This book is the first study of how information flows linked early modern cities in Europe and the Ottoman Empire. It is as much about media of communication (i.e., how information circulated) as it is about a wide variety of messages of communication (i.e., different types of information including political news, local gossip, stories, etc.). In doing so, it argues that stories circulating in Ottoman oral culture in Istanbul could experience a second life in
scribal and printed newspapers in London and Paris. One argument, therefore, is about the mechanics of communication, and how information flows represented a type of connectedness between Europe and the
Middle East long before modern communications. But there is a larger argument too about early modern globalization itself, namely that we cannot understand these types of flows and networks without also thinking about the role that individual people played in these processes. To this end, what is unique about the approach of this volume is that it tells the story about early modern communication through the prism of a single person's experience, namely William Trumbull.