Emerging journalism in Early Modern Europe: The Time of Rebellions: Ireland, Catalonia, and Portugal (1640-1714)

This paper – which is intended to be developed in more detail in the future – is of a comparative nature. We will focus on three places in Europe where rebellions took place from 1640 onwards, discontent with the treatment of the composite monarchies they belonged to. Those movements had very different roots and effects, but still, they had also many things in common. During those rebellions, journalism – meaning, the periodical press, non-periodical one existed before it – appeared and, with some difficulty, was developed between 1640 and 1714, from the time in which such revolts or risings happened in Ireland, Catalonia, and Portugal to the time in which Europe changed because of the Spanish succession war – a pan-European conflict nevertheless, hegemony of European powers and monarchies was at stake – and because of the Utrecht Treaty (1713). Just one year later, in September 1714, when Barcelona fell under the new Spanish king’s army, it was also the end of a journalistic model in Catalonia. We will focus not on those revolts themselves, but on journalism. This is a media history approach, but we will not only mention newspapers. Our main interest is the people behind those initiatives, so this is sort of a social history too.