34 Haegse Post-Tydingen The Hague, 1663–1677

By 1663 Adriaen Vlacq (1600–1667) was a seasoned couran- Nieus. But by the 1660s it had become clear to Vlacq that tier.1 The mathematician had been a newspaper pub- in order to compete in the profitable but competitive Ams- lisher in The Hague for a decade: he took over publica- terdam news market, a newspaper from The Hague would tion of the Wekelycke Nieus (1652–1655) in 1653, and in have to appeal to the tastes of Amsterdam customers. The 1656 established the bi-weekly Post-Tydingen uyt ’sGraven- partnership betweenVlacq and Aertsen is testament to the Hage.2 When Vlacq first entered the newspaper business lasting importance of Amsterdam in the Dutch news mar- he had found a highly competitive market. The Hague was ket, as well as the capacity of courantiers to establish a a rapidly expanding centre of news, and the news trade foothold in the capital. Similar contracts would be estab- was booming. This was exploited by several innovative, if lished between courantiers in Rotterdam, Weesp and Lei- controversial courantiers, who adopted for their papers a den and booksellers in Amsterdam in the 1660s and 1680s.5 pamphlet format ostentatiously different from the estab- The first issue of the Haegse Post-Tydingen appeared lished norm of the former newspaper capital, Amsterdam. on Tuesday 2 January 1663. The earliest surviving example But since the summer of 1658 and with the banishment of dates from Thursday 5 July of the same year. The final Gerard Lodewijk van der Macht (c. 1622–1698), Vlacq was known issue dates from Thursday 28 October 1677. A total the only courantier left inThe Hague. Rather unexpectedly of 273 issues (including one variant, two special issues and he had the local newspaper market to himself. three illicit reprints) have survived for the fifteen years of In 1663 Vlacq decided to expand. A contract with the publication, a low survival rate of around 5%. Most extant bookseller Pieter Aertsen (fl. 1663–1667) stipulated that issues can be found in Kew (130 issues), Moscow (97 issues) Vlacq would deliver half his print run to Aertsen for dis- and Bremen (51 issues), with others scattered between tribution in Amsterdam.3 The costs of publishing and dis- Amsterdam, Oldenburg, Haarlem, The Hague, Arnhem, tributing the newspaper would be shared equally between Wolfenbüttel, Oxford and Berlin. the two bookmen; if Vlacq or Aertsen wanted to cancel From 1664 the newspaper carried a small woodcut of the contract then he would have to reimburse his partner the arms of The Hague at the top of each issue. This was a 200 gulden. There was a further specification to the con- development in tune with other newspapers: the Oprechte tract: Vlacq would now print his newspaper on Tuesdays Haerlemse Courant and the Amsterdam Courante uyt Ital- and Thursdays (instead of Mondays and Thursdays) and ien featured similar woodcuts from 1662 onwards. The use he would do so “in the format and manner of the Amster- of the woodcut was a source of authenticity as much as a dam and Haarlem newspapers”.4 This new venture was to mark of identity and local pride, and would later also be be the Haegse Post-Tydingen. found on newspapers in Rotterdam, Utrecht and Leiden. Thus far Vlacq, like other newsmen in The Hague, had As agreed in the contract between Vlacq and Aertsen, the printed his newspapers in the quarto pamphlet format, Haegse Post-Tydingen initially appeared on Tuesdays and similar to the newspapers published in the Holy Roman Thursdays, although between 1665 and the summer of 1671 Empire, England and France. In the Dutch Republic this the partners experimented with publication on Tuesdays style had been pioneered in The Hague; but it had not and Fridays before reverting back to the original schedule. spread to Amsterdam and Haarlem, the two great news- Vlacq may have been a seasoned courantier, but he paper cities, where newspapers traditionally appeared on was not a true news specialist. He was above all a math- both sides of a half-sheet folio. Vlacq had long been eyeing ematician and a scholar, and a widely published author this market: he first entered into a sales agreement with an before he became a book publisher in The Hague. Even Amsterdam bookseller in 1653, when Gillis Joosten Saegh- when building his news business Vlacq continued to dedi- man (1619–1704) undertook to distribute Vlacq’s Wekelycke cate significant efforts to the publication of scholarly texts. Throughout the final five years of his life he published 1 Kossmann, Boekhandel, pp. 435–440. at least fifty-five titles, ranging from his own mathemat- 2 See chapters 23 and 30. ical treatises to astrological and medicinal tracts, politi- 3 Keblusek, Boeken in de Hofstad, p. 98. 4 Ibid. 5 See chapters 39–40 and 46. 1080 34. haegse post-tydingen cal commentaries, cookery books, classics and news pam- invested in the venture, given that the two reprints from phlets.6 This was a shrewd diversification of Vlacq’s busi- 1667 included a woodcut emblem of The Hague closely ness as well as a reflection of his intellectual interests, but modelled on the original woodcut of the Haegse Post- the content of the HaegsePost-Tydingen definitely suffered Tydingen. The earliest surviving reprint was a verbatim as a result. Vlacq’s issues contained on average only nine reproduction, and included all news reports present in reports per issue—compared to over twenty reports in the the original published by Vlacq. However, the reprint of issues of his rivals in Amsterdam, Haarlem and Utrecht.7 4 March 1667 contained some differences; although it Vlacq used a larger typeface than his competitors, and in repeated news reports from Madrid, La Rochelle, Paris, some ways the Haegse Post-Tydingen resembled more the Dover, London, Hamburg and Antwerp, it ignored oth- size and lay-out of Dutch newspapers from the 1630s and ers, and added new reports from Rotterdam, Middelburg, 1640s than the 1660s. Stockholm, Edinburgh, Venice, Rome, Genoa and Naples Vlacq’s range of sources was relatively restricted, albeit not in the original. Publishing these additional reports consistent. He usually opened the newspaper with reports required editorial investment, and suggest that the per- from Naples and Venice or Rome; on Fridays he would petrator was a news publisher as well. It is uncertain publish reports from Madrid, Genoa and Paris; on Tues- where he operated: perhaps in nearby Leiden, or even days one could always find a report from Vienna; and most Amsterdam. Sadly, no complaints by Vlacq regarding ille- issues ended with reports from London, Hamburg and gal reprints have survived, unlike complaints by Abraham then several Dutch cities (Amsterdam, Haarlem, Rotter- Casteleyn in Haarlem and Joannes Naeranus in Rotterdam, dam and The Hague). These domestic reports often occu- who both found their newspapers reprinted in Amster- pied half of the issue, and it is likely that Vlacq invested dam.9 more in local sources than in an international network Adriaen Vlacq died in early April 1667. The final issue of correspondents (again, unlike his rivals in Haarlem or of the Haegse Post-Tydingen with his imprint dates from Amsterdam). 25 March 1667, but the illegal reprint from Friday 1 April The Haegse Post-Tydingen also featured fewer adver- still claimed to copy Vlacq’s newspaper, which makes tisements than its competitors.8 A third of surviving it likely that Vlacq died around this time. On Tuesday issues include an advertisement, compared to over three- 5 April the newspaper appeared in much the same fash- quarters of issues published in Amsterdam and Haarlem ion, but it was now published by Crispijn Hoeckwater in the 1660s and 1670s. The Haegse Post-Tydingen featured (1642–1731), living on De Poten in the “Groene Tent” (green book advertisements fromThe Hague, Amsterdam, Leiden tent). At the end of this issue Hoeckwater announced and a few other cities, but seems to have relied more than that Vlacq had passed away, and that his widow had usual on regular customers. The apothecary and oculist expressed no interest in continuing the venture. Hoeckwa- Johannes van Duren (in Rotterdam) advertised at least ter had therefore petitioned to take over the newspaper; eight times in the Haegse Post-Tydingen between 1666 and he assured his readers that he would endeavour to main- 1673. tain a high standard of credible and accurate news report- Regardless of its limited content, the Haegse Post- ing. Tydingen was popular enough to be copied and reprinted Crispijn Hoeckwater was the son of an Amsterdam mer- illegally. Three reprints, dated from 27 August 1666, chant, and had established himself as a bookseller and 4 March 1667 and 1 April 1667, can be found mixed in with publisher in The Hague a year earlier, in 1666.10 He did not genuine copies of the newspaper in the National Archives own a printing press, and had the Haegse Post-Tydingen in Kew. All three mimic the style and format of the Haegse printed by the local printer Levijn van Dijck (fl. 1662–1694). Post-Tydingen. Nevertheless, none of the three pretend to Hoeckwater was only twenty-five years old, but the magis- be an authentic issue: each states that it was printed “after trates of The Hague must have been convinced of his tal- the copy by Adriaen Vlack”. ents as a courantier: the succession was not uncontested, This act of piracy seems to have been part of a care- as Johannes Rammazeyn (c. 1619–1693), publisher of the fully planned operation. The editor of the reprint clearly Wekelycke Nieus (in 1652 and 1653) and the printer of the Wekelycke Mercurius (1654), also petitioned to publish the Haegse Post-Tydingen at Vlacq’s death.11 Clearly the magis- 6 See the STCN. 7 Of the seventy-seven surviving issues of the Haegse Post-Tydingen published by Vlacq, sixty-eight have been inspected. 9 See chapters 31 and 40. 8 Sixty out of the 201 inspected issues of the Haegse Post-Tydingen 10 Kossmann, Boekhandel, pp. 181–182. feature at least one advertisement. 11 Ibid., pp. 321–325.