The Information Revolution in Early Modern Europe

This provocative history of early modern Europe puts information and information management at the centre of the period's many transformations.

Paul M. Dover (Author)

9781316602034, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 14 October 2021

270 pages
22.8 x 15.2 x 2 cm, 0.53 kg

'With this book, Dover unveils a very important aspect of early modern history, making it invaluable to all major libraries. … Essential.' D. L. Tengwall, CHOICE

This provocative new history of early modern Europe argues that changes in the generation, preservation and circulation of information, chiefly on newly available and affordable paper, constituted an 'information revolution'. In commerce, finance, statecraft, scholarly life, science, and communication, early modern Europeans were compelled to place a new premium on information management. These developments had a profound and transformative impact on European life. The huge expansion in paper records and the accompanying efforts to store, share, organize and taxonomize them are intertwined with many of the essential developments in the early modern period, including the rise of the state, the Print Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, and the Republic of Letters. Engaging with historical questions across many fields of human activity, Paul M. Dover interprets the historical significance of this 'information revolution' for the present day, and suggests thought-provoking parallels with the informational challenges of the digital age.

1. Introduction: worlds of paper
2. European paper
3. 'Ink-Stained fingers': the information of commerce and finance
4. The paper of politics and the politics of paper
5. Revolutionary print
6. The book of nature and the books of man
7. Writing others and the self
8. Conclusion: information revolutions, past and present.

Subject Areas: Publishing industry & book trade [KNTP], Early modern history: c 1450/1500 to c 1700 [HBLH], European history [HBJD]