Dipartimento di Storia e Critica della Politica

The research focuses on the Neapolitan revolution and, particularly, on the spreading of news in the Medicean
court of Florence. Thanks to the Medici Granducal Archival Collection (Mediceo del Principato) hold at the State Archive in Florence, I would like to study the flow of official and unofficial
information regarding that event. This would allow us to consider under a new light the relationship between the Medici Grand Dukes and the vice-kingdom of Naples.

The link between communication and politics is deeply rooted in history. In the recent years, the rise of noteworthy events---such as the Arab Spring and its "Twitter revolution", the “Wikileaks affair" and the vicissitudes surrounding the NSA whistle-blower, Edward Snowden---have harnessed the attention of both the wider public and scholarly community on the issues regarding new and old media. However, new technologies not only trigger new questions on the way we should be thinking about our cultural and political legacy in today's global (and protean) world, but they also provide new tools of analysis on the study of the history of news and its impact on our present. In this respect, a number of Digital Humanities projects applied to archival collections continue to shed new light on a primary sources, which are fundamental for the study of political communication and information in the early modern period. My paper will examine these very issues with specific relation to handwritten newsletters, known in Italian as Avvisi, which circulated rampantly in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Almost every single European archive and library houses a collection of Avvisi. In the past, historians made full use of them in their works, although they have failed to recognize the intrinsic value of these sources. The reasons were partly due to their sheer quantity and their often erratic organization in archives, which have frustrated comprehensive analyses of this historical phenomenon. Through the research program “The Birth of News”, set up by the Medici Archive Project and directed by Professor Brendan Dooley, this challenge is beginning to be tackled. The aim of the program is to examine one of most complete collections of Avvisi in Europe, which are incorporated in the epistolary collection of the Medici Grand Dukes (Mediceo del Principato), preserved in the Archivio di Stato of Florence. This corpus of newsletters consists over 100 volumes from 1543 to 1743, comprising more than 200,000 folios. Utilizing the data-organization tools furnished by one of the most innovative digital humanities platforms now in public use: the Medici Archive Project's BIA, “The Birth of News” program will systematically address the cultural world of Avvisi, map out their trajectories, analyze their content, and configure, with historical grounding, the shape of public information in early modern Europe.

With the establishment of public mail routes in the early sixteenth century, weekly and biweekly manuscript newsletters, known as avvisi, began to circulate among cities and courts of Europe. The content of these folios ranged from political and financial updates, cultural events, news of catastrophes, plagues, and conflicts as well as social commentary, local color, and gossip. Written by postmasters, information brokers, and anonymous agents, copied by teams of scribes, hawked on the streets, purchased by subscription, and read, often out loud, at court, avvisi originated from places as distant from each other as London, Madrid, Krakow, Venice, Malta and Constantinople.

The sheer quantity of avvisi and their often erratic organization in archives have frustrated comprehensive analyses of this historical phenomenon. The Birth of News program intends to examine one of the most complete and geographically inclusive collections of avvisi in Europe. Housed in the Archivio di Stato in Florence and incorporated in the epistolary collection of the Medici Grand Dukes (Mediceo del Principato), this corpus of avvisi (1537-1743), comprising more than 200,000 folios, arrived to Tuscany from all over Europe, Northern Africa and the Levant.

This program’s mission includes the transcription and contextualization of the avvisi in the Medici Archives, using one of the most innovative digital humanities platforms now in public use: the Medici Archive Project’s BIA, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Utilizing the data-organization tools furnished by BIA, The Birth of News program will systematically address the cultural world of avvisi, map out their trajectories, analyze their content, and configure, with historical grounding, the shape of public information in early modern Europe.

During the Mid-Seventeenth Century, Europe experienced a revolutionary wave whose impact transcended the borders of single countries. The years 1647-48 represent the apex of a long period of challenges to political powers. The outcomes (i.e. the British Revolution, the Neapolitan Rebellion and the French Fronde, just to mention the most relevant ones) would changed profoundly the political, social and cultural framework of the Old Continent. My paper tries to suggest that the dissemination of political information created the conditions through which new political ideas and practices were publicly developed, exchanged and debated throughout Early Modern Europe.

It analyses information which passed through diplomatic channels, for instance, manuscript and printed gazettes between Florence and the British Isles sent by the Tuscany envoy in London, Amerigo Salvetti; or the news flow between the Roman Curia and the Apostolic Nuncio to Ireland, Giovanni Battista Rinuccini. These examples will prove not only how the diplomatic entourage reported on similar events, but also how it reacted to exceptional conjunctures.

Moreover, my paper will try to figure out the movement of news not only through the geographical space but also within a variegated media landscape. Through the analysis of the contents and materiality of information, on the one hand, we will see how news went from a manuscript from to a printed one; on the other, their renegotiation in other cultural contexts following their translation in different languages and the appearance in different early modern political arena.

This approach could help us link again not only important events which were artificially separated by the narrative of national historiographies, but also to balance the dichotomy of some historical categories, such as printing/writing and public/private.

Il contributo intende rendere conto del lavoro di spionaggio e di controspionaggio messo in atto dal Ministero per la Sicurezza Statale della Repubblica Democratica Tedesca (meglio conosciuto come Stasi) durante il periodo di détente. L’apertura verso occidente comportò per il Ministero una lunga serie di compiti nuovi e gravosi, per assolvere ai quali il suo apparato subì un’espansione eccezionale ed impressionante. Facendo perno sulla storiografia tedesca prodotta sul tema, l’articolo ha voluto illustrare gli sviluppi del Ministero, le principali azioni compiute e, più in generale, la sua complessa reazione, fatta di spionaggio e di difesa, di fronte a questi importanti rivolgimenti politici.

La storiografia tedesca ha di recente esplorato nuove ed interessanti vie per lo studio del terrorismo e della violenza politica di sinistra degli anni Settanta. Tra le diverse suggestioni emerse, la nota si concentra sull’analisi di un approccio di tipo transnazionale, adottato da Petra Terhoeven nel suo più recente studio del terrorismo tedesco-occidentale. In una breve panoramica iniziale, l’articolo cerca di contestualizzare il lavoro di Terhoeven nel più ampio dibattito tedesco, in cui esso si inserisce coerentemente e di cui rappresenta un esito esemplare. Obiettivo della nota è delineare i numerosi spunti d’analisi che la prospettiva transnazionale, così come essa è stata declinata nel dibattito tedesco, potrebbe portare alla riflessione della storiografia italiana sul fenomeno terroristico del nostro paese.