Everyday News in the Early Modern Mediterranean

This article uses John Looker’s remarkably detailed journal of his voyage from England to Constantinople as a case study of how English travellers in the Mediterranean engaged with information through informal processes of exchange – including letters, gossip and guesswork. In doing so, the article shows how information crossed between, over, and through different communities, and how cross-cultural or cosmopolitan exchange could easily break down. It shows how informal everyday news informed and were an important part of the day-to-day lives of sailors, merchants, and other travellers, a-s they negotiated cross-cultural encounters in a connected world.