Posts, Newsletters, Newspapers: England in a European system of communications*.

The author of this article illustrates the transmission of news from England to the newspapers of the Habsburg Netherlands over the 40-year period 1620-1660, and the types of news so conveyed. Such news of politics, war, diplomacy, religion, trade, justice, and prodigies, came not only directly from England but also through news centers on the Continent, indicating the flexibility of the communications networks. Newspapers, in the sense of printed news periodicals available to the general public, made their appearance throughout Western Europe in the first half of the seventeenth century.