Books in Foreign Languages: Publishing in The Netherlands, 1500-1800
Résumé
Any survey of a specialised market requires an indepth assessment of its specificity: are printers and booksellers in that market distinguishable from others? Does it have specific outlets? Any particularity in the production line, from manufacturing to selling to consumption, can be a matter for analysis. Case studies can be fascinating but they lack this analysis of the relevant market, whose very existence is rarely questioned. What can we say about these specialised markets at the level of a city or a country? Are they really that specific? And above all, how can we build a relevant dataset to identify a market where players adapt the production to meet a particular demand?In this paper we addressed these questions in the case of books published in a foreign language in the Netherlands from 1500 to 1800. Can we distinguish one or more specialised markets, and what are their defining characteristics? How do they evolve over three centuries? The Netherlands have always been a booming market for books, and a significant part of this production was exported. This means being able to speak – or to read, at least – the language of readers to typeset and proofread the books. By looking at the entire production, we set out to understand how – and if – it was influenced by the demand for foreign language books.
Domaines
Histoire
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