Defeat and Dissimulation: Translations of the Capitulations of Breda (1625) in European News Publications’
(2024) History and Translation Network — Location: Graz (2024.September.11AD)
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- Abstract
- The surrender of Breda in June 1625, after a nine-month siege by Habsburg forces under the command of Ambrogio Spinola, was one of the most celebrated events in the Eighty Years’ War. The armies involved were international and multilingual, with Dutch, French, English and Scottish troops among the defenders—to name only the most substantial contingents—while the besieging forces included Spaniards, Italians, Germans, Walloons, Burgundians, Croats and Irishmen. Even the kings of Denmark and Sweden sent aid to the Dutch relief effort, although their support seems to have made little appreciable difference. When the siege concluded, it was an outcome that had been speculated and wagered on across Europe for months: a prime media event. The articles of capitulation were circulated in a plethora of news publications in different European countries. An analysis of twenty- one of these publications in Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish (carried out by Paul Arblaster, Carmen Espejo-Cala, and Javier Díaz Noci) shows that embedded within a range of narratives are essentially three different versions of the terms of surrender: one full copy based directly on the original documents, and two different partial summaries, one incorporating elements of hearsay and the other based on what would seem to have been the preferred redaction of Spinola’s field chancery and/or the Brussels court. How the capitulations were transformed through translation reveals the operations of secrecy, power and dissimulation in the field of the journalistic publicity of the Baroque age.
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Arblaster, P. (2024). Defeat and Dissimulation: Translations of the Capitulations of Breda (1625) in European News Publications’. History and Translation Network, Graz. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/260119