Polemology Positions
John Fowke Studies
John Fowke and the Invention of News (Audio Version)
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John Fowke and the Invention of News (Audio Version)

Revolutionary merchants with political machines

This is another podcast version of a selected post. I will be doing this for all of my posts about Fowke from now on, as the chair of my thesis committee is blind. (Have you ever seen someone give a 60-minute lecture on English Civil War historiography without notes? I have, and it’s amazing!) I will begin recording posts on other topics soon enough. Don’t expect superior audio quality, however, as I am using a phone to do this and there’s no room in the budget for real recording equipment.

Polemology Positions
John Fowke and the Invention of News
The Mercurius Aulicus newspaper was published in Oxford and within London during the English Civil War. Like everything else organizational to the royalist war effort, it peaked in 1643 and disintegrated during 1645, lasting down the ages as an alternative view to the military victors of the conflict — and inspiring the creation of news as an industry. …
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Polemology Positions
John Fowke Studies
Everything John Fowke related. London merchant adventurer and military entrepreneur John Fowke. My scholarship has centered on his role in the outbreak of the English Civil War, the parliamentary victory, and the birth of mass politics. Fowke and his partners shaped the nascent British gunpowder empire through the Restoration. No standalone volume about him exists.