Description
In this talk, I will present the central thesis of my dissertation, which is nearly finished. I argue that newspaper advertising in the eighteenth century Dutch Republic transformed, from an occasional practice to a consistent part of economic activity. Whereas most attention of historians goes to the seventeenth century (for the earliest newspapers) or the nineteenth/twentieth centuries (for the rise of mass media), eighteenth-century newspapers played a vital role in the creation of a supralocal market for commodities. I will illustrate this with two types of medical advertisements, that I have studied in detail: advertisements for public auctions of “drugs” (i.e. drogerijen, or crude substances that were used in medicine); and advertisements for “secret remedies” that were produced and promoted by irregular medical practitioners. As the attached chapter aims to show, systematic, digital data like these are essential to supplement the fragmentary information that we have, to study the trajectories of exotic commodities (like remedies) in commerce, science and culture.| Period | 11 Jan 2018 |
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| Event title | Cultural History Seminar |
| Event type | Other |
| Location | UtrechtShow on map |
| Degree of Recognition | Local |