From Home and Abroad:A Cracow handwritten newssheet from 1729 as a source to the history of Polish mentality under the Saxon Kings

Abstract

Handwritten newssheets played a major role in the processes of information transfer in the 18th-century Poland. They not only supplied the reading public with information about current political and social events but also played a considerable role in the shaping of social attitudes, manners and norms (including some stereotypes and prejudices). Z kraju i ze świata was quite selective in its coverage: important events could be sidelined if it was thought that they were of little interest to its readers. The contents of the newssheet is usually clearly divided into ‘foreign news’, ie. dispatches from Europe and overseas, and ‘home news’, especially important from the point of view of the Polish reader.