The Courier de l'Europe as an agent of cultural transfer (1776-1791)

Benedict Anderson's work would seem to imply that, in general, the newspaper press will offer lean pickings for historians of cultural transfer. In Imagined communities, Anderson suggests that newspapers played a fundamental role in forging the (often xenophobic) nationalism of the nineteenth century by helping readers to envisage themselves as part of a national community linked and defined by a common and exclusive language and cultural values. This depiction suggests that the newspaper press acts primarily as a forum for national self-definition, rather than a bridge between cultures. As is so often the case, however, conditions before the watershed of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars were very different to those which prevailed for most of the nineteenth century. In particular, many of the most prominent newspapers of the pre-Revolutionary period were aimed at a pan-European elite audience conversant with the French language. Among these internationally orientated French-language gazettes was the Courier de l'Europe.