Cultural Exchange In Early Modern Europe

First published in 2007, this volume explores the importance of correspondence and communication to cultural exchanges in early modern Europe. Leading historians examine the correspondence of scholars, scientists, spies, merchants, politicians, artists, collectors, noblemen, artisans, and even illiterate peasants. Geographically the volume ranges across the whole of Europe, occasionally going beyond its confines to investigate exchanges between Europe and Asia or the New World. Above all, it studies the different networks of exchange in Europe and the various functions and meanings that correspondence had for members of different strata in European society during the early age of printing. This entails looking at different material supports from manuscripts and printed letters to newsletters and at different types of exchanges from the familial, scientific and artistic to political and professional correspondence. This is a ground-breaking reassessment of the status of information in early modern Europe and a major contribution to the field of information and communication.

As transfer points between different economic and cultural zones, cities are crucial to shaping processes of cultural exchange. Urban culture embraces cultural traits borrowed or imported from afar and those of local neighbourhoods, professions and social groups, yet it also offers possibilities for the survival of minority identities. This volume compares the characteristics and patterns of change in the spaces, sites and building, which expressed and shaped inter-cultural relationships within the cities of early modern Europe, especially in their ethnic, religious and international dimensions. A central theme is the role of foreigners and the spaces and buildings associated with them from ghettos, churches and hospitals to colleges, inns and markets. Individual studies include Greeks in Italian cities and London; the 'Cities of Jews' in Italy and the place of ghettos in the European imagination; and the contributions of foreign merchants to the growth of Amsterdam as a commercial metropolis.