Conclusion of Peace in Printing Forms of Communication of Westphalian System (Based on Peace Journalism in the Middle of the XVII and the Beginning of the XVIII Centuries)
The article presents a comparative political analysis of peace journalism during the end of the Thirty Years’ War and the first decades of the Age of Enlightenment. The author believes that the Early Modern Period became the first peak of peace journalism, and peace congresses were the highest point of international communication. The Thirty Years’ War was the first religious-political conflict, during which information on military events, both officially propaganda and oppositional one, was spread throughout the continent. The article notes that it was peace journalism that gave the name to this long and destructive European war. Almost half a century later, from peace congresses in Ryswick (1697), and in Utrecht (1713), a new «medial type» appeared, which purpose was to periodically familiarize European society with the development of the negotiation process and comment on the events taking place. To convey events to the reading public and for propaganda the activities of sovereigns and governments, materials of peace congresses began to be published shortly after their conclusion. In general, by the Age of Enlightenment, the peace press had obviously changed, new international publications appeared, peace projects had been created, and the periodicals became more open and full of discussion. Many years of the conflict had contributed to the growing perception of Europe as an international community, and performative nature and congress journalism emphasized European character of peace and the protopatriotic moods evoked by the concept «Europe». The author comes to the conclusion that the peace journalism of the studied period was a form of communication that perfectly reflected the contradictions and transformations in European society before, during and after the conclusion of peace, and, in general political terms, the developed the function of «enter» that characterized the subject political culture. It was like an indicator showing the level of political competition and helped contemporaries and descendants to look at the ongoing international transformations objectively.