| This dissertation is about international news in the age of the American Revolution. Reading French- and English-language newspapers alongside private correspondence, diplomatic dispatches and spy reports, it seeks to understand how people knew what they knew about other places. The emphasis throughout is on the process of news creation. Focusing on moments of controversy reveals the attitudes and practices of the many participants involved in writing, reading, translating and rewriting the news as it crossed political and linguistic borders. Meanwhile, comparing newspapers printed in Britain, Europe, North America and the West Indies shows how battle reports, political speeches, and government documents evolved as they moved through different phases of publication. Every newspaper was composed of other newspapers, and the news they contained depended upon the patterns of communication between them.; In order to understand how news shapes diplomacy, we must first study how the news is made. Chapter 1 reconstructs the oral origins of printed news, emphasizing the role of ship captains, who carried letters, spread rumors at sea, and gave verbal reports in port. Once a report arrived in town, its subsequent publication depended upon local attitudes and practices. Chapter 2 therefore considers the culture of speculation that shaped London journalism during this period. As a technique of thinking through possible military and political outcomes, speculation influenced the form and content of the news. These local interpretations had global implications when paragraphs from London were reprinted elsewhere. Accordingly, chapter 3 examines the practices of copying and translation that ensured the interdependence of newspapers throughout the Atlantic World.; In the second part of the dissertation, three case studies explore how print mediated international relations. Chapter 4 focuses on French translations of debates in the British Parliament to discuss the consequences of exporting national politics to the international arena. Chapter 5 reconstructs reports of Washington's defeat at Brandywine to understand how newspapers drew upon each other to make sense of a military event. Finally, Chapter 6 focuses on French translations of the American state constitutions to examine the factors that shaped views of American government in the European press. |
