struggle for a Reformed Republic in the Dutch Golden Age / Forrest C. Strickland.

Explores Natalie Zemon Davis's concept of history as a dialogue, not only with the past, but with other historians.

The leading historians who are the authors of this work offer a highly original account of one of the most important transformations in Western culture: the change brought about by the discovery and development of printing in Europe. Focusing primarily on printed matter other than books, The Culture of Print emphasizes the specific and local contexts in which printed materials, such as broadsheets, flysheets, and posters, were used in modern Europe. The authors show that festive, ritual, cultic, civic, and pedagogic uses of print were social activities that involved deciphering texts in a collective way, with those who knew how to read leading those who did not. Only gradually did these collective forms of appropriation give way to a practice of reading--privately, silently, using the eyes alone--that has become common today. This wide-ranging work opens up new historical and methodological perspectives and will become a focal point of debate for historians and sociologists interested in the cultural transformations that accompanied the rise of modern societies. Originally published in 1989. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This volume seeks to enhance our understanding of printing and the book trade in small and peripheral European cities in the 15th and 16th centuries through a number of specific case studies.

Provides a concise introduction to and overview of the centuries in Europe between the Renaissance and the French Revolution. Features include: surveys of key topics written by an international team of historians; suggestions for seminar discussion and further reading; extracts from primary sources; a glossary; and chapter chronologies of major events.