Empire in Fragments: Transatlantic News and Print Media in the Iberian World, ca. 1600–40.

This article shows how the rise of printed news media during the opening decades of the seventeenth century fomented and fragmented authority in the polycentric Spanish Habsburg empire. Analyzing the making, dissemination, and reception of transatlantic news from Madrid to Mexico and from Lisbon to Lima, the article explores how the influx of fragments of unverifiable information from overseas undermined the possibility of complete knowledge. While the Spanish Crown exploited news media to create a sense of a unified imperial space, the dynamics of distance resulted in uncertainty and the spread of conflicting narratives that fractured central control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]