Communication and Politics in the Hispanic Monarchy

Acknowledgement 9
Domenico Cecere and Alessandro Tuccillo
Times of emergency: Managing communication and politics in the aftermath of a disaster 11
Section I: Controlling the flow of news
Tamar Herzog
Early modern information: Collecting and knowing in Spain and its Empire 39
Fernando Bouza
Calamities, communication and public space between manuscript and print (Spain and Portugal, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries): From prayers to news 59
Virginia García- Acosta
Decide, apply and communicate: The colonial administration in Mexico faced with extreme weather episodes 79
Section II: From relaciones to periodicals
Annachiara Monaco
A linguistic perspective on the reporting of seventeenth- century natural disasters 113
Vincenzo Leonardi
The rhetoric of disaster between the pre- periodical and the periodical press: The Guadalmedina flood (1661) and the case of the Gazeta Nueva 139
Valentina Sferragatta
Communicative strategies in relazioni on the 1669 eruption of Mount Etna 171
Enrico De Prisco
Countering the spread of contagion. Plague and the media: A close relationship, the case of Conversano (1690– 1692) 197
José Daniel Lozano Díaz and Antonio Manuel Berná Ortigosa
A comparative analysis of earthquakes as reported in the official Spanish press (1770– 9): A commercial strategy? 223
Section III: The logistics of communication
Guillaume Gaudin
Crisis as a measure of communicative capacity in the Spanish Empire: Letters, messengers and news informing Spain of the Sangley uprising in Manila (1603– 1608) 255
Paulina Machuca
The 1645 Manila earthquake: The distance- time problem during emergencies 281
Domenico Cecere
Standing on shaky ground: The politics of disasters in early modern Peru 309
Rocío Moreno- Cabanillas
Mechanisms and strategies for communication in time of war during the eighteenth century 341
Section IV: Putting a spin on disasters
Alessandro Tuccillo
Divine intervention? The politics of interpreting disasters 365
Armando Alberola Romá
Disaster and personal perception: The Calabria and Messina earthquakes (1783) according to the account by the Spanish clergyman Antonio Despuig y Dameto 391
Luis Alberto Arrioja Díaz Viruell
Between the brilliant light and the shadow of the insects: The instruction on the plague of locusts ordered by the Government of Guatemala in 1804 433
Index 461