News Versus Opinion: the State, the Press, and the Northern Enlightenment
chapter �3 News versus Opinion: The State, the Press, and the Northern Enlightenment Ellen Krefting The absolutist kingdom of Denmark-Norway may have been situated on the geographical as well as the cultural outskirts of eighteenth-century Europe, but this twin kingdom nonetheless took part in the transformation and ex- pansion of news transmission at the beginning of the Enlightenment period. Handwritten newsletters, printed broadsheets, pamphlets and ballads began circulating early in the seventeenth century. Networks of postal routes were connected directly and regularly to several European networks through Ham- burg, a centre for the dissemination of news about Europe and beyond. These networks made possible the first newspapers regularly printed in Copenha- gen, which were published from the 1660s in German and Danish.1 The popular craze for news became a literary topic early in the eighteenth century, just as in other, more central parts of Europe. The market for news, however, and for printed material in general, developed and expanded despite the heavy con- trols imposed by the Lutheran, absolutist state through the privilege system and strict censorship laws and procedures. Absolutism was introduced in 1660, with a Royal Law (Kongeloven) vest- ing all legislative, executive, judicial and fiscal power in the sovereign king. The market for print was placed under even stricter control in order to pro- tect absolutist power and religious uniformity. Scholars have traditionally seen absolutism as the main reason for the centralised and slow development of the printed news press, especially in the Norwegian part of the kingdom dur- ing most of the eighteenth century.
[Show full text]