New book: ‘The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution’

The monograph “The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution” by assistant professor David de Boer is now available open-access: https://bit.ly/48EMvNX.

David received his PhD from the University of Konstanz and Leiden University (joint doctoral degree). He held visiting fellowships at Harvard University, the Leibniz Institute of European History, and the European University Institute. His work mainly focuses on religious conflict, migration, and the politics of memory. His publications include Refugee Politics in Early Modern Europe (2023, co-edited with Geert Janssen) and Revolts and Political Violence in Early Modern Imagery (2021, co-edited with Malte Griesse and Monika Barget).

Publisher’s description

The Early Modern Dutch Press in an Age of Religious Persecution (Oxford University Press, 2023) investigates the rise of the printing press as a powerful weapon against state persecutions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. For victims of persecution worldwide, attracting international media attention for their plight is often a matter of life and death. This study takes us back to the news revolution of seventeenth-century Europe, when people first discovered in the press a powerful new weapon to combat religiously inspired maltreatment, executions, and massacres. To affect and mobilise foreign audiences, confessional minorities and their advocates faced an acute dilemma, one that we still grapple with today: how to make people care about distant suffering? David de Boer argues that they laid the foundations of a humanitarian culture in Europe.

As consuming news became an everyday practice for many Europeans, the Dutch Republic emerged as an international hub of printed protest against religious violence. De Boer traces how a diverse group of people, including Waldensian refugees, Huguenot ministers, Savoyard office holders, and many others, all sought access to the Dutch printing presses in their efforts to raise transnational solidarity for their cause. By generating public outrage, calling out rulers, and pressuring others to intervene, producers of printed opinion could have a profound impact on international relations. But crying out against persecution also meant navigating a fraught and dangerous political landscape, marked by confessional tension, volatile alliances, and incessant warfare. Opinion makers had to think carefully about the audiences they hoped to reach through pamphlets, periodicals, and newspapers. But they also had to reckon with the risk of reaching less sympathetic readers outside their target groups.

By examining early modern publicity strategies, de Boer deepens our understanding of how people tried to shake off the spectre of religious violence that had haunted them for generations, and create more tolerant societies, governed by the rule of law, reason, and a sense of common humanity.

Table of contents

• Introduction
• 1: The paradox of intervention
• 2: A silent persecution
• 3: Covering a refugee crisis
• 4: Selling the last war of religion
• 5: Between eschatology and enlightenment
• Conclusion: Beyond the confessional divide