Early Modern Bibliopolitics: From a Seventeenth-Century Roman-Iberian Perspective

Abstract

This article focuses on how learned communication conditioned the continuity and developments of political communication during early modern times of war. Exchanges of books and the plundering of libraries and archives constituted only a small part of a wide array of practices, which this articles refers to as “bibliopolitics,” which were responsible for such continuity and developments. During open conflict, bibliopolitics secured political communication and contributed to the development of multilateral foreign relations. By taking as its main point of reference the relations that Iberian scholarly dissidents established with other European states from positions of exile in Rome during the first part of the seventeenth century, this article invites the reader to reconsider the role that Iberian men of letters and the Republic of Letters played in connecting multiple state information systems and in securing transfers of imperial hegemonies.