Property, Power and Press Freedom: Emergence of the Fourth Estate, 1640-1789

Property, Power and Press Freedom:Emergence of the Fourth Estate,

1640-1789

© 2011BY THE ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATION IN JOURNALISM

AND MASS COMMUNICATION

Carl Patrick Burrowes is an associate professor of Communications, andHumanities at Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg.

Carl Patrick Burrowes

2 CARL PATRICK BURROWES

AbstractThis paper employs a theoretical framework that combines political

economy and cultural studies to uncover the forces driving the develop-ment of press freedom in early modern England, the United States andFrance from the launch in 1640 of the English Short Parliament, which tem-porarily abolished censorship, to the French Revolution in 1789. The fac-tors it found to be determinant were a transnational print technology, thepublic sphere, social movements and egalitarianism, not liberalism, the lib-eral ideologues and the nation-state highlighted in the dominant press-free-dom theory. Going beyond the rights of commercial news media owners,which is a focus of the traditional press-freedom literature, it examinesother manifestations of press freedom, including the use and ownership ofthe means of publication by formerly excluded groups (including womenand tradesmen), publication in vernacular languages, new styles of expres-sion (including ironic treatment of religious and political authorities), anda successful challenge to private monopolistic control over knowledge pro-duction, especially printing. This study offers a new theory of press free-dom, undergirded by the claim that the production of rights occurs in therealm of social relations, which have cultural, economic and politicaldimensions.

3PROPERTY, POWER AND PRESS FREEDOM:

EMERGENCE OF THE FOURTH ESTATE, 1640-1789

ews media bring almost daily reports from around the world ofviolence in the form of harassments, imprisonment, torture,“disappearances,” and even attempted genocide being directedagainst people who dare practice or express unpopular beliefs,often of a religious or political nature. Every year, an untoldnumber of prisoners of conscience languish away in confine-ment, despite the determined efforts of non-governmental

organizations committed to the preservation of civil liberties. In 2006 alone, 56journalists worldwide were killed in the line of duty or were murdered becauseof their professional activities, while another 134 were imprisoned, includingone in the United States, another held by American forces in Iraq, and a thirddetained at the U. S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay (Committee to ProtectJournalists, 2007). Although freedom of expression has been an area of philo-sophical reflection and disputation for centuries (e.g., Luzac, 2003; Milton, 1931;Locke, 1689; Mills, 1978), theorizing about how it might be protected andexpanded in today’s world remains frozen in an unproductive Cold War epis-teme.

In hopes of unthawing press-freedom theorizing, this study examines legaland extra-legal constraints on the press that obtained in Britain (including itsNorth American colonies that became the United States) and France between thelaunch in 1640 of the English Short Parliament, which temporarily abolishedcensorship, to the French Revolution in 1789, which consolidated legal guaran-tees of press freedom in particular and human rights in general. It draws uponpolitical-economic and critical cultural studies, along with an abundance of rel-evant findings produced under their influence.

This study draws upon critical political economics and cultural studies,along with an abundance of relevant findings produced under their influence, tooffer a new theory of press freedom, based on the conditions that obtained in

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Britain (including its North American colonies that became the United States)and France between the launch in 1640 of the English Short Parliament, whichtemporarily abolished censorship, to the French Revolution in 1789, which con-solidated legal guarantees of press freedom in particular and human rights ingeneral. According to Hobsbawm (1962, pp. 18-20), these two “neighboring andrival” countries were the incubators of a “larger regional volcano” in industrialand political affairs respectively that led to domination of the globe by a fewWestern regimes (and especially by the British).” Occurring earlier, but, it isargued, forming an essential precondition, was the Protestant Reformation(1517-1555), in the course of which Europe went from having “truth” defined bythe Catholic Church (whose authority was reinforced by the coercive power ofstates throughout the continent) to competing visions of the mundane andsacred realms, each rooted in an association of individuals that was “voluntary”but often shared “regional and class identities” (Bruce & Wright, 1995, pp. 110-111; also Sedgwick, 1977, p. 1). Three critical ruptures occurred in the centuries-long process of transition: the English Civil War (1642-1689), the AmericanRevolution (1775-1783) and the French Revolution (1789), all of which helpedboth to constitute and transform the Western legal tradition (Berman, 1983, pp.18-19). From a reliance on prior censorship, governments shifted to suits foralleged wrongs brought after publication. One immediate and significant conse-quence was that unauthorized printing was no longer automatically deemed tobe criminal (Hill, 1980, pp. 256-257). Notwithstanding the focus of this study onBritain, France, and, to a lesser extent, the British colonies of North America, itis important to note that this period was characterized by the existence of a pan-European public sphere – “albeit a narrow and largely autocratic one” – linkedby a transnational press, published in French (Burrows, 2002, p. 23).

The conceptual and methodological problems that have stymied the devel-opment of press-freedom theory can be traced to Four Theories of the Press bySiebert, Peterson and Schramm (1969; originally published 1956), arguably themost influential work in the field. According to Nord and Nelson (1981, p. 303),Four Theories at the time of its publication was one of only three significantefforts at building theory in communication history. The book and its authorshave profoundly influenced the vast majority of subsequent American researchon comparative press systems and restrictions on expression (Nerone, 1995, pp.1-16), from introductory textbooks on media and society (e.g. Vivian, 2002,Chapter 22), and books synthesizing communication theories (e.g., Baran &Davis, 1995, pp. 74-105; McQuail, 1984, 84-98) to scholarly efforts at theorybuilding (e.g., Hachten, 1982; Lowenstein, 1970). For the most part, scholarshave not challenged the research questions posed therein or the paradigm thatunderpin them but have sought, at best, to augment the topography (e.g., Picard,1982-1983; Merrill, 1990; Altschull, 1995, pp. 418-439).

Since the late 1980s, the Four Theories legacy has come under critical exam-ination from two directions simultaneously: “First Amendment realism” withinjurisprudence and (e. g., Delgado & Stefancic, 1997, p. 45) and critical commu-nications scholarship (e. g., Burrowes, 1989; Nerone, 1995). Fueled in part bycritical race theory and feminism, the new legal paradigm rejects the dominantliberal approach for “legitimating the status quo” by masking the mal-distribu-tion of “social power and resources.” Its proponents criticize the marketplace-of-ideas metaphor for assuming a perfect utopian condition of equality. They




hold that “language and expression can sometimes serve as instruments of pos-itive harms,” as in the case of pornography and hate speech. Further, they arguethat freedom of expression is better protected, not by all-or-nothing absolutistclaims (what is labeled as “mechanical jurisprudence”), but by the “balancing ofcompeting principles” that have characterized other non-speech areas of the lawsince the 1920s (Delgado & Stefancic, 1997, pp. x, 43; also O’Neil, 1990, p. 174).As noted by Delgado & Stefancic (1997, pp. x), “speech in any sort of meaning-ful sense requires equal dignity, equal access, and equal respect on the part of allthe speakers in a dialogue: free speech, in other words, presupposes equality.”

From within the communications field, both Burrowes (1989) and Nerone(1995) offered holistic critiques of Four Theories, highlighting its lack of compo-sitional integrity; its dichotomous characterization of media systems, which wasdriven by a Cold War ideological agenda; and its stultifying impact on press free-dom theorizing. Due in part to the defining influence of Four Theories, theextensive literature on the history and theory of press freedom that has devel-oped since its publication is marred by four imbalances. First, these accountshave generally focused on mainstream commercial papers (Nerone, 1995, p. 9)while, ironically, ignoring the radical press (Curran & Seaton, 1997, p. 11) thatwas principally responsible for expanding the parameters of free expressionthrough the challenges it posed both to conventional thinking and traditionallegal boundaries. As noted by Pasley (2001, pp. 2-3), “the partisan press is per-haps the one major institution in American society that goes virtually unmen-tioned in survey narratives, textbooks, and other syntheses.” One concomitanteffect of privileging newspapers is the marginalization of pamphlets. In addi-tion, the literature largely credits the construction and preservation of press free-dom to the genius of individual ideologues (e.g., Merrill, 1990, p. xii; TheStruggle for the Freedom of the Press from Caxton to Cromwell and “Heralds ofLiberty: Thomas Jefferson’s republic as system of free expression,” in Fischer,2005, pp. 200-202) and ideas, as evident in such titles as The Idea of a FreePress: The Enlightenment and Its Unruly Legacy, Four Theories of the Press, andPrinters and Press Freedom: The Ideology of Early American Journalism(Fischer, 2005; Copeland, 2006; Siebert, Peterson & Schramm, 1969; Smith,1988). Furthermore, historical accounts of normative theories regarding theproper place of the press in society usually credit secular antecedents andrationality while ignoring the significant role of religious disputations and pas-sions in securing freedom of expression.

This ideational bias is exemplified by Four Theories, which explains thedegree of press freedom in society on the basis of four normative theories – lib-ertarianism or liberalism, authoritarianism, Soviet-Communist and socialresponsibility. This approach implies a determining role for “philosophy”(meaning, ideology) in ensuring conditions of press freedom, with little consid-eration given to non-ideational factors (Nerone, 1995, pp. 16-20), such as the roleof social movements. The authors of Four Theories proposed in their introduc-tion to “look at certain basic beliefs and assumptions of the society” (p. 2), how-ever, it is impossible to judge whether this promise was delivered because thedocuments were arbitrarily chosen. Evidence for the existence of a social respon-sibility philosophy is taken mainly from American journalists while evidencefor the Soviet-Communist system is drawn from Soviet officials – and theirWestern critics. Moreover, these theories were not defined using a unified set of

criteria (Burrowes, 1989, p. 39; Nerone, 1995, p. 30, n. 2). Two of the theories,social responsibility and Soviet Communist, were defined largely by recourse toempirical data. Two others, authoritarian and libertarian, derived from the writ-ings of influential Western theorists, largely offered models for how the mediaought to behave. Although the authors acclaim the fact that these models were“widely adopted” and are “still practiced in many places” (p. 7), they providelittle evidence to support the implication that the philosophy led to the prac-tices.

A third axiom of the dominant press-freedom literature is the determinantrole ascribed to liberalism in creating and preserving freedom of expression,especially its conceptualization of democratic society as resting upon sovereignindividuals (Burrowes, 1989, pp. 46-49; Nerone, 1995, pp. 24-26; Carey, 1987,pp. 9-10). Instead of asking if the liberal theory of press freedom worked, schol-ars simply set out to prove how well it did. As noted by Karlekar (2006, p. xix),the methodology employed in the annual global survey of press freedom con-ducted by Freedom House, which embodies the dominant approach, uses the“universal” criterion of the individual. A preferment of liberalism is also evidentin Siebert (1952), who identified three trends to account for restrictions onexpression in the three centuries of English press history covered by his study(i.e., political changes, the trade demands of printers and philosophical princi-ples). However, both of the propositions he offered concerning press-govern-ment relations were rooted in the individualism of liberal ideology. The firstposited the degree of government control of the press to be dependent on the sys-tem of governance in the larger society. The second hypothesized that increasesin governmental and societal instability would correlate inversely with freedomof the press. In Siebert’s presentation of libertarians, little or no attention is paidto the restriction on the expression of specific groups advocated or practiced bythem (Burrowes, 1989, p. 45; Nerone, 1995, pp. 136-143; Holmes, 1990, pp. 21-26). For example, John Locke, a shareholder in the Royal African Company,developed justifications for the enslavement of foreign captives that provideimportant counterpoints to his arguments in favor of liberty for British nation-als. Thomas Jefferson not only endorsed restriction on African-Americans, butwas also a slaveholder in practice. John Stuart Mill, secretary of the East IndiaCompany, supported liberty of thought and expression for all adults – exceptthose deemed uncivilized (Davis, 1984, pp. 107-108; Flake, 1985, 1985;Burrowes, 1989, p. 45). If these exceptions had been granted throughout the vastempire in which Anglo-Saxon power was exercised, it would have meant theexclusion of the majority (i.e., colonial subjects and New World slaves).

Linked to the overvaluation of liberalism in particular and ideology in gen-eral is an under-emphasis of power, especially corporate power (Burrowes, 1989,pp. 48-49; Nerone, 1995, pp. 21-29, 182; Lichtenberg, 1990, pp. 119-129;Altschull, 1995, p. xii), a concept that should be central to the study of restric-tions on expression given its concern with control and censorship. The ignoringof power relations can be seen in Stevens’s (1971) proposition that the more het-erogeneous a society, the more freedom of expression it will tolerate. Here, “het-erogeneous” is defined largely in cultural terms. But, although urbanization andother variables may activate people’s intolerance toward those who are cultural-ly different, neither the ruled nor the rulers in a society would be able to placerestrictions on the “cultural other” if power relations are symmetrical and bal-




anced (Wrong, 1979, p.). As noted by Burrowes (1989, p. 48), the concept ofpower – meaning the panoply of wealth, prestige, expertise, and control thatundergirds censorship – is largely ignored or ideologically cast in ways thatobscure the role of non-governmental institutions. For example, Siebert,Peterson and Schramm (1956) noted: “To see the social systems in their true rela-tionship to the press, one has to look at certain basic beliefs and assumptionswhich the society holds: the nature of man, the nature of society and the state,the relation of man to the state, and the nature of knowledge and truth” (p. 2). Ifone substitutes for every reference to “state” the word “power,” however, itbecomes clear that by their phrasing, certain forms of power are ruled out fromanalysis (e.g., churches and corporations). As will be argued here, one specificform of power that is excluded from consideration, although crucial to the pro-duction of toleration and civil liberties, is that exercised by social movements.

Fourth, the traditional press-freedom literature valorizes the judgments ofWestern observers in assessing media censorship conditions globally (e.g.,Karlekar, 2006, p. xx), while denoting the structure of Western societies as nor-mative. After testing at least one of Siebert’s propositions, Stevens (1971, pp. 17,26) proposed two hypotheses of his own. In the first he argued that more hetero-geneous societies are likely to be more supportive of free expression. His secondthesis posited an inverse relationship between a society’s level of developmentand the degree of censorship likely to be imposed by its government. Both ofthese conjectures place less overt emphasis on government restrictions than iscommon in the field, however, like the two propositions offered by Siebert, theyare built around two defining features of Western societies (Burrowes, 1989, p.39). The first, evident in Siebert’s hypotheses, involves a commitment to mini-mal governmental restrictions on expression, a canon whose cultural impor-tance is only suggested by its codification in the First Amendment of theAmerican Constitution (Fiss, 1990, pp. 136-154). However, this bias does notflow from the historical documents inasmuch as the church – as censor and cen-ter of power – was as much a concern as the state was for libertarians of the 17ththrough 18th centuries. The second axis involves a commitment to modernity,highlighted in Steven’s second proposition. This assumption is a variant of theonce hegemonic but now widely debunked modernization theory (e.g., Bah,2008; Fejes, 1982; Lee, 1980; Lee, 1991). These twin biases – against governmentand for modernity – permeate most theorizing on press freedom (e.g., Weaver,1977, p. 153).

Subsumed within this Western template is a tendency to highlight the con-tributions of Britons and Americans to the rise of press freedom (Laursen andVan der Zande, 2003; e.g., Copeland, 2006), in what was a transnational inter-play of people and ideas (Burrows, 2002; Laursen & van der Zande, 2003, pp. 5-6). Developments in other countries that have received inadequate treatment inthe press-freedom literature include Germany’s role in the Reformation and earlycommercialization of printing (Black, 1987; De Hamel, 2001; Eisenstein, 1979;Febvre & Martin, 1976; Laursen & van der Zande, 2003; Pelikan, 1996), theimportant nurturing influence of Holland as refuge for exiled English, Frenchand Jewish writers and publishers (Gibbs, 1971; Groenveld, 1987; Huussen,1987; Sprunger, 1994; Starr, 2004, p. 27) and the enormously significant impactof the French Revolution (Bellanger, Godechot, Guiral & Terrou, 1969; Birn,1994; Febvre & Martin, 1976; Hunt, 1996; Hunt, 2007). As noted by Laursen and

van der Zande (2003, p. 7), the danger of having freedom of press presented asthe legacy of one culture is that the international value of what should be a sig-nificant universal right becomes “hostage to the rise and fall of the prestige” ofthat society.

Taken as a whole, the episteme running through press-freedom studies incommunications reflects a projection onto the past of power configurations inthe United States during the early 1950s the triumph of newspapers over pam-phlets, commercial media over the radical press, liberalism over other ideolo-gies, individualism over collective identities, the West over the rest of the world.This high level of agreement has led one scholar to propose a structural model,as a first step toward a theory of press-freedom development (Weaver, 1977, p.153; also Stevens, 1971, p. 26). However, Burrowes (1989, p. 38) has argued thatthe consensus evident in these studies is more the result of shared assumptionsand epistemological approaches than to correspondence with processes in thereal world. In short, the literature is riddled with what professional historianshave long discredited as the fallacy of presentism, meaning the construction ofhistorical accounts that are “the ratification, if not the glorification, of the pres-ent” (Butterfield, 1968, p. v).

The ideological and cultural blinders built into those models have stymiedresearchers in their professed goals of contributing to the development of a the-ory, with the wherewithal to more fully explain and predict social processes.Because of these weaknesses and biases, theorizing about press freedom hasreached a dead end, with few new studies having been produced since the1970s. As a consequence, press-freedom theorizing remains largely unaffectedby new approaches and findings in such critically important areas as the histo-riography of the British and French revolutions. In the intervening 50-plus years,research in several disciplines veered toward what has come to be termed the“cultural turn,” along with a “bottom-up” perspective on society and an eman-cipatory mission. Regarding liberalism in particular, its critical study was fur-thered by the application of certain research methods and analytical tools thathad been previously applied only to the non-white Other, thus unhinging thetaken for granted nature of an ideology that is central to contemporary Westernpolitical regimes (Molho & Wood, 1998, p. 11; Benedict, 1998, p. 302; Hamelink,1983, pp. 74-79; Miller, 1983, pp. 32; Blumler, 1983, pp. 166-173; Smythe & VanDinh, 1983, pp. 117-127; Rosengren, 1983, pp. 185-207; Mosco, 1983, pp. 237-248).

Finally, press-freedom studies generally fail, with a few notable exceptions(e. g., Ungar, 1990, pp. 368-398), to acknowledge — both at the level of theoryand in their research design — the increasingly global character of interlockingpower relations, which is receiving increased attention in other areas of commu-nications (e. g., Featherstone, 1992, especially pp. 1-14; Mattelart, 1983;McPhail, 1981; Rogers, 1976; Schiller, 1969; Smith, 1981; Sreberny-Mohammadi, 1984). However, the investigation of this possibility will requirescholars to shift from nations to larger systems as units of analysis. Historicalstudies of press freedom across national boundaries would permit the periodiza-tion of restrictions on a global basis (e. g., Wallerstein, 1986, pp. 101-137). Incontrast to Nerone (1995, p. 182), who faulted Four Theories for offering theo-ries that were “driven not by ideas but by history,” the approach embraced inthis study assumes historical processes and patterns to be constituent elements




of any macro-theory of press-society relations.

REVIEW OF RECENT HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL STUDIES LITERATUREAs a result of a worldwide eruption of civil disobedience involving stu-

dents, disenfranchised minorities, Vietnam War protesters, and feminists thatbegan in 1968, the humanities and social sciences came to explore the study ofsociety from the perspective of subaltern groups and to ask new questions aboutthe role of culture in maintaining the political-economic status quo. Over time,this new, more critical approach has generated the constitutive elements for analternative theory of press freedom, but the parts have remained separated andframework inchoate. One crystallization of this new approach, which came to beknown as “cultural studies,” remains broadly international and interdiscipli-nary. Its major proponents include literary scholar Raymond Williams of Britain,who established the aim of cultural history as capturing the “structure of feel-ings” or “characteristic elements of impulse, restraint, and tone; specificallyaffective elements of consciousness and relationships” (Williams, 1977, p. 132)Also influential were Italian sociologist Antonio Gramsci, especially his conceptof hegemonic ideologies, and American symbolic anthropologist Clifford Geertz,who offered a view of culture as a system of signs (Gramsci, 1973; Geertz, 1975).Drawing upon Gramsci, British sociologist Stuart Hall contributed a theory ofideology that is employed in this study and elaborated later (Hall, 1979; Hall,1982; Hall, 1983; Hall, 1986; Hall, 1989). Influenced by Williams, Americanmedia scholar James Carey defined communications as “a symbolic processwhereby reality is produced, maintained, repaired, and transformed” (Carey,1989).

On the history of printing in early modern Europe, Lucien Febvre and HénriMartin, opened a fruitful line of studies into the relationship between the book,printing and knowledge. An equally important interpretation of the culturalimpact of printing was developed by Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, especially in herThe Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Although lacking the continentalsweep of earlier works, Adrian Johns’ study of printing and knowledge inEngland treats in more depth issues of authorship and ownership of intellectualproperty (Johns, 1998, pp. 10, 40; Febvre & Martin, 1976; Eisenstein, 1979;Johns, 1998; Bobrick, 2001).

Regarding the history of the English Civil War (1642-1669), the emergenceof a new and highly influential theoretical perspective can be traced to the jour-nal Past & Present, which began in 1952. Several of its founding editors wouldspearhead a veritable revolution in the field by uncovering the contributionsmade to Britain’s democratic tradition by Puritans, Dissenters, Nonconformistand working-class activists. Central to this process was Christopher Hill, who iswidely regarded to be “the dominant figure in studies of the English Revolution”and “one of the greatest historians to work in the English language in the twen-tieth century” both in terms of the quality and quantity of his work (Kaye, 1984,pp. 99, 101). Another significant contributor, Eric Hobsbawm, has influenced ageneration of historians throughout the English-speaking world. His classic Ageof Revolution, 1789-1848, first published in 1962, is now the standard interpre-tation on that tumultuous era (Judt, 1995, p. 20).

During the past half-century, studies of the French Revolution also came toembody a bottom-up approach, along with a shift away from socioeconomic

interpretations to more political and cultural ones. A significant catalyst wasprovided by Marc Bloch, Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel, whose Annalesschool of historiography explored the development of mentalité, meaning a“vision of the world” or “mode of thought” that changed slowly over the longuedurée (Kaye, 1984, pp. 223-227). The Annales approach in general and Bloch inparticular influenced Robert Darnton, who is considered “one of the most impor-tant experts on France in the English-speaking world and a leading writer on thehistory of the book.” His work explores the role of the communication network,especially the low-life literature of libelous pamphlets and trashy novels, in de-legitimizing the monarch and disseminating radical ideas (Pallares-Burke, 2002,p. 158; e.g., Darnton, 1971). Van Kley (1996) explored the significant influenceof Jansenist ideologies to parlimentary constitutionalism in the eighteenth-cen-tury. Popkin (1999) highlighted the impact on constitutional struggles in Franceof newspapers, such as the Gazette de Leyde, that were produced by Frenchexiles in neighboring countries. Baker (1990) brought attention to the fact that,decades before the Revolution, the culture of absolutism was upended by aseries of earlier political crises. Censer (2002) highlighted the spread via radicalnewspapers in early revolutionary France of popular-sovereignty ideas that pit-ted the “people” against “aristocrats.” Hunt examined how changes in language,ritual, clothing and other forms of symbolic practices served to stabilize the cul-ture and provide self-definition for the emergent class of revolutionists (Hunt,1984).

POLITICAL ECONOMY AND CULTURAL STUDIES THEORYThis paper proposes a theoretical framework that combines two approach-

es, critical political economy (e.g., Wallerstein, 1979; Meehan, Mosco & Wasco,1993; Mosco, 1996; Golding & Murdock, 1991; Garnham, 1991; Mattleart, 2000)and critical cultural studies (e.g., Williams, 1977; Carey, 1983; Hall, 1979; Hall,1980; Hall, 1982), to uncover the forces driving the development of press free-dom. These two approaches claimed a place in communication studies in the1970s in opposition to the dominant paradigm that was positivist, behavioristand functionalist (Hall, 1982). They fit the definition of “critical” scholarshipgiven by Gerbner (1983, p. 362), that is, research directed at addressing “theterms of discourse and the structure of knowledge and power in its domain andthus to make its contribution to human and social development.” Both are char-acterized by commitments to four values not evident in much of the researchdone under the sway of the previously dominant paradigm: social justice; his-torical analysis; analysis of communication activities in their broader societalcontext; and praxis or social action to right injustices (Mosco, 1996, p. 17; alsoChase, 1997, p. 20; Schiller, 1983; Golding & Murdock, 1991, pp. 17-18;Garnham, 1991, p. 495; Meehan, Mosco & Wasco, 1993, pp. 108-109; Habermas,1973). The framework outlined here responds to the appeal by Cohen andGleason (1990) for scholars to “generate theory that is cognizant of and realisticabout law, communication, and freedom of expression – an integrated theory, ifyou will, predicated on the relationship among law, communication, and free-dom of expression.”

Both critical political economy and key variants of cultural studies seek touncover the contradiction and change that are assumed to undergird appear-ances of stasis. This commitment to historical analysis involves a view that




“social structure [is] constantly constituted rather than constantly reproduced”(Connell, 1987, p. 44; e.g., Marx, 1981, pp. 20-21). As defined by RaymondWilliams (1977, pp. 139-140; also Carey, 1983, p. 313), one of the founders ofcultural studies, this perspective involves a focus on “the interrelationshipswithin this complex unity … [of] institutions, formations, and communicativerelationships … insisting on what is always a whole and connected social mate-rial process.” Holism is also characteristic of political economy, which, accord-ing to Mosco (1996, p. 33; also Chase, 1997, p. 39), recognizes that “any discus-sion which addresses solely the parts or the whole [of reality] is elliptical.” Thisshared emphasis on totality results in the displacement of mass media from thecenter of analysis, by examining the constitutive role of fundamental economic,political, social, cultural and – important, though sometimes overlooked – mili-tary processes in society (Mosco, 1996, p. 71; Schiller, 1986; Mattelart, 1980; Gilland Law, 1988, p. vii).

As regards political economy in particular, Mosco (1996, p. 25) defines it as“the study of the social relations, particularly the power relations, that mutual-ly constitute the production, distribution, and consumption of resources. …Moreover, political economy tends to concentrate on a specific set of social rela-tions organized around power or the ability to control other people, processes,and things, even in the face of resistance.” Among European communicationscholars, critical political economy has emphasized either class struggle, espe-cially resistance by subaltern classes and oppositional movements (e.g.,Mattelart, 1980), or class power, particularly the integration of communicationinstitutions into the capitalist economy (e.g., Golding & Murdock, 1991;Garnham, 1991). Those scholars adopting the latter perspective have generallyfocused on two questions, as noted by Golding and Murdock (1991, p. 23; alsoHabermas, 2000): “The first is the pattern of ownership of such institutions andthe consequences of this pattern for control over their activities. The second isthe nature of the relationship between state regulation and communicationsinstitutions.”

The origin of political economy can be traced to Scottish Enlightenmentwriters, especially Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith. From their observation ofcapitalist relations of production emerging out of feudalism, they argued thatsocieties could be distinguished on the basis of their “modes of subsistence,”which were defined mainly by two features: 1) the dominant economic activitythat the majority of the population was engaged in and 2) the most widespreadsocial relations forged in the course of production activities. In a feudal mode ofproduction, for instance, farming was the main economic activity and the socialgroups which formed on the basis of their relations to land – the primary eco-nomic input – were serfs (who worked the land) and lords (who owned it).Political economists argue that the study of society – its legal and communica-tion systems included – ought to begin with the mode of subsistence, which isindispensable to the survival of the society and its members. For Adam Smith inthe Wealth of Nations, political economy “consisted of theorizing a set of rela-tionships which were not self-evident in contemporary practices in order tohighlight the structures latent in existing conditions” (Gill & Law, 1988, p. 5; alsoGarnham, 1991, p. 494).

The key difference between the approach developed by Adam Smith andthe critical political economy that is employed here turns on “what each tradi-

tion holds as the source of historical change and the key defining characteristicof modes of production.” Where Smith and other liberal scholars stress technol-ogy and organizational forms of production as the key source of historicalchange, Marx and other critical scholars emphasize social relations rooted incollaboration within classes, on the one hand, and antagonism between classesover the generation and distribution of the economic surplus, on the other hand(Garnham, 1991, p. 494; also Chase, 1997, p. 33; Gill and Law, 1988, p. 56; Hall,1983, pp. 57-85). For critical political economists, the main polarity within thecapitalist mode of production is between the capitalist class, which owns themeans of production, and the working class, which sells its capacity to labor inorder to earn its livelihood (Shaikh, 1990, p. 74).

In addition, world-systems theory – a variant of critical political economy– argues that over several centuries power and capital have come to be disbursedand reproduced along geographic lines of polarization, between one region ofthe world economy known as the core, characterized by “high-wage (but lowsupervision), high profit, high capital intensive” production, and the regioncalled the periphery, which is confined to the production of “low-wage (but highsupervision), low-profit, low-capital intensive goods,” resulting in tradebetween the two regions that is disadvantageous to the periphery (Wallerstein,1979, p. 162 and also pp. 16-17). A third polarity, identified by Sassen (2000, pp.70-76), pits much of the globe against a “worldwide grid of strategic places,” thatis, world cities, where the rulers of the world economy reside – increasinglyfreed from political control and from conformity to the norms of local cultures.

Although the application of political economy to the analysis of socialrights is not widely evident in the current literature – especially in theories ofpress freedom, the approach has deep historical roots. It is worth noting thatjurisprudence was also the area of formal education pursued by Marx (Marx,1981, p. 19), and Adam Smith himself pioneered the application of politicaleconomy to the analysis of law and legal history, resulting in his conclusion that,“Till there be property there can be no government, the very end of which is tosecure wealth, and to defend the rich from the poor” (Ross, 1995, cited in Chase,1997, p. 28, p. 29, n. 42). In contrast to traditional press-freedom theories, whichroot themselves in an uncritical acceptance of the liberal ideology embedded inthe Western legal system that presents itself as treating all persons equally, theapproach to press freedom theory advocated here argues that rights are notequally distributed because capital and other power resources are not.

By focusing exclusively on economic components of media growth, howev-er, many political economic studies conceptualize power too narrowly as coer-cive and utilitarian, while failing to theorize the process of meaning-making.The comprehensive understanding of press freedom requires studies of subjec-tive factors (meaning, perceptions and their evaluations by individuals) on theone hand and research on the culture or “Zeitgeist” – “that is, the (more or lessspecific) combination of ideas, opinions, beliefs and values, and evaluationsembraced by (more or less specific groups within) a given society in a given peri-od” (Rosengren, 1981, pp. 717-737, especially p. 718). To understand thosedimensions, which include ideology, the public sphere, and certain practices,one must move beyond political economy to draw upon cultural studies, whichis concerned “with all those practices, institutions and systems of classificationsthrough which there are inculcated in a population particular values, beliefs,




competences, routines of life and habitual forms of conduct” (Bennett, 1998, p.28; also Barker, 2000, p. 71). As noted by Johnston and Klandermans (1995, p.21), “Unless we are able to construct theories that relate culture’s impact to vari-ables that we know already to be of influence – such as resources, organizations,political opportunities, and perceived costs and benefits of participation – wewill not get beyond the descriptive study of aspects of … culture.” In the contextof press freedom, this cultural dimension includes what Finkelman (2002, p. 15)called the “not inconsiderable symbolic representation of law, justice, and fair-ness.” Although significantly concerned with power and inequality (Swidler,1995, p. 29) cultural studies is opposed to economic reductionism (Grossberg,1984, p. 412) and, therefore, is sometimes dismissed as vague in its treatment ofpower – conceptualized in political-economic terms (e.g., Garnham, 1991, p.500).

The concept of ideology in particular remains relatively underutilized bypolitical economists but holds great promise for illuminating the impact of cul-tural resources on the outcome of political contests – including, for example,struggles for the redefinition and extension of rights (Cox, 1981; Swidler, 1995;Johnston & Klandermans, 1995, p. 19; Gill & Law, 1988, p. 77). The conceptual-ization of ideology adopted here is rooted in the theoretical framework devel-oped by Antonio Gramsci and those who have been influenced by him. ForGramsci, ideology is embodied in common sense, which consists of generallyheld assumptions and beliefs that are broadly accepted, and folklore, whichencompasses “ways of seeing things and acting.” In this formulation, ideologydoes not simply describe a psychological disposition or moral stance, it embod-ies an epistemology (Gramsci, 1973, p. 323). According to Stuart Hall, whosework has contributed considerably to focusing scholarly attention on the con-cept of ideology during the past several decades, “Meaning is a social produc-tion, a practice. The world has to bemade to mean. Language and symbolizationis the means by which meaning is produced.” Representation, he notes else-where, “is a very different notion from that of reflection. It implies the activework of selecting and presenting, of structuring and shaping; not merely thetransmitting of an already-existing meaning, but the more active labour of mak-ing things mean” (Hall, 1982, pp. 88, 60; also Hall, 1979, pp. 319, 333, 344-346;Geertz, 1973).

For Hall, the reading of ideology is not done by individuals on a purely idio-syncratic basis. Instead, “decodings” by the public tend to fall into three broadcategories: 1. Hegemonic readings, which occur when the message is decoded inthe same frame of reference within which it was originally coded; 2. Negotiatedreadings, that is, acceptance of the dominant ideology at a general level mixedwith opposition insofar as it is applied to the particular situation of the audiencemember; and 3. Oppositional decodings, wherein the information is interpretedaccording to a demythologizing code, are most likely to be evident in the inter-pretations offered by participants in dissident popular movements (Hall, 1980,pp. 15-47; also Hall, 1989, p. 51; Hall, 1979, p. 344; Hall, 1982). In the ideologi-cal struggles over the definition and limits of rights, dissidents and oppositionmovements are clearly at a disadvantage in relation to several strategic factors.First, they have to “perform within the established terms of the problematic inplay.” They are also at a disadvantage when measured on the basis of “access tothe very means of signification,” which Hall noted is as important as “the dis-

cursive condensations to which different ideological elements are subject.”Uneven access to the “means of signification” means that their arguments areconfined to a few media, while proponents of the received hegemonic viewadvance their position via a range of media. Finally, dissidents are at a disadvan-tage because they often enter the debate in a defensive position, meaning theyare confined mainly to responding within a predetermined context. As noted byHall, “Opposing arguments are easy to mount. Changing the terms of an argu-ment is exceedingly difficult, since the dominant definition of the problemacquires, by repetition, and by the weight and credibility of those who proposeor subscribe to it, the warrant of ‘common sense’” (Hall, 1982, p. 81).

DEFINITIONSGiven the centrality of terms like “freedom,” “tolerance” and “power” to

this study, it is important to examine their etymology, as a means of avoiding ablinding presentism. “Tolerance,” derived from the Latin torerare, carries twodistinct definitions of “to bear or endure” (which connotes condescension) and“to nourish, sustain, or preserve.” “Freedom” enjoys a proximal relationship to“liberty,” as in, “Exemption or release from slavery or imprisonment; personalliberty.” The widespread contemporary acceptance of these two terms as inter-changeable belies their very different genealogies. Etymologists generally tracethe “fre-“ family of words to an Indo-European verb *pri, meaning to love.Sometime around the 1300s, derivatives of *pri that meant love and friendshipseparated from words meaning free and freedom (Simpson & Weiner, 1989, pp.866, 164, 885; also Pitkin, 1988, p. 529). Whereas fre- terms were brought by theAnglo-Saxons into English from German, the liber- words came from Frenchwith the Normans. “Freedom” and related terms in Anglo-Saxon held a range ofmeanings that included nobility (of birth or character), without cost or charge,unhampered movement, and spontaneous action performed gladly, even zeal-ously. On the other hand, “liberty” in Norman came with associations to groupmembership and slavery, unimpeded motion, and sexual pleasure and potency,which were indirectly tied to one’s status as a slave (who lacked discretion inthose areas) or a free person (with the privilege to choose one’s sexual partner,for example). This choice of two related terms is unique to English, since mostEuropean languages only employ words derived from the Latin root liber, as inthe French liberté (Zagorin, 2003, p. 5; Pitkin, 1988, pp. 529, 530, 537-538).

That property was an activating element in the struggle for press freedomwas widely acknowledged by the contemporaneous sources of the period. Inmedieval Latin, for example, the word libertas meant “a right to exclude othersfrom your property, your franchise” (Hill, 1980, p. 37, also 47, 89). When a groupof independent booksellers, printers, and bookbinders petitioned the House ofCommons to repeal the Regulation of Printing Act in 1693, they highlighted itsinterference with the free exercise of their trade as the reason for their plea. Onejustification given was, it “destroys the Properties of Authors in their Copies;and sets up many Monopolies” (Siebert, 1952, p. 260, emphasis added; alsoBlack, 1987, p. 8). Similarly, a Dutch preventive censorship plan in 1769 wasopposed by book sellers on the grounds that it endangered “Liberty, Learningand the Book Trade” (Eijnatten, 2008, pp. 12-13, emphasis added).

During the period under consideration, “freedom of the press” involved adecrease both in the number of prosecutions and criminal penalties for expres-




sion of ideas perceived to be critical of the hegemonic religion (“blasphemy”)and government policies and officials (“sedition”). It also meant reductions inpreferential treatment of media on the basis of religious or political belief, inprior restraints on publication and distribution, and in strict prohibitions onaccess to government information (especially legislative deliberations). In addi-tion press freedom involved greater access to printing without a license, publi-cation of political news, and distribution without a license or discriminatorytaxation. It was often justified on a utilitarian basis because of its role in provid-ing for a tolerant public opinion. As argued by John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) inhis famous essay On Liberty (1859) opposing government and majoritarian cen-sorship, “We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle isa false opinion … . Those who design to suppress it, of course, deny its truth;but they are not infallible” (Wiggins, 1981, p. 366; Siebert, 1952, p. 7; Levy, 1985,p. xii; also Simpson & Weiner, 1989, pp. 410, 866, 164, 885; Ingelbart, 1987, p.61; Johns, 1998, p. 160). Liberty of the press resulted, in part, from contestationsof power by social movements, mainly dissenting religious groups, that resultedin declarations of toleration, meaning “the (often grudging) willingness of thestate to allow a variety of religious [and political] belief and behavior.”Declarations of religious liberty and freedom of the press were, in fact, admis-sions by the state that it was incompetent to judge what was acceptable “in therealm of beliefs and their public expression” (Bruce and Wright, 1995, p. 104).

Following Wrong (1979, p. 2), “power” is defined specifically as “the capac-ity of some persons to produce intended and foreseen effects on others.” Powerresources are taken to mean “coercive, utilitarian and normative assets” (Wrong,1979, p. 124). Unlike other definitions found in the traditional communicationsliterature (e.g., Curry, 1982, pp. 254-270), this one does not use “power” as syn-onymous with social structure or social control. The former, viewed here as anunconsciously elaborated societal framework, gives form and direction to lifeand is necessary for the existence (and definition) of freedom. Control mayinvolve intentionality, but, unlike power, it is “inherent in all recurrent or pat-terned social interaction” (Wrong, 1979, pp. 3-4; also Lee, 1963). “The Bases ofPower” are those individual and collective resources that make it possible forone actor in a power relation to gain assent from the other side. These basesinclude prestige, expertise, monopoly of jobs or skills, organization and solidar-ity (Wrong, 1979, pp. 124-45). Added to that list, based on recent critical studiesresearch, should be the public sphere, ideology and property, defined as “theright of the owner or owners, formally acknowledged by public authority, bothto exploit assets to the exclusion of everyone else and to dispose of them by saleor otherwise” (Pipes, 2000, p. xv). “Asymmetry” exists when “a power holderexercises greater control over the behaviour of the power subject than thereverse” (Wrong, 1979, p. 10). “Imbalance” exists in the power relations of twoinstitutions when “decision-making and initiatives are centralized and monop-olized by one party” (Wrong, 1979, p. 11).

Of the bases of power noted here, property is regarded by critical politicaleconomy scholars as the most important because it is seen as being determinantin the first instance (Hall, 1983, pp. 57-85). While humans are not circumscribedby their economic activities and relations, those dynamics ought not be ignoredin an explanatory framework because they are essential for the active exercise ofpower (Wrong, 1979, pp. 14, 24, 125, 131, 134-140). While modern governments

usually exercise a monopoly over coercive assets, other institutions and powerholders may draw upon property, prestige, expertise, and control of jobs in theirexercise of power. The mass media in particular play a special role in the con-ferral of prestige and the maintenance of solidarity throughout society. Thisuneven distribution of power assets among various institutions results in a formof interdependency among power holders: The ability of governments to flextheir coercive muscles requires solidarity, the maintenance of which is depend-ent in part upon the mass media.

THE PRINT INDUSTRY, DISSENTERS AND THE THREE ESTATESFreedom of expression was placed on the agenda of early modern Europe as

a matter of public debate, theorizing and, eventually, legislative fiat through theemergence in the mid-1400s of the printing industry. Prior to that critical devel-opment, these societies were characterized by highly centralized political andecclesiastical authorities that were both said to be divinely sanctioned.Christianity in Europe was entering perhaps the most intolerant period of itslong history. Committed to the idea that it provided the one path to salvation, itsadherents fought to suppress, not only other faiths, including Judaism, out ofwhich it developed, but also co-religionists deemed heretics (Zagorian, 2003, p.ii, 2, 8, 17-45; also Armstrong, 1993, p. 176). Between 1520 and 1565, for exam-ple, approximately 3,000 “heretics” were legally put to death in Europe andcountless others were subject to extra-judicial executions. This legacy stood insharp contrast to the tolerance that characterized many multi-religious societiesof the Mediterranean rim, notably al-Andalus, as Muslim-dominated MedievalSpain was known, which was later the site of virulent anti-Semitism andIslamophobia, culminating in the infamous inquisition against heretics (Zagorin,2003, p. 4, 8, 88; also Armstrong, 1993, p. 152).

Within the religious realm of early modern Europe, the Catholic Churchmaintained the largest pan-continental network of knowledge and communica-tion. Its monks held a dominant position in various aspects of manuscript prepa-ration, from translation of ancient texts, through generation of new exegeses, toreproduction, illustration and binding by hand. Present throughout the conti-nent, its priests constituted a formidable postal network and supplied a domi-nant, unified interpretation of the all-important Christian Bible, which was cen-tral to European identity. Its schools – from Rome through Sweden to remoteIreland – provided a uniform education in Latin, the only language of instruc-tion and the primary medium of transnational publication and sacral communi-cation. Over the course of centuries, this system inhibited originality, discour-aged new publications and reinforced a sanctioned conception of the world(Tuck, 1974; Bobrick, 2001, pp. 86-87; de Hamel, 2001, pp. 216, 218; Eisenstein,1983, pp. 148-146; Febvre & Martin, 1976, pp. 287-318).

The political system within each state featured a similar centralization,with a monarch resting upon three pillars of property ownership calledestates the nobility or gentry, the clergy and the commons, which was com-posed of the freeholders in counties and freemen in towns.1 In England, the gen-try consisted of only 3,000 families in the early 1600s and 5,000 by the end ofthe century, but they formed the dominant estate. The clergy, who formed thesecond tier, retained representation in the House of Lords, but most of theirproperty had been seized by the state in 1536-40, during the reign Henry VIII.




The most numerous group among the common were the yeoman farmers whoconstituted about one seventh of the population or over 160,000 families. Fromthe 1500s, increased textile manufacturing to satisfy a global market stimulateda wool trade in the countryside, which, along with a capitalist outlook, led tostrains on the old feudal order. Those forces grew up in opposition to the monar-chy and its retinue who relied heavily on taxation of economic activities. Themedieval system of agriculture, consisting of open fields, divided into acre andhalf-acre strips, was replaced by vast enclosed estates comprising an entireparish or more, ruled over by country squires or titled peers. On one level, thestruggle between the old economy and the new registered as a tension betweenlandowners in the country and merchants in the city, but eventually a commer-cial outlook spread to the countryside, in part, through the wool trade. Whencivil war erupted in 1642, it was initially a fission among the enfranchised thatpitted advocates of free trade, including merchants, consumers and craftsmen,against state-sanctioned monopolists. In short, a key element in the upending ofthe system was the growth of symmetry and balance in relations between theCourt and power holders linked to new sources of capitalist economic activities(Moore, 1966, pp. 6-7, 14; Hill, 1980, pp. 37, 88-89, 95; Morrill, 2001, p. 342; TeBrake, 1998, p. 146),

In France, the clergy was regarded as the first estate because its mediatoryrole between God and society had never been challenged by the state on thescale undertaken in Britain. Although it numbered about 23,000 out of a popu-lation of 20 million, it owned about one tenth of the land, and, unlike otherestates, formed a corporation with commonly held income and property. In addi-tion to income derived from lands, it collected a tithe on all farm products. Thenobility or second estate, although consisting of only 400,000 persons, held afifth of all land in France and was exempt from paying taxes on the grounds thatits members or their ancestors had fought in the country’s defense. Nobles wouldlose class standing if they traded or engaged in manual labor, which made themnotoriously exacting in the extraction of manorial dues from the peasants. Thethird estate consisted of all other enfranchised persons – including profession-als, government employees, artisans, merchants and approximately eight mil-lion free male peasants, who, although poor, could choose their spouses, as wellas buy and sell property (Lefebvre, 2005, p. 7, 20, 130; Doyle, 2002, pp. 14-38).

After centuries of structural stability, both church and state authoritiesfaced significant challenges beginning in the 1600s due to a mix of factors thatincluded effective use of the printing industry by dissidents. The first printingpress in England was reportedly implanted at Oxford in 1468 by a workmannamed Corsellis, who had apprenticed under Gutenberg himself. By 1487, thegovernment had established the Court of Star Chamber, whose main impact onthe print industry stemmed from its punishment of libel as a crime. In the firsttwo decades of the 1600s, the first newspapers appeared in Germany,Switzerland, Belgium, Holland, Austria and Spain. In the 1620s in London, thehandwritten letters that were earlier prepared by paid correspondents for mer-chants, big landowners and other wealthy patrons developed into printednewsletters. Those newsletters came to look more like newspapers as they founda wider pool of readers, thanks to increased levels of literacy and higherdemands for reading materials (Bourne, 1966, p. 1; von Stutterheim, 1934, p. 13;Harris, 1978. 83; von Stutterheim, 1934, p. 13; Hill, 1980, p. 257; also Bond,


1957, pp. 9, 11; Ingelhart, 1987, pp. 13-14, 25, 32-33).The printing press significantly increased the number of texts in circula-

tion, decreased their cost, and hastened the speed of their reproduction. Overtime, long-distance trade unleashed a “traffic in commodities and news” thatwould help to upend the old order of estates (Habermas, 2000, pp. 14-15). By1510, a mere 50 years after the Gutenberg Bible was published, presses wereoperating in 236 towns and 35,000 separate titles had been published, with totalpress runs of more than 20,000,000 copies. During the Sixteenth Century, theindustry grow astronomically as every major town came to have at least onepress, competition intensified among the many publishers in major cities (espe-cially Paris, Lyon and Venice) and production skyrocketed to an estimated150,000,000 to 200,000,000 books. As noted by Febvre and Martin (1976, p. 10;also Johns, 1998, pp. 543-621; Eisenstein, 1983, pp. 187-254), the printed bookbrought together “works of the most sublime creative spirits in all fields,” alongwith “the scattered ideas of representative thinkers,” which allowed creativesynergies in science and philosophy, as widely dispersed researchers were ableto immediately share their results. This outpouring resulted in, not just a quan-titative expansion of audiences for publications, but also the availability of textsto groups, such as women and tradesmen, that had previously lacked access toreading materials. For these reasons, the technology of mechanical reproductioncame to be implicated in several significant societal transformations. Where thehand production of manuscripts mainly catered to local demand, which encour-aged the development of regional variations in style, the larger number of copiesgenerated by printing fueled an industry that from its inception was transnation-al both in sales and stylistic uniformity (Anderson, 2006, pp. 15, 39; Bobrick,2001, pp. 81, 86-87; Febvre & Martin, 1976, pp. 80, 153, 155; de Hamel, 2001,pp. 216, 218; Hill, 1982, p. 17; Starr, 2004, p. 27; Innis, 1972a, p. 143; Kidd,2002, p. 1153; Eisenstein, 1983, pp. 148-186, especially p. 170).

The higher level of disposable income required for the publication of books,pamphlets and newspapers – as well as for their purchase by reader – wasderived mainly from long-distance trade in exotics like tea, coffee, sugar andtobacco from Asia, Africa, and the Americas beginning in the sixteenth century.Because large-scale publishing to meet the demand of a transnational marketrequired capital that printers, publishers and booksellers often lacked, the print-ing industry came to depend on loans, usually secured using equipment or bookstock as collateral, while printers in particular became reliant on contracts frompatrons in the church, local government or parliament. As a result of these twindependencies, large-scale publishers initially aligned themselves closely withgovernment officials, church authorities and leading sectors of the economy. Asin other areas of the economic system, the printing industry, too, developed acore (centered in Germany, Holland and Italy with a concentration in Latin texts)and a periphery focused with increased intensity on vernacular publicationsbetween 1520 and 1550 (Wallerstein, 1979, pp. 16-17; Lechner & Boli, 2000, pp.49-50; Bond, 1957, p. 11; Anderson, 2006, pp. 15, 39; Bobrick, 2001, pp. 81, 86-87; Febvre & Martin, 1976, pp. 109, 115; de Hamel, 2001, pp. 216, 218; Starr,2004, p. 27; Innis, 1972a, p. 143; Kidd, 2002, p. 1153; Eisenstein, 1983, especial-ly p. 163).

Within 100 years, mechanical reproduction had grown into a highly prof-itable industry, given its ability to satisfy pent up demand for publications



among previously underserved groups. In Italy, printed newsletters called avvisiwere introduced in 1565, but within six years the pope banned their publicationor possession because of the “gossip” and “scandals” they pervaded. The outputof publishers shifted from consisting almost entirely of Latin texts to being dom-inated by books in vernacular languages, beginning in France in 1575 and occur-ring in most major European markets by the mid-1600s. The development oflocal print-languages created what Anderson (2006, pp. 44-45, 37; also Ingelhart,1987, p. 21) called “unified fields of exchange and communication below Latinand above the spoken vernaculars.” These processes culminated in the emer-gence of national literatures, the “nationalization” of the Bible and the emer-gence of nascent nationalisms. This development helped shift control overknowledge production and dissemination from the Church into the hands ofprofit-seeking capitalists. By making the Bible available to commoners in theirown languages, the printing press helped to undermine monasticism and a tra-dition of monolithic interpretation. Beginning in Germany in 1517, when MartinLuther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the doors of a Wittenberg Church, andspreading gradually elsewhere, public and passionate disputes about religiousquestions were ignited as an outpouring of pamphlets and tracts challenged thedogma of the established church and promoted new doctrines. Although writtenin Latin for an academic audience, Luther’s text was translated into a variety ofCentral European tongues at such a rapid rate that even its author was stunned(Febvre & Martin, 1976, pp. 80, 153, 288, 291-293, 307; Anderson, 2006, pp. 15,39; Bobrick, 2001, pp. 81, 86-87; de Hamel, 2001, pp. 216, 218; Hill, 1982, p. 17;Starr, 2004, p. 27; Innis, 1972a, p. 143; Kidd, 2002, p. 1153; Eisenstein, 1983, pp.148-186, especially p. 170).

Luther’s arguments against the supremacy of the Pope, calling into questionthe mediatory role of priests between God and the people and promoting theultimate authority of the Bible, were similar to a message mounted a hundredyears earlier in England by dissenters who came to be known as the Lollards. Atthe center of the group was John Wycliffe (1328-1384), an Oxford-trained theolo-gian who viewed both the feudal structure of the church and its claims to mate-rial emoluments as inimical to scripture. In addition to leading the first success-ful translation of the Bible into English, he supported a parliamentary effort toblock the clergy from serving in state positions and organized a coterie of itiner-ant preachers to evangelize uneducated commoners. Following a major peasantuprising in 1381, which began mainly in resistance to tax collection, theLollards came to be blamed by both church and state. Dying in 1384 after astroke, Wycliffe escaped the persecution that would be directed at his followers.Many of them were excommunicated, tortured into recanting while imprisoned,or were martyred. Others fled into exile on the continent or disappeared under-ground, hiding in forests and mountains mainly in Western England. In 1410,some 200 copies of Wycliffe’s works were burned in Prague, followed two yearslater by a similar burning at Oxford. Some 30 years after Wycliffe’s death, he wascondemned as a heretic by the Catholic Church, which ordered his remains tobe removed from the churchyard where he was buried. His bones were thenburned and the ashes cast into the Swift River (Bobrick, 2001, pp. 24, 30, 36, 41,56, 58, 59, 64-66, 72-73; MacCullouch, 2003, pp. 35-36, 72; Ingelhart, 1987, p.13).

The Lollards’ influence would continue long after their suppression as was

evident in the work of William Tyndale (1495-1536). Having grown up in a dis-trict where Lollard ideas had persisted, he went on to prepare an English NewTestament that reflected Wycliffe’s in its “rhythms and turning of phrases.”Tyndale was supported in his translation effort by a group of Lutheran cloth mer-chants known as the Christian Brethren. A semi-secret society, the Brethren usedtheir wealth and textile trade network to subsidize the printing on the continentof Protestant works in English, as well as their smuggling back into England.Sensing that his translation effort was likely to offend the authorities, Tyndalefled to the continent where he befriended Luther and arranged for his NewTestament to be published, copies of which began to appear for sale in Englandin early 1536. Well received by the public, his work was quickly declared hereti-cal and copies assigned to the bonfires. While living in Antwerp on the largessof the Christian Brethren, Tyndale was captured on order of the English author-ities and convicted of heresy in August 1536. Two months later, he was execut-ed by being strangled first, then burned as the stake. Three years followingTyndale’s martyrdom, a friend named John Rogers published a translation of thecomplete Bible under the pseudonym “Thomas Matthew.” With 1,500 copieslicensed to the king, the “Matthews” Bible became the first English Bible thatcould be legally sold in England (Bobrick, 2001, pp. 80, 96-99, 104, 107, 135,142-152; Nicholson, 2003, pp. 248-249). The efforts of the Lollards were not assuccessful as Tyndale and Luther because, given their lack of access to the print-ing press, they were unable to produce enough copies of their works. Thus,printing helped seed the soil for the flourishing of the schisms in EuropeanChristianity that came to be known as the Reformation.

In England, the bishop of London and the archbishop of Canterbury weremade licensers of all books in 1526, but eight years later authority was trans-ferred to the Privy Council. The Reformation received a major impetuousbetween 1529 and 1534, when Parliament cut all money payments from theEnglish clergy to the Vatican, shifted the process of selecting bishops from thepope to the king, and organized the Church of England, over which King HenryVIII was declared supreme head. In 1543, the Privy Council began requiringprinters to deposit a bond that would be forfeited upon publication of forbiddenmaterials. In an attempt to curb the spread of heresy, however, Henry’s Catholicsuccessor, Mary, Queen of the Scots (reign 1553-58), in 1555 incorporated theStationers’ Company and issued a proclamation banning the importation ofProtestant books. She also had over 200 Protestants burned at the stake andissued three orders to have their churches destroyed. Driven into exile on thecontinent, many British Protestants deepened their antipathy for the Vaticanthrough exposure to the radical ideas of John Calvin, a French Protestant exiledin Geneva, who advocated greater egalitarianism in church polity. Upon return-ing home, they sought to transform the polity of the Anglican Church from epis-copal, which means having a hierarchical structure with authority over a localchurch invested in a bishop, to presbyteral, as in having control invested in acouncil of elders or ministers. Reversing Mary’s controls on Protestants in 1559,Queen Elizabeth invested the licensing of printing in the Protestant EpiscopalChurch (Ingelhart, 1987, pp. 24-25, 27; Guy, 1984, pp. 246-251; Fleming, 1953,p. 15; Copeland, 2006, pp. 30-31; Zagorin, 2003, p. 72).

Besides the Catholic interpretation of the Bible, another textual form of uni-formity against which some dissented was the Anglican Book of Common




Prayer. These reformers came to be known in one form as Puritans (because oftheir commitment to “purify” all Roman Catholic remnants from the Church ofEngland) and in another as the Presbyterians. Unable to reform the establishedchurch from within, the dissenters eventually organized themselves into alter-native structures and took to pamphleteering as a means of proselytizing, whichinextricably bound issues of religious freedom and freedom of expression. Anensuing struggle between competing visions of church polity – and, by implica-tion, state governance – contributed to the outbreak of the English Civil War(1642-51) and to mass emigration of dissenters to the New World. In 1652,Presbyterian printers and stationers – in a pamphlet titled A Beacon Set on Fire– argued for the suppression of Catholic books. One outcome of the war – withimportant implications for the emergence of civil liberties – was An ActDeclaring the Rights and Liberties of the Subjects, or the Bill of Rights, which notonly guaranteed “the right of the subjects to petition the King,” but also barredprosecutions against petitioners. The bloodless transfer of the crown from JamesII to William & Mary came to be known as the Glorious Revolution in partbecause it ushered in long fought-for religious and political rights. These“ancient rights and liberties” were not viewed as natural or universal, butderived from English history (Hunt, 2007, p. 21). An equally important outcomewas the Act of Toleration issued in 1689, which confirmed the episcopal struc-ture of the dominant church but offered recognition to the Presbyterian Churchof Scotland and tolerance to dissenters, under certain constrains (Bobrick, 2001,p. 174; Spaulding and Brass, 1961, pp. 417, 422; Spurr, 1989, pp. 927, 930; Kidd,2002; Bruce & Wright, 1995, p. 106; Ingelhart, 1987, p. 53; Barker and Burrows,2002, p. 16; Doyle, 2000, pp. 8, 88; Sedgwick, 1977, p. 12; Copeland, 2006, p. 51;Zagorin, 2003, pp. 7, 188-196).

Other challenges to the dominant order were mounted by several socialmovements that came to be known to later generations by the labels of opprobri-um applied to them by their opponents. Among these were the Baptists, whodistrusted university education for clergy, attacked tithes to the official church,and argued that the sacrament of baptism was valid only when administered toadults and by immersion in a river. Because tithes were the foundation of polit-ical and economic standing of clergy, opposition to tithes was advanced, not justto bring the contemporary church in line with practices of early Christians , butas a means of achieving substantive equality. Also rooted in Puritanism but moredirectly political than the Baptist was the Leveller movement, which arose as areaction against the privatization of what had previously been common land, aprocess known as enclosure. It was in the context of negotiations over the settle-ment of the Civil War that the Levellers emerged, with a specific concern for pro-tecting the interest of the common people from perceived “betrayal” and for pre-venting a hegemonic national church from being imposed on dissenters. In thiscontext, Leveller leader John Lilburne emerged as the principal crusader forpress freedom. Although coming almost a century after the Lollards, Leveller’sideology reflected many of the earlier movement’s ideas, which may have con-tinued an underground existence in oral form, long after proponents and theirpublications had been successfully suppressed (Hill, 1978; Hill, 1982; Davis,1966, pp. 291-332; Capp, 2003, p. 287-289; Copeland, 2006, pp. 40-45, 75-82;Ingelhart, 1987, p. 42; Hill, 1983, pp. 21, 29, 35, 43).

Where the Levellers had professed support for the preservation of private

property, the Diggers or “True Levellers” advocated economic equality as thefoundation of all liberties. Equally radical but more loosely organized was thegroup known as Ranters, a collection of cells that rejected all institutionalchurches and traditional sexual mores. Although not organized as a separatebody, women appeared in print in unprecedented numbers in the 1640s, manyoffering prophetic visions and using male pseudonyms, some even denying theirfemaleness in order to conform to existing gender conventions regarding author-ship. The last major movement to emerge, the Quakers, emphasized the gather-ing of believers, not the institutional church. Their belief in the inner light ofGod in-dwelling in each human being led to a radical rejection of war and slav-ery, as well as an embrace of equality for women and blacks (Hill, 1982, espe-cially pp. 306-322; Davis, 1966, pp. 291-332; Capp, 2003, p. 287-289; Copeland,2006, pp. 40-45, 75-82; Hill, 1983, pp. 21, 29, 35, 43, 143; Johns, 1998, p. 414).Britain during the 1640s enjoyed relatively wide latitude of free expression, eventhrough power continued to be asymmetrically distributed. This suggests thatregarding the organization of power in society, countervailing balances amongpower holders as existed in the Dutch Republics in 1579-1795 is a more impor-tant precondition for toleration (Copeland, 2006, p. 60; Eijnatten, 2008, p. 2;Laursen & van der Zande, 2003, p. 4; Starr, 2004, p. 81; Zagorin, 2003, pp. 147-152).

France, too, underwent a process of religious schisms, although the timingand tenor were different. While remaining within the ambit of the CatholicChurch, both the king and bishops of France managed to establish autonomyfrom the Vatican. “Gallicanism,” as their guiding doctrine came to be called,asserted three major limitations of the pope’s powers: first, the French king exer-cised independent authority in the secular realm; second, doctrinal assertions bythe pope required assent from a national ecumenical council; and third, thecombined authority of the French king and clergy limited the intervention of theVatican in French affairs. The ratification of Gallicianism by the NationalAssembly of the French Clergy in extraordinary session between November 1681and March 1682 redefined the place in French society held by the Society ofJesus, who were now accused of “ultramontanism” (because the commitment ofits adherents was perceived to lay “over the mountain” in Rome). On the onehand, Jesuits continued as confessors to prominent political figures and wereentrusted with the education of noble and bourgeois men in their many colleges.On the other hand, their strong allegiance to the Vatican kept them under suspi-cion of disloyalty to France, which resulted in their temporary expulsion in1594 for alleged subversive activities (Van Kley, 1996, pp. 1-13, 33-38; Sedgwick,1977, pp. 2-3l, 10-11).

This division among French Catholics, together with grievances against thearistocracy, facilitated the rapid spread of Protestantism between 1517 and 1561.By 1562, the words “tolerance” and “liberty” were being employed in France todescribe a permissive stance toward Protestant beliefs and their expression.France managed to send Protestant theologian Jean Calvin into exile, but hisideas found local followers, who came to be known as Huguenots. From 1562 to1570, competing visions of church polity between Protestants and Catholics ledto what the French call the Wars of Religion. These wars brought the Frenchstate closer to disintegration than any development prior to the Revolution of1789. In 1589, when Catholics and Protestants united to repel an invasion by




Spain, the Edict of Nantes was enunciated, assuring both toleration and protec-tion for Huguenots (Zagorin, 2003, pp. 90, 10-11; Sedgwick, 1977, p. 3; Benedict,1977; Conner, 2002, p. 3). Despite opposition from Catholic clergy, the decreeconferred to Huguenots certain privileges, including governance of importantcities, such as La Rochelle, Montauban, and Nîmes, and representation in feder-al assemblies. This arrangement was rescinded in 1627, after a revolt byHugeunots in La Rochelle, which resulted in the massacre of nearly 10,000Protestants in that city. From then until the French Revolution (1789), Huguenotpolitical privileges were curtailed, although Protestant worship was allowed bythe state.

At that time, about three-quarter of the Protestant population of France – anestimated 850,000 persons – lived in a compact area between La Rochelle on thewestern coast and Dauphiné in the southeast. Included in that crescent wasRouen, a city of upwards of 100,000 residents, second in size only to Paris. Some40 percent of the Huguenots lived in towns in this region, compared to 17 per-cent town dwellers for all France. The compactness of the Huguenots con-tributed to their “barefaced defiance,” which was probably reinforced by the dif-ficulty the central government faced in moving an army across vast and difficultterrain. A similar spatial density of dissenters in specific regions of Britain (e.g.,the Lollards in western England, Presbyterians in Scotland) and urban centers(e.g., Puritans) had invested their values with a strength beyond their minoritystatus and gave adherents within their region the power to defy standardsimposed by the state and dominant church (Conner, 2002, pp. 4, 7; Benedict,1977, pp. 7, 210, 223, 230; Benedict, 1991, pp. 1-10; Kidd, 2002, p. 1159; Bruce& Wright, 1995, pp. 106-108). In short, the increased symmetry and balanceamong religious factions that developed during this period (Te Brake, 1998, p.139; also Zagorin, 2003, pp. xii, 47) was an important precondition for the emer-gence of religious and press freedom.

Continued persecution of French Protestants led to thousands of forced“conversions” and emigration by an estimated 400,000. This loss to France wasa gain to the rest of Europe, as industrial life quickened wherever they settled inlarge numbers, especially in Holland, Brandenburg, and Berlin. This exodus hadtwo unintended consequences that were important for an expanded commit-ment to freedom of expression and of religion. First, it deepened hostilitiestoward Catholicism in Protestant host societies, including England, in ways thatmay have contributed to the Glorious Revolution. Second, it led to the establish-ment of an Huguenot-operated exile press of international gazette along majortrade routes that constituted 37 percent of the French-language press prior to1789 (Gwynn, 1983, pp. 384, 393; Connor, 2002, pp. 3-13; Benedict, 1977;Benedict, 1991, pp. 1-10; Burrows, 2002, pp. 28, 42, n. 6; Gibbs, 1971, p. 324-334, 343, 347; Popkin, 1999, pp. 16-17).

France subsequently underwent another effort to reform the dominantchurch from within, in the form of a movement called Jansenism. Adherentsdrew their inspiration from Cornelius Otto Jansen of Fleming, who was Catholicbishop of Ypres when he died. A book on the ideas of St. Augustine, Augustinus,which Jansen had spent 20 years preparing, was published posthumously, onlyto be banned by the Vatican for allegedly endorsing predestination and effica-cious grace. The Jansenists then mounted a campaign within the CatholicChurch for a more egalitarian structure based on the imagined model of the early

church – similar in some ways to the Puritans in England, the Presbyterians inScotland and the Calvinists in the south of France. Jansenism found publicexpression through the Nouvelles Ecclésiastiques, whose stories of inequities bythe French Catholic hierarchy, the Jesuits and the popes, helped to earn itsstanding as the “most successful clandestine journal of the century” until the1770s (Doyle, 2000, p. 79; also Abercrombie, 1936, p. ix-x; Van Kley, 1975, p.637; Sedgwick, 1977, p. 8). From their base in Port Royal, a community not farfrom the palace at Versailles, the Jansenists resisted a combined assault by thecrown, the Jesuits, and the Vatican (Doyle, 2000, p. 87; Abercrombie, 1936, p.xii; Van Kley, 1975, p. 641, 663).

In 1713, Jensenists were the target of a papal declaration of blasphemy,known as the bull Unigenitus, which one historian of the French Revolutioncalled, together with a denial of the sacraments to Jansenists in 1750s, “majorlandmarks on a polemical road which gradually bifurcated toward theRevolution and counter-Revolution” (Van Kley, 1975, p. 663). In the aftermath ofthe bull, Jansenism transitioned from functioning as a “theological system” tobecome “rather a legal and political tendency.” At the onset of the Revolution,the pamphlets challenging the Ancient Regime were said to have reflected amentalité that fused Gallicanism, Jansenism and parliamentary constitutional-ism. Resulting from a change in public opinion produced by Jansenism, theJesuits were again expelled in 1762. A catalytic step toward revolution was anattack in 1771 on the power of the parliaments by a defender of the feudal order,which provoked a flood of pamphlets in their defense, mainly by Jansenistlawyers, some of whom issued the earliest calls for elected legislatures with rep-resentatives drawn from beyond the estates (Abercrombie, 1936, p. xii; alsoDoyle, 2000, p. 82; Van Kley, 1975, p. 632, 635; Sedgwick, 1977, p. 12).

By 1787, public support for religious persecutions had waned, and, just asthe Glorious Revolution had resulted in toleration for Presbyterians in Scotlandand the Puritans in England, an edict was issued providing for toleration of theHuguenots. The regime’s long-term struggles with the Jansenists and Huguenots– millions of French people who were disenfranchised because of their beliefs –supplied much of the fuel and many intellectual tools that ultimately broughtabout its upending (Zagorin, 2003, pp. xii, 47; Butterfield, 1980, pp. 4-8; VanKley, 1996, pp. 341-344; Sedgwick, 1977, p. 3; Hunt, 2007, p. 154; Tallett, 1992,pp. 13, 15; Hill, 1982, p. 153). As noted by Miller (1993, p. 600), “(e)thical rela-tivism and Pyrrhonian skepticism developed in precisely those regions beset bywarfare and confessional chaos.”

These edicts of toleration in Britain and France secured through the effortsof minorities were significant concessions by once all-powerful regimes. Asnoted by Bruce and Wright (1995, p. 107, 115; also Copeland, 2006, p. 32;Zagorin, 2003, p. 12; Jordan, 1932-1940, pp. 16, 17, 19), toleration was tacitacknowledgment by the major protagonists in Europe’s religious wars that theyhad fought to a draw. In this context, many dissenters actually began as advo-cates of religious coercion to protect the true faith, which they assumed wasembodied by them. Faced with relentless persecution, however, they eventuallycame to argue for toleration, first for themselves, then for all religious noncon-formists, and ultimately as a general principle to be extended to non-Christiansand atheists. Because acts of toleration served as models for later action of otherfactions of the population, they were important preconditions for the emergence




of civil liberties broadly and press freedom in particular (Zagorin, 2003, pp. 7,306; Mill, 1978, p. 20).

Faced with the emergence of trading and industrial towns, as well as the ris-ing wealth of merchants, continued autocratic exercise of power by Europeanmonarchies and their feudal lords on whom they traditionally depended soonbecame untenable, so new political structures were innovated in both Britainand France that sought to contain the new potential centrifugal forces by allow-ing limited political enfranchisement. In the short term, instability in govern-ment and society may have correlated inversely with freedom of the press, asposited by Stevens (1971), but it was only through contestation by religiousminorities that a culture and legal edifice of toleration was brought into exis-tence and maintained in the long term. The roots of civil liberties laid, not exclu-sively in the rationalist discourse of secularism as portrayed by liberal writers,but also in the bloody wars that wracked Europe between 1480 and 1799, manyof which were driven, at least prior to 1650, by religious passions.

Ideological Contributions of Social MovementsAlthough the scholarship on press freedom (especially within the American

context) tends to highlight the contribution of individual philosophers, notablyJohn Milton and John Locke (e.g., Siebert, 1969; Clyde, 1970), recent historicalresearch has revealed the extent to which the ideological foundation uponwhich aristocracy rested was deconstructed by one group of dissenters afteranother over the course of centuries. Some dissenters, like the Levellers andRanters, dissipated their energy within a generation or two due to a lack cohe-sion and discipline, but others, notably the Quakers and Baptists, achieved thesolidity of movements, which enabled their continuity over centuries (Hill,1982, pp. 114, 373-378). Even groups like the Ranters were characterized by col-lective identity, defined as “a network of active relationships between the actors,who interact, communicate, influence each other, negotiate, and make deci-sions” (Melucci, 1995, pp. 41-63, especially 45). While they might not haveachieved widespread, national influence, they exerted disproportionate impactin those locates where they were concentrated, such as the English Familists inEast Anglia and the North of England (Hill, 1982, p. 27). One critical solvent wasthe Calvinist assertion, evident in Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), that individualconscience was not bound to accept or obey man-made laws. Hill’s study of JohnMilton, an iconic figure in the struggle for freedom of expression, showed himto be, not a modern liberal (as he is often portrayed in the press-freedom litera-ture), but as “living in a state of permanent dialogue” with the ideas of theLevellers, Ranters, Diggers and other radicals of his day (Hill, 1979, pp. 1-10,especially 4; 95, 113). And while Milton is deservedly celebrated for hisAreopagitica (1644), which advocated for unregulated competition of truth andfalsehood in the marketplace of ideas, it largely goes unacknowledged that in thesame year a leader of the Levellers, William Walwyn (1600-1681), argued in TheCompassionate Samaritane “That the Presse may be free for any man” (Tuck,1974, p. 46; also Hill, 1980, pp. 107-116; Copeland, 2006, p. 61; Walwyn, 1644;Zagorin, 2003, pp. 213-239).

The writings of Locke, too, especially his Letter Concerning Toleration(1689), brought forward arguments published 20 years earlier by Presbyteriandissenters, radical Puritans and Levellers that governmental authority in church

and state rested upon “rational consent and magisterial rectitude” (Tuck, 1974,p. 55, 57, 60, especially p. 55). Locke’s commitment to these ideas were verylikely reinforced by his own persecution in 1675, when he fled to France. Adiary of his travels showed his interest in the condition of the French Huguenotsin particular. An entry from February 1676 noted “they and the papist laity livetogether friendly” in Monpellier (Lough, 1953, pp. 28, 41; also Pocock, 1985, pp.52-71; Copeland, 2006, pp. 78-82, 90-92; Shapiro, 2003, p. xii; Woolhouse, 2007,pp. 117-152; Zagorin, 2003, pp. 240-267). This quote reveals the impact of a liv-ing example of toleration on Locke 13 years before his Letter ConcerningToleration was published.

Dissenting religious groups helped to enlarge the sphere for tolerance by (1)the numbers of adherents they mobilized on their own behalf and (2) advocacyof an ideology that either (re)asserted the supremacy of a supernatural God overa concrete monarch or conflated the voice of the people with the voice of God.As noted by Van Kley (1975, p. 665) in reference to eighteenth-century France,“the mixed religious, ecclesiastical, and political controversies generated thefundamental political and ideological directions” of the society. Denominationaldifferences concretized in words like “Episcopalian” and “Presbyterian” weredebates over sacred power in the first instance but with implications for secularpowers. Among French Huguenots, the anonymous writer of a pamphlet titledVindiciae contra tyrannos published in 1579 seven years after the Massacre ofSt. Bartholomew’s Day advocated “the right to attack the king if he would notguarantee them toleration” (“Vindiciae contra tyrannos,” 2011). Similarly, theHuguenot exile newspaper Nouvelles extraordinaires de divers endroits, knownless formally as the Gazette de Leyde, not only supported the revolution inAmerica and parliamentary constitutionalism at home, but also held that allefforts by monarchs to alter the parliament were despotic. That struggles inBritain and France were mutually reinforcing is exemplified by the use of theBurning Bush as the emblem by both the French Huguenots and the Church ofScotland (Censer, 2002, pp. 170, 172; Velema, 2003, especially p. 13).

Among French Catholics, Jansen was apparently the first among sixteenth-century European political theorists to draw attention to the distinction inGreek often conflated in translation between “power” (synonymous with“might, puissance, force, abilitie”) and “authority” (meaning “dignitie; to havethe protection or tuition of any thing, province, or people”). His writings on thesubject beginning in 1571 would pose significant implication, in the firstinstance, for the ordering of church and, ultimately, for the state (Tuck, 1974, pp.45, 48-49). A public sign in this shift was Institution of a Prince, published in1739 by a Jensenist writer, which outlined the responsibilities of a true Christianruler to his subjects, including the avoidance of war and discouragement ofusury, and became the “key political handbook” of pre-Revolutionary France(Boyle, 2000, p. 82). The influence of Jansenists at crucial points in theRevolution was said to be “if not decisive, certainly obvious.” The enshriningduring the Revolution of freedom of religion and expression as basic rights wasspearheaded by several Jensenists, including LaPaige and Maultrot, who advo-cated toleration of Protestant worship; Parisien magistrate Robert de Saint-Vincent (1725-94), who fashioned the final 1787 declaration of toleration; andHenri Grégoire (1725-1799), champion of both civil rights for Jews and emanci-pation of slaves (Boyle, 2000, p. 83, 80).




THE RISE OF THE PUBLIC SPHERECrucial to the transition from feudalism to capitalism – and to the lessening

of restrictions on speech and the press – was the development of what has beentermed the bourgeois public sphere. The public sphere was characterized byongoing deliberation among private people organized in Masonic lodges, coffeehouses, salons, Tischgesellschaften, and reading clubs where status was disre-garded in social intercourse (Habermas, 2000, pp. 14-43). As noted by Starr(2004, p. 24), the “development of the public sphere required the breakdown of‘norms of secrecy and privilege’ and the open acknowledgment and acceptanceof political difference.” Its emergence is traced to early finance and trade capi-talism, which over time helped to dissolve status fixed on the basis of heredityand patronage; the expansion of local markets made possible in part by the con-quest and colonization of Asia, Africa and the Americas; the creation of mailroutes organized first by merchants to facilitate long-distance trading; and thecommodification of books, newspaper, art and culture, which made it possiblefor mass audiences to reflect collectively upon matters of common concern. Notsurprisingly, one of the earliest manifestations of the public sphere appeared inthe context of the printing industry and its aligned publishing houses, whereuniversity professors, former priests and ex-abbots could be found working side-by-side with metal workers and other craftsmen (Habermas, 2000, pp. 14-43;Eisenstein, 1983, p. 24 Bourne, 1966, pp. 42 and 48; Bond, 1957, p. 12).

The public sphere’s initial print flowering was in the form of pamphlets andother ephemera. During the period 1763-1783 in the United States alone,approximately 1,500 pamphlets were published, as compared to 44 newspaperswith an annual circulation of 1,373,000. In France an estimated 4,158 pamphletswere issued from May 1788 and April 1789, with a circulation of over 10 mil-lion, which compared favorably to an annual combined newspaper circulationof 55 million. However, the impact of pamphlets stemmed not mainly from theircirculation numbers, but rather from their use by opposition forces to publishthe first spirited, influential and celebrated arguments advancing free expres-sion, such as Elie Luzac’s Essay on Freedom of Expression (1749), Locke’s LetterConcerning Toleration (1689), Milton’s Areopagitica: A Speech of Mr. JohnMilton for the Liberty of Unlicens’d Printing, to the Parliament of England (1644)and Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776) (Tanselle, 1981, pp. 347-349; Popkin,1999, pp. 19, 25-26, 83; Starr, 2004, p. 68; e.g., Luzac, 2003; Locke, 1689; Milton,1931).

Pamphlets were efficient solvents against autocracy, but their successproved to be their undoing. Once self-government was achieved in England,America and France, they were eclipsed by newspapers because of the greaterneed for information over argumentation (Starr, 2004, p. 64). The level of pressgrowth and diversification in all three countries was all the more remarkablesince it was not spurred by any significant changes in communication technol-ogy. In England, the press grew from 13 in 1684-87 to about 24 in 1702 includ-ing London’s first daily to more than 48 in 1714. Predictably, the new paperswere located in major population centers like London, which had been the mainsites of capital accumulation and anti-monarchical ferment. They were usuallyowned by individuals, mainly printers and to a lesser extent booksellers (Black,1987, p. 12; Bourne, 1966, p. 55; Hill, 1980, pp. 256-257; Bond, 1957, pp. 4-5;

Harris, 1978, pp. 83-84, 87, 92; von Stutterheim, 1934, p. 30). It was in this con-text, according to Hill (1981, pp. 256-257), that journalism “established itself asa social force.”

In America, the development of the public sphere took a critical turn around1720 with the appearance of public debates in newspapers. Forty-five years later,the press entered a new phase as publishers became directly engaged in politi-cal contests. The press’s visible part in influencing political events, from theRevolution through to consolidation of a strong federal government, coincidedwith a rapid growth in the number of newspapers. In 1760, the entire countrysupported only 18 newspapers, and these were confined to port towns, especial-ly Boston. Twenty years later, the pamphlet as the epitome of the print publicsphere was eclipsed in America by the newspaper, which emerged as a majorforum of debate regarding radical republicanism and the ending of slavery(Barker, 2002, pp. 96-97; Harris, 1978, p. 97) read by a “truly popular” audiencefrom “across the social spectrum” (Barker, 2002, p. 108). By 1790 14 years afterthe American Revolution the number of papers increased to 106 and by 1819was 518 (Starr, 2004, p. 57; Copeland, 2002, p. 140; Brown, 1989, p. 111; alsoTanselle, 1981, pp. 315-363, especially p. 347).2

As the American Constitution was being debated in the mid-1770s, the sig-nificance of the public sphere was so clearly established that the authors of TheFederalist Papers, argued in Number LXXXIV, “whatever fine declarations maybe inserted in any constitution respecting it, must altogether depend on publicopinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government”(Madison, Hamilton & Jay, 1989, p. 87). Similarly, Tocqueville (1994, p. 111) con-cluded, based on his observation of American democracy in the 1830s:

When men are no longer united among themselves by firmand lasting ties, it is impossible to obtain the co-operation ofany great number of them unless you can persuade every manwhose help you require that his private interest obliges himvoluntarily to unite his exertions to the exertions of all theothers. This can be habitually and conveniently effected onlyby means of a newspaper; nothing but a newspaper can dropthe same thought into a thousand minds at the same moment.

Having been peripheral to most French people prior to 1740, periodicalssaw their audiences rapidly expand to include lower middle-class readers. Thelast 25 years of the Old Régime saw improvements in education, a doubling ofliteracy and a rise in book production. These development were accompanied bya steady rise in the status of serious writers, who formed a kind of “estate” withan air of nobility. A successful writing career came to depend less on patronagepayments and more on the form of “protection” derived from cultivating theright people and pulling proper strings. This exclusive world was often closedto aspiring authors and journalists, who survived by “doing the dirty work ofsociety – spying for the police and peddling pornography.” With the outbreak ofrevolution, these marginalized writers would supply the voice of extremism(Darnton, 1971, p. 94, 51, 85, 98). In 1789, freedom from prior restraint came tobe proclaimed in France as a right of man based on an assertion of natural law,unlike earlier claims of press freedom as a right derived from citizenship.




Between 1789 and 1799, 13,000 political pamphlets and posters were published,and the number of newspapers increased from 60 prior to liberalization to 2,000newspapers. Just as impressive as the spectacular increases in circulation andthe number of titles was the “huge range of styles, tones and formats adopted”by the political press (Schama, 1990, p. 526; also Ingelhart, 1987, pp. 140, 149;Kennedy, 1989, pp. 320, 325; Gough, 2002, pp. 182, 195; Barker & Burrows,2002, p. 16; Censer, 2002, p. 159; Burrows, 2002, p. 35; Copeland, 2002, p. 196;Schama, 1990, pp. 177, 525; Darnton, 1982, p. 38; Hunt, 2007, p. 25).

Critical features of the public sphere included, not just interpersonal dis-cussions, but participation in large political assemblies and print media audi-ences by persons who had previously been excluded from debating publicaffairs, such as women, nonconformists and mechanics. In the 1730s, oppositionjournals, such as the Craftsman and the Gentleman’s Magazine, found massaudiences for the first time. Although publication of reports on parliamentarydebates began appearing in the London Magazine during this period, it wasn’tuntil a hundred years later that stands for reporters were install in the House ofParliament. A key manifestation of the emerging public sphere was the increas-ing size and frequency of public meetings. This trend culminated in the organi-zation of political parties outside of Parliament for the first time in the late 1700sand the publication of the first party election platform in 1834 (Habermas, 2000,pp. 36-37, 60-65, also xi; also Smith, 1994, pp. 5, 26, 34; Sutherland, 1986, pp.236-237, n. 52; Black, 1987, p. 19, Blanning, 2007, pp. 332-333, 350-351, on pub-lic meetings in France; Kennedy, 1989, pp. 17-26; Johns, 1998, pp. 112-113, 124).

By the 1670s, coffeehouses had become institutionalized in most majortowns and cities in England, especially London, as venues for discussion andnewspaper reading by people of diverse stations and statuses (Pincus, 2009, pp.74-81). Face-to-face encounters in these settings engendered a culture of toler-ance and cavity in discussions, as well as a more conversational style of writing(Coser, 1997, pp. 21-22). By the late 1700s, however, English coffeehouses shift-ed from attracting heterogeneous clientele to serving “clubs” of men with sharedinterests (Coser, 1997, p. 24). In British North America, coffeehouses in the1700s, together with taverns and printer’s shops, served as plebian publicspheres and, in the words of Warner (1987, p. 19), “cells of community life. ”Significant examples included the Boston coffeehouse operated by BenjaminHarris, founder of America’s first newspaper, and the Rising Sun Tavern inPhiladelphia, where the Society for the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Heldin Bondage was founded in 1775. Notably excluded from participation wereAfrican Americas, who were sometimes auctioned outside these venues(Warner, 1987, pp. 3-21; Daley, 2009; Carey, 1987, pp. 8-10; Nash, 2005, p. 152;Clark, 1994, p. 212; Schudson, 1998, pp. 11, 39).

Although coffeehouses were thriving in French cities by 1690, they werefewer, more decorous and served a more bourgeois clientele than those inEngland. (Pincus, 2009, pp. 75-77). More central to the French public sphere by1760, but uncommon outside of France and Italy, were salons, often created,hosted and guided by women. Beyond serving as venues where public opinioncame to life, salons as did coffeehouses, taverns and print shops facilitated theconvergence of the oral and print aspects of the public sphere by providingpatrons access to conversations and newspapers, gossip and books, lectures andpamphlets (Goodman, 1989, p. 347; Coser, 1997, p. 22; Warner, 1996, p. 19;

Carey, 1987, pp. 8-10; Clark, 1994, p. 212). Salons in particular were the “epis-tolary exchange” where news, information and ideas circulated, which also pro-vided a forum for new and sometimes experimental musical, literary and theatri-cal works to be tested before an informed and passionate and critical audienceof intellectuals, ranging from philosophes to dilettantes (Coser, 1997, pp. 11-17;Herbst, 1994, p. 33; Goodman, 1989, p. 340). The guidance of women in thesefor a helped foster “the grace and refinement that characterized so much of roco-co literature” and to “democratizing the life of the mind” (Coser, 1997, pp. 15,17). Salons played a critical role in “public opinion formation” (Herbst, 1994, p.56) and, in the view of Goodman (1989, p. 330), provided literary and artisticaspirants from non-elite backgrounds entry into the “new Republic of Letters.”Ironically, the male leaders of the French Revolution enforced such a rigid dis-tinction between the “masculine” public sphere and a “female” domestic realmthat women were soon excluded from the very salons they had fostered (Herbst,1994, pp. 62-63).

The role played by the public sphere and empathy in expanding the boundsof free expression came to be recognized nearly two decades after the dominantpress-freedom theory took hold. While it is understandable that theorizing in the1950s did not incorporate those significant phenomena, failure to incorporatethem subsequently is not. The original conceptualization of the public spheredepicted it as juxtaposed against the state, but the separation was less starkbecause governments often fueled the growth of the press in a variety of ways.According to Boyce (1978, pp. 28-29; also Barker & Burrows, 2002, p. 15), theBritish press derived power from being “an extension of the political system,”with leading editors “under at least an obligation, if not a firm commitment, toparty-political backers.” In America, too, the press initially existed in a depend-ent relationship with the colonial government, which supplied printing con-tracts and advertising revenues (Starr, 2004, pp. 60, 114), and, after theAmerican Revolution, whichever party was in power would “reward its loyaleditors by granting them government printing contracts and political office”(Copeland, 2002, p. 150). Starr (2004, pp. 2-12; also Brown, 1989, pp. 13, 79,218) highlights the role of “constitutive choices” made by actors within the pressand government regarding the “design and rules of operation” of communica-tion networks, including intellectual property rights, technological innovationand diffusion of both information and knowledge.3 In his view, these policiesenabled the American press system to become “a remarkable engine of wealthand power creation.” Two elements in the creation of a public sphere in NorthAmerica were the postal service and exchanges of news and editorial content bynewspapers editors in the context of their campaign against Britain (Starr, 2004,p. 66). The postal service, a nationalized industry, allowed printed matter to cir-culate at a cheaper rate than regular mail. From 65 before 1776, the number ofpost offices exploded to 4,500 by 1820.

While Habermas cast rationality as a constitutive element of the publicsphere, later scholars have found, not rationality, but “intolerant, sometimeseven murderous, partisanship” and “wit, humour and theatricality,” even pas-sion (Barker & Burrows, 2002, pp. 17, 22, n. 58). Coffee houses were the venueof such non-deliberative activities as billiards and card games, often played formoney, as well as political conspiring. British poet, playwright and essayistJoseph Addison (1672-1719) characterized their habitués as “modern newsmon-




gers and coffee house politicians” who were “pleased with everything that ismatter of fact, so it be what they have not heard before. A victory or a defeat isequally agreeable to them.” He dismissed them as “men of a voracious appetitebut no taste” (Addison, The Spectator, August 8, 1712, cited in Fox Bourne, pp.84-85; also Boyce, 1978, p. 37; Brooke, 1988, p. 54; Schudson, 1992, pp. 143-163,cited in Copeland, 2002, p. 142; Copeland, 2006, p. 94; Blanning, 2007, pp. 331-332; Johns, 1998; contrast to Habermas, 2000, pp. 35, 58).

Although Habermas emphasizes the importance of rational discussions insuch small-scale venues as coffee houses, he, too, notes that large public meet-ings and emerging political parties played a key role in securing the publicsphere. In France, the Revolution is said to have changed politics through anemphasis on mass participation through demonstrations, marches, assemblies,clubs and civic ceremonies (Habermas, 2000, p. 58; Blanning, 2007, pp. 350-351;Kennedy, 1989, p. 391). Furthermore, participants in the public sphere were notexclusively the autonomous individuals posited by liberal scholars, but includ-ed pseudonymous authors who presented themselves as embodying the perspec-tive of a broader public. Perhaps the most celebrated example is the team of J.Trenchard and T. Gordon who, between 1720 and 1723, published some 138essays in the London Journal under the name “Cato,” borrowed from the Romanstatesman known for his virtue and honesty. “Cato’s Letters,” which argued fora free and open press as a natural right of all, were printed together in four vol-umes and proved so popular they were reprinted five times between 1723 and1755. A notable example in America was the Federalist Papers, written byAlexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, but serialized in the pressunder the pseudonym of “Publius.” Even Locke originally published his cele-brated Epistola de Tolerantia (“Letter Concerning Toleration”) anonymously inHolland (Barker, 2002, p. 94; also Trenchard & Gordon, 1995, first published in1720-1723; Copeland, 1997, pp. 97-100; Madison, Hamilton & Jay, 1987, firstpublished in 1788; Woolhouse, 2007, pp. 270, 266).

In addition to the structural changes associated with the public sphere,there were also stylistic ones, including the emergence of colloquial prose inprint and the use of irony in the treatment of public subjects. The English CivilWar brought a shift toward more plainness, simplicity and directness in publi-cations across a wide range of genres. Preachers incorporated more personalexperiences in sermons, popularizers produced simplified accounts of scientif-ic breakthroughs and geographical explorations, and drawing upon low-browtheatrical traditions polemicists incorporated colloquial dialogue into politicalpamphlets. The Levellers in particular laced their prose with proverbs, concretelanguage, coarse images, irreverent wit, epigrams and jokes. The previouslydominant “literary” style, which Hill (1983, p. 60) described as “heavy, learned,ornate, allusive,” was joined by a “racy” and “vulgar” pamphleteering styleinfused with the “rhythms of ordinary speech” that was better suited for politi-cal battle. A critical bent toward social institutions culminated in an outpouringof satirical works, including Swift’s Gulliver, Pope’s Dunciad, and Gay’s Fables,all published in 1726. A similar upswing occurred during the AmericanRevolution, which saw the production of 530 political satires mainly in newspa-pers (Hill, 1983, pp. 59-66, especially 60 and 65; Heinemann, 1983; Smith, 1994,especially pp. 11 and 26-28, 295-319; Habermas, 2000, pp. 60-65; Tanselle, 1981,p. 346). Despite the economic egalitarian aspirations of the radicals in the

English Civil War, their legacy – as observed by Smith (1994, p. 6) – was “morethoroughgoing in the extension of the possession and use of words than it wasin property redistribution.”

A remarkably similar expansion of genres and styles marked the emergenceof press freedom in France, including the rise of satirical journals, some reflect-ing a counterrevolutionary perspective. To attract readers in a time of tumult,writers went from a formal style of “leisurely literary cadences” to breezilyworded summaries that reflected the fast pace of events they were reporting(Gough, 2002, p. 182). A newspaper in this context provided its publisher a vehi-cle to attack his opponents in an “opinionated, aggressive, and even defamato-ry” way (Kennedy, 1989, p. 320). Among the best-selling genres were libels, vit-riolic attacks against religious and political authorities. In Holland these libelswere known as pasquinade, a form of writing that exposed the moral shortcom-ings of known and named individuals (Popkin, 1999, pp. 118-119; Darnton,1982, p. 145; Kennedy, 1989, pp. 256-269; Eijnatten, 2008, p. 10). In short, free-dom of speech meant, not only a wider range of voices in the public sphere, buttheir expression in an equally wide range of styles and accents.

Where the public sphere provided a social grounding for press freedom, itwas accompanied by a shift in mentalité that proved equally indispensible – anincreased expression of empathy. As early as 1759, Adam Smith in his Theoryof Moral Sentiments had identified “sympathy” to be a basis for morality,including a revulsion against torture. While highlighting a shift in sentiment asa sine qua non for the invention of human rights, Hunt (2007, pp. 64-65, 29, 40,30, 80, 32, 42; also Blanning, 2007, pp. 456-527; Kennedy, 1989, pp. 195-139)argued against using “sympathy” (the term employed by Scottish philosopherslike Smith, during the period under consideration) because it “often signifiespity, which can imply condescension, a feeling incompatible with a true feelingof equality.” Instead, she uses the Twentieth-Century term “empathy,” meaningthe ability to recognize strangers as having inner emotions similar to one’s own,because “it better captures the active will to identify with others.”

A more empathetic disposition became widespread in the second half of theeighteenth century as a result of a centuries-long process that saw a shift fromcommunity authority based on a “transcendental religious framework” to“autonomous” individuals with a psychological ability to identify with others ofdifferent demographic backgrounds. The print and visual media of the day facil-itated this process by making “the stories of ordinary lives accessible to a wideaudience.” This trend was evident in painting, for example, which went fromhistorical and mythological themes to individual portraits. However, a majorrole was played by epistolary novels, such as Rousseau’s Julie, or the NewHéloïse (1761), because they “made possible a heightened sense of identifica-tion” by middle- and upper-class readers, including Diderot and ThomasJefferson, with fictional servant girls, prisoners or other leading characters withbackgrounds unlike their own (Hunt, 2007, pp. 29, 30, 32, 42). It is worth notingthat the condition for the spread of empathy had been prepared by religious dis-sidents who had encouraged “soul” searching, emphasized individual interpre-tations of the Bible and promoted appeals to conscience.

IDEOLOGIES AS CONSTRAINT AND AGENTS OF CHANGEWhile ideological contestation contributed to the rise and consolidation of




press freedom, neither ideologies in general nor liberalism in particular playedthe leading role suggested in the traditional press freedom literature (e.g.,Siebert, Peterson and Schramm, 1969; Siebert, 1952). Three ideologies that con-tinue to inform contemporary political debates emerged during the period ofconcern: egalitarianism, which stresses the threat to governmental and socialstability posed by inequality, as well as the need to strip away privileges con-ferred by birth; conservatism, which argues for modest government and continu-ity of the state; and liberalism, which emphasized the importance of protectingindividual choices in the areas of religion and economics from state or grouppressure (Kogl & Moore, 2005, pp. 694-701; Aughey, 2005, p. 452; Charvet, 2005,p. 1262). As noted by Wallerstein (1999f, p. 77), “the true unity of each ideolog-ical family lay only in what they were against.” As ironic as it may seem, it isnot surprising that periods of social upheaval engendered philosophical clarityand coherence because, as noted by Geertz (1975, p. 219), ideologies tend toemerge “precisely at the point at which a political system begins to free itselffrom the immediate governance of received tradition, from the direct anddetailed guidance of religious or philosophical canons on the one hand and fromthe unreflective precepts of conventional moralism on the other.” Various com-ponents of these ideologies were evident during the early modern period underdifferent labels. For example, many elements of conservatism were present inthe arguments of those who were known as monarchists or royalists. In a simi-lar vein, egalitarian claims animated many opposition social movements, suchas the Puritans and Levellers in Britain and the Jansenist and Huguenots inFrance. What had been previously scattered threads were drawn together duringthe era of the French Revolution, which sent shockwaves throughout Europewhen it abolished the feudal system. The famous slogan of the Revolution – lib-erty, equality and fraternity – reflects in distilled form the core values of thosecompeting ideologies (Wallerstein, 1999g, p. 96; Gross, 1997, pp. 9, 11). Out ofthat crisis emerged “the modern narrative of progress versus reaction, improve-ment versus obstruction, and reason versus tradition” that has shaped politicaldiscourse and behavior since then (Cheyette, 2005, p. 829; also Wallerstein,1999d, pp. 233, 245-246; Wallerstein, 1999f, p. 72; Wallerstein, 1999d, p. 233;Aughey, 2005, p. 452).

As should be evident from the earlier discussions of social movements andthe public sphere, the ideological driving force of the 1640-1789 period was rad-ical egalitarianism, which challenged concentrations of power in allrealms political economic and ecclesiastic as inimical to liberty because“unequal persons cannot have equal ability to participate in collective deci-sions” (Wallerstein, 1999g, p. 96; also Kogl, & Moore, 2005, p. 699). Liberalscholarship reflects a tendency to pit collective rights against possessive indi-vidualism and equality against freedom, but if, as Sen (1992, pp. 13, 16-17, 21-3) has argued, poverty is “lack of freedom,” the concepts involved are not mutu-ally exclusive. Elements of egalitarianism were evident in the claims pressed bya variety of subaltern groups against the dominant order, from the Baptists,Levellers, the Diggers, Ranters, Fifth Monarchists, and Quakers in the EnglishCivil War through the colonists versus the monarchy in America to theJensenism and Huguenots in France. Beginning as challenges to the hegemonicinterpretation of Christianity, egalitarian movements succeeded, not only inwinning tolerance for a multiplicity of theological perspectives, but also in

securing greater participation in sacred and secular governance by commoners.They helped to institute checks against magisterial power through legislaturescomposed of periodically elected representatives and the application of law byjuries drawn from the districts wherein crimes were committed. Their expand-ing calls for popular sovereignty and more equitable distribution of economicresources fueled several constitutional crises that pitted parliament against themonarch and resulted in regicide in England in 1649 and France in 1793 (Kwass,2003, p. 319; McCuaig, 2003, p. 195; Buel, 1981, p. 70; Copeland, 2006, pp. 40-47, 75-82; Zagorin, 2003, p. 12; Jordan, 1932-1940, pp. 16, 17, 19; e.g.Winstanley, 1983). However, these group ideologies were a double-edge sword:On the one hand, they provided the basis of internal solidarity, but on the other,they fostered rivalries among subaltern groups.

In arguing against hereditary monarchy, egalitarians drew upon a traditionof republicanism that extended back to classical Greek and Roman political the-orists who advocated self-government by a community of citizens in city-statesand viewed economic inequality as a threat both to individual liberty and dem-ocratic government. Another central concern of republicanism was the potentialcorrupting effect on rulers of patronage, public debt and standing armies. Inpressing claims for equality, the movements from this period justified theiractions on the basis of historical antecedents, which helped to establish a time-less basis for rights. Lollards and Calvinists, for example, asserted that they weremerely reclaiming proper church polity from early Christian practices. In a sim-ilar fashion, the American Declaration of Independence justified the establish-ment of a new government on the basis of preexisting rights which had alleged-ly been trampled upon by the British monarch. So too would the French par-lement promulgate a new government on the basis of universal and naturalrights, which it claimed had been ignored. In all of these cases, rights were infact being invented (McCuaig, 2003, pp. 195, 200; Kogl & Moore, 2005, p. 697;Pocock, 1985, p. 48; Hunt, 2007, p. 116; Bobrick, 2001; Levy, 1985, p.348; e.g.,U. S. Declaration of Independence, 1776).

A leading egalitarian ideologue was French philosopher Jean-JacquesRosseau, who favored direct rather than representative democracy. He arguedthat economic equality was necessary in order for citizens to have equal capac-ity to participate in collective self-governance. To ensure substantive equality, headvocated state regulation of markets and property-holding as a check againstthe development of gross economic imbalances. Although Rousseau is some-times misrepresented as having valued equality over individual liberties, heactually argued for giving equal weight to both so that “justice and utility are inno way divided.” His ideas influenced many leaders of the French Revolutionand inspired its Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Rousseau,2004, p. 1; also Charvet, 2005, p. 1264; Kogl & Moore, 2005, 1997, pp. 3, 9).

Rousseu’s Social Contract (1762) introduced the phrase “rights of man,”which meant something like “natural rights,” and it was employed one year laterin Voltaire’s Treatise on Tolerance, which proved to be very influential. Evenbefore the fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, the phrase permeated Frenchpolitical language, and, thereafter, it crossed into English. In Holland during thesame period, the term “freedom of the press” (vrijheid van drukpers) came intocommon use and the French exile Mirabeau produced the first catalogue of the“rights of man,” which ended with the claim “La liberté de la presse doit être




inviolablement maintenue.” As a consequence of Mary Wollstonecraft’sVindication of the Rights of Men (1790) and Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man(1791), Hunt (2007, pp. 134-135; also pp. 23-25; Eijnatten, 2008, p. 17. 20) notes,“the use of rights language increased dramatically. Evidence of this surge can befound readily in the number of titles in English using the word ‘rights’: itquadrupled in the 1790s (418) as compared to the 1780s (95).” She found simi-lar surges in Dutch, German and French around that time. It was egalitarianismthat provided the ideological framework for advocates of free expression ratherthan liberalism, which is widely credited in the traditional press-freedom liter-ature.

In contrast to egalitarianism, conservatism emerged as a reaction to thedemocratizing forces that culminated in the revolutions of this period, especial-ly the French variant. As noted by Hill (1983, p. 24), “Confidence in novelty wasitself new, and the property of the radicals.” For conservatives, the role of thestate was to preserve the institutions viewed as fundamental to society, such asthe family, dominant religious groups, the monarchy and the feudal orders. Theyalso opposed the individualism of liberal ideology, as well as the “grandschemes for the political emancipation or salvation of humankind” as proposedby egalitarian movements. Their arguments are often advanced on the basis ofappeals to history, custom and respect for traditional authority (Aughey, 2005,pp. 452, 454; also Wallerstein, 1999b, pp. 75, 85; Wallerstein, 1999d, p. 235;Wallerstein, 1999f, p. 85; Wallerstein, 1999e, p. 48; Cheyette, 2005, p. 829).

A major contributor to the development of conservatism was Edmund Burke(1829-97), Irish philosopher and member of the British Parliament, whose mostimportant work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), provoked bothWollstonecraft and Paine to write rebuttals in the form of their pamphlets onrights. Burke regarded the French Revolution as a “monstrous tragic-comicscene” because of its leaders’ willingness to reject a social order rooted in thelaws of nature in favor of “presumptuous speculations,” as if “government mayvary like modes of dress, and with as little ill effect.” In his view, government isbased on a social contract between “those who are dead, and those who are to beborn. Each contract of each particular state is but a clause in the great primevalcontract of eternal society” (Burke, 1999, pp. 418, 431, 452, and 458; Aughey,2005, pp. 452-453; Pocock, 1985, pp.193-212).

Liberalism the ideology that underpins much of the literature on press free-dom differs from the other ideologies presented here in taking the individual tobe “the primary subject of social action,” as well as viewing status as derivedfrom individual merit and social utility, not birth (Wallerstein, 1999g, p. 91; alsoKwass, 2003, p. 320). Because man is conceived of “competitive and aggrandiz-ing by nature,” the liberal idea of the good society is one that guarantees “the lib-erty of the individual to maximize the self and its freedom of action.” Regardinginstitutional arrangements, liberalism values protection for and hereditary trans-mission of private property, voluntary associations and representative govern-ments rooted in the free choices of individual citizens. In order to protect indi-vidual liberty and ensure accountability to citizens, it favors a program of “con-scious, continual, intelligent reformism,” along with the adoption of constitu-tional arrangements that enshrine limited government with state power dividedinto co-equal branches (Hall, 1986, pp. 39-40; also Charvet, 2005, p. 1262;Wallerstein, 1999f, p. 76; Kwass, 2003, p. 321). It presents itself as quintessen-

tially centrist, positioned against conservatives (presented as defenders of“unjustified privilege”) and against egalitarians (depicted as “reckless” levelers)(Wallerstein, 1999b, pp. 1-2; also Gross, 1997, p. 1).

Of the three ideologies considered here, liberalism emerged last the termitself being first used in Spain in the early nineteenth century in reference to apolitical party (Charvet, 2005, p. 1262-1263). However, academics have writtenits origin backward into history to the period between John Locke (1632-1704)and Adam Smith (1723-1790).4 In so doing, they have also appropriated featuresof earlier non-liberal movements for social change and credited liberalism forbattles waged under other political banners, whether egalitarian or libertarian(e.g., Mill, 1978, p. 16; also Wallerstein, 1999a, p. 95; Wallerstein, 1999c, p. 254;Pocock, 1985, pp. 111, 121). In the press-freedom literature this tendency towardwhat Bruce and Wright (1995, p. 105) identified as “post facto legitimations” oftriumphant ideologies is evident in its diminution of the role of social move-ments, along with an overemphasis on the role of liberal ideologues in produc-ing and preserving liberty of expression. The liberal conceptualization of rightsas based in nature proved a powerful solvent against previous dispensations ofprivilege by kings and bishops, but, the liberal promise of extending rights uni-versally would go unfulfilled until wrested by groups often acting under theinfluence of egalitarian ideologies (Wallerstain, 1999e, p. 150; Wallerstein,1999g, pp. 91-92; Charvet, 2005, p. 1268). Furthermore, liberalism’s formalisticconcern with “equality before the law” leaves economic inequalities unchal-lenged and institutionalizes decriminalization against status group (Kwass,2033, p. 321; Charvet, 2005, p. 1266; Brown, 2006, p. 17; Wallerstein, 1999g, p.94). This is the case, Brown (2006, pp. 9, 10, 16) argues, because “discourses oftolerance inevitably articulate identity and difference, belonging and marginali-ty, and civilization and barbarism, and… they invariably do so on behalf of hege-monic social or political powers.” By reducing “historically induced suffering”to mere “difference,” tolerance is able to replace a “justice project” with a “atherapeutic or behavioral one.” By “excessive freighting of the individual sub-ject with self-making, agency and a relentless responsibility for itself,” and bypresenting culture and most forms of group solidarity as sites of natural hostili-ty and intolerance, liberalism has often succeeded in “the personalization ofpolitically contoured conflicts and inequalities” (Brown, 2006, pp. 17; also 23,21, 151). The ambiguity of liberalism toward democracy has led Wallerstein(1999g, p. 87; also Wallerstein, 1999c, p. 257) to characterize the two projects as“frères ennemis.” Given this inherent contradiction, liberalism has not provenas reliable a guarantor of press freedom as it is portrayed in the communicationsliterature. Despite protections enshrined in national constitutions, the existenceof representative institutions and lofty proclamations of free expression as a uni-versal right of man, governments in Europe and North America turned to jailingand hounding their critics within decades of the American and French revolu-tions.

Facilitated by the development of print culture, two additional sets of ideasarose during this period with significant negative implications for press free-dom: nationalism and alterity. As noted by Anderson (2006, pp. 43, 25, 19, 35-36, 6), who revolutionized the study of nationalism, its emergence in early mod-ern Europe was facilitated by the print industry in two important ways: First, thedisplacement of Latin by vernacular print languages provided fertile ground on




which territorialized identities linked to nation-states could take root. Second,millions of widely scattered residents of a territory (previously associated veryloosely in the context of empires) found a sense of bonding and common pur-pose through simultaneous and “incessantly repeated” consumption of printmedia, especially newspapers and novels. As with rights, nationalism inventednation-states even while claiming for each an ancient provenance. Furtheringthe project of nationalists were increased efforts by states to enumerate the pop-ulation of their territories through periodic national censuses, as well as the cir-culation of mass-produced maps that helped citizens imagine their identityagainst others in the wider world and the development of museums that facili-tated the anchoring of national identities in history (Anderson, 2006, pp. 163-185).

The rise of nationalism accompanied the transformation of “subjects” (ruledby a monarch who was regarded as sovereign) into “citizens” (seen as engagedin collective self-governance of a nation viewed as sovereign). In the process,those subjects who held a privileged status because they shared common reli-gious or other institutional affiliations with the monarch came into an equal sta-tus before the law and a common citizenship with previously subaltern out-siders. But even as former enemies were being reconciled through the nexus ofcitizenship, nationalists accepted, with few exceptions, denial of citizenshipand the “rights of man” to large swaths of humanity, including women, non-property-owning men, persons born outside the nation, Jews, and Muslims, aswell as individuals, groups and nations deemed to be uncivilized (Wallerstein,1999e, pp. 151, 153; Kwass, 2003, pp. 319-320; Charvet, 2005, pp. 1262, 1267;Wallerstein, 1999g, p. 93). This discourse, known as alterity, imagined non-citi-zens as essentialized others or polar opposites of citizens. Because of theseexclusions, alterity came to be intertwined with racism and colonialism, both ofwhich justified the exploitation of certain people and regions while denyingthem rights deemed “inalienable” and universal (Wallerstein, 1999e, p. 153;Innis, 1972b, p. 28). Africans in particular were portrayed as most different fromEuropeans because of their alleged lasciviousness, as well as their dark complex-ion, which over time came to be associated with sin and a biblical curse visitedby God upon Ham, from who Africans were said to be descended (Jordan, 1971,pp. 7, 9, 17-20; 32, 41; also Ada, 1989, p. 33).

What is surprising was the prominent role of leading liberals in construct-ing arguments for the denial of “universal” rights to non-Westerners. For exam-ple, Thomas Jefferson, American revolutionist and republican ideologue, wasamong the first publically to promote the idea of black inferiority in the UnitedStates. He said, “I advance it therefore as a suspicion only, that the blacks,whether originally a distinct race, or made distinct by time and circumstances,are inferior to whites both in body and minds” (Frederickson, 1971, p. 1).Similarly, Locke, who had a financial stake in slave-holding American colonies,repeatedly justified the seizure of lands from African and Native Americansbecause, as claimed by him, they did not engaged in cultivation, which madeEuropean attacks on them “just wars” (Bernal, 1987, p. 203). John Stuart Mill,secretary of the East India Company, supported liberty of thought and expressionfor all adults except those deemed “uncivilized” (Davis, 1984, pp. 107-108;Flake, 1985, 1985).

Even as “universal” and “natural” rights was being inscribed in variousforms in the late 1700s, alterity was proclaiming the utter otherness of Africans,

Native Americans, and “Orientals,” especially in Britain and France, whichwere prominent in seizing overseas territories (Ada, 1989, p. 8). Those personswho were excluded from enjoying citizenship rights were precisely members ofgroup that had not mounted a collective push for equal treatment. In creatingknowledge of the non-European world, the West was organizing its dominationof those people (Coward, 1999, p. 9; Said, 1979). Although Western worldviewsduring this period were fundamentally similar to those of other societies, includ-ing widespread belief in the omnipresence of supernatural forces in shapingdaily life, nonetheless Europeans came to represent their own perspective asarrayed in radically different form from other cultures. This process involved, asnoted by Mudimbe (1988, pp. 4, 17; also Frederickson, 1971, p. xi; Bernal, 1987,p. 224), a “dichotomizing system” built upon several binary oppositions: “tradi-tional versus modern; oral versus written and printed; agrarian and customarycommunities versus urban and industrialized civilization; subsistenceeconomies versus highly productive economies.” By the end of the 1700s, “eth-nicity” had emerged as a central factor in Western historical and sociologicalaccounts, followed soon thereafter by the concept of “race.” What resulted, espe-cially in reference to Africa, was a “reification of the primitive.” An earlier, pos-itive perception of ancient Egypt, as enshrined in Speculative Masonry andreflected in the image of the pyramid and eye on the Great Seal of the UnitedStates and its dollar bill, was replaced by hostility in the early 1800s (Bernal,1987, pp. 175-177, 189-215).

According to alterity scholars, the image of non-Westerners that emergedwas diametrically opposed to the self-image of Westerners and inextricablylinked to their own anxieties. The absence from other societies of Christianity,scribal or print culture and a Western approach to mastering the natural worldwas taken as proof that they lacked philosophical and scientific thinking. It wasprobably more than coincidental also that belief systems in other regions werebeing labeled “superstition” and “sorcery” even as obsessive efforts were under-way to root out “witches” in Europe and America, at the cost of thousands oflives. Furthermore, the publicity given to the “noble savage” living supposedlyin harmony with nature was itself a foil for indicting home audiences for theirdecadence, overconsumption and excessive refinement (Ada, 1989, pp. 53, 40,70-71; also Bah, 2008; Said, 1978; Todorov, 1982; Mudinbé, 1988; on hunt forwitches in Europe, Zagorin, 2003, pp. 82-83; Demos, 2008).

Despite widespread agreement on the otherness of non-Western people,Westerners tended to bifurcate regarding engagement with them. If India andChina were reported to be governed by bureaucracies, these were touted by thePhysiocrats as exemplars for more “backward” regions, while simultaneouslybeing condemned by the Orientalists as excessively regulatory of markets. In asimilar vein, Native Americans came to be presented as either proud and peace-ful children of nature or naturally warlike and cruel. Likewise, the popular por-trayal of Africans as materially backwards was cited both as justification fortheir enslavement by pro-slavery ideologues and as reason for their protectionby abolitionists and evangelists (Ada, 1989, pp. 33, 171, 8; Coward, 1999, p. 7).These differing approaches to non-Westerners notwithstanding, what was notquestioned was their assumed inferiority. By this process, individuals, groupsand nations deemed to be uncivilized were excluded from citizenship andrights. Even as universal rights were being declaimed in coffee houses through-




out Europe and North America, the mainly non-Europeans responsible for grow-ing and processing the sugar, tobacco and coffee that fueled those coffeehousediscussions were being defined out of eligibility.

Emergence of the Fourth EstateThe spread of print technology and the massive outpouring of texts it pro-

duced raised in a stark way the question of who would control the knowledgethey were disseminating. From the inception of printing, the English Crownexercised direct control until 1557, when a monopoly was granted to theStationers Company, an official print craft organization, whose members“bought their books in gross from the printers, bound them, and sold them intheir shops.” Both in England and France, authorities focused their regulatoryefforts more on printing houses than on booksellers, perhaps because there werefewer of the former and their relatively bulky equipment inhibited them fromrelocating easily, whereas targeting of shop keepers by authorities would simplyhave diverted distribution through an existing army of highly mobile streethawkers. Censorship was initially directed mainly against philosophic essays,trial briefs and other pamphlets, which were a preferred medium for politicaland religious proselytizers. In contrast, newspapers were easy to intercept, pub-lished on a regular schedule and maintained known offices, making them a poorchoice for dissemination of subversive messages. With the notable exception ofBritain, the United States, and the Netherlands, newspapers neither offeredreaders a regular venue for the publication of their letters nor did they serve asa forum for public debate, except during periods of “revolutionary disturbances”(Barker & Burrows, 2002, pp. 8, 12, 15; also Johns, 1998, pp. 72, 153-155; 254;Darnton, 1996; Maza, 1993).

However, the question of who would control knowledge did not challengegovernments exclusively, as suggested in much of the recent press-freedom lit-erature (e.g., Siebert, 1952, p. 526; Copeland, 2006, pp. 22-47). A leading advo-cate of censorship was the Catholic Church, which issued a license to theUniversity of Cologne in 1471 to censor authors of heretical books, along withtheir printers, their publishers and even their readers. In 1521, Charles V of theHoly Roman Empire centered in Germany incorporated into state laws all exist-ing ecclesiastical prohibitions regarding publishing. The Vatican’s censorshipefforts increased in the 1500s when it issued and repeatedly updated theIndex Librorum Prohibitorum. Given the international nature of the print indus-try, the Index had a contradictory effect by suppressing publication in Catholicterritories of listed texts, while fueling their publication in Protestant countries,where being listed was used for marketing purposes by blacklisted authors. Atthe Council of Trent, which ended in 1570, the Vatican went so far as to barCatholics from reading vernacular Bibles and scientific works that challengedorthodoxy. As a result, publishers in Catholic countries turned to producing safedevotional works, often based on lucrative contracts from the Church, while layCatholics lost the incentive for acquiring literacy skills in vernacular languages(Febvre & Martin, 1976, pp. 241-247, 193-194; Ingelhart, 1987, p. 17; Zagorin,2003, pp. 3, 159; Eisenstein, 1983, pp. 173, 233).

Protestants, too, sought to stifle “popish” doctrines in territories where theyconstituted the majority and, along with Catholics, persecuted Anabaptists.Luther, in addition to publishing a number of anti-Semitic writings, fiercely

opposed worship and publication by non-Lutheran Christians, especiallyCatholics and Anabaptists. Calvin not only opposed Anabaptists andAntitrinitarianism but also played a role in the execution of a Spanish dissenterin Geneva. In England, not only did Queen Elizabeth reverse the restrictions onProtestants imposed by her predecessor Queen Mary, but in 1559 she investedthe licensing of printing in the Protestant Episcopal Church, which functionedin relation to religious ideas as the Star Chamber did in the secular realm. In1573, printer John Stand was arrested and his presses destroyed for having pub-lished Puritan books. Nine years later, William Carter, who had been imprisonedseveral times before for “lewde” publications, printed A Treatise of Schism, forwhich he was ordered “hanged, bowelled, and quartered.” In 1590, Roger Wardhad his presses and type destroyed by the Stationers for having published “for-bidden” religious works. Three years later, John Penry was executed for this rolein having operated an illegal press, which specialized in printing Puritan worksbut had been moved frequently to avoid detection. For a pamphlet criticizing theEnglish clergy as anti-Christian, physician Alexander Leighton was sentencedby the Privy Council in 1630 to be pilloried, whipped, one ear cut off, his noseslit, his face branded and imprisoned. One printer, Michael Sparks, was jailed11 times between 1629 and 1641 for seditious publications. In short, leaders ofall denominations sought help from the state in regions where they dominatedto impose their beliefs and practices on society because it was widely believedthat religious uniformity was essential for political unity (Zagorin, 2003, pp. 3,73, 76-79, 81-82, 87; Hill, 1980, p. 66; Ingelhart, 1987, pp. 18, 26-30, 39, 43).

Even within the printing industry, there was pressure from printers andpublishers who, as protection against “piracy,” sought monopolies on the publi-cation and sale of texts they had produced. The solicitation of government recog-nition and protection of intellectual property claims began as early as 1481among publishers in Milan. Through this process, “piracy” was added as a jus-tification for suppressing texts along with “sedition,” “blasphemy,” and“obscenity.” The greatest threat was outright reprinting, which like the printingof original works, was done on a transnational basis. Terms such as “piracy,”“plagiarism,” and, more commonly in England, “usurpation” came into curren-cy in the publishing world in the 1500s, as what had been a “literary common”became subject to “enclosure movements” led by successful publishers andrenowned authors. In England in particular, ownership was often referred to as“propriety,” which was synonymous with “property.” In winning state backingfor their claims, monopolists helped transfer responsibility for protection ofintellectual property from guilds to bureaucrats and magistrates (Johns, 1998,pp. 222, 454, 461, 37-38; also Febvre & Martin, 1997, pp. 240-247; Eisenstein,1983, p. 84). To publish on an authorized basis in England required a license thatonly a few state-allied clerics could grant.

In 1404, a guild formed in England to provide “good rules and governance”of the trade, which grew into the formidable Stationers’ Company (Ingelhart,1987, p. 13). The system of copyright that developed in the context of theCompany granted exclusive publication rights in perpetuity to whichever of itsmembers published the first edition of a work. Although similar groups existedin other European commercial centers, the English Stationers’ group was uniquein admitting a diverse cross-section of printing trades into membership frompaper-stationers and master printers to binders and booksellers (Siebert, 1952,




pp. 5-6; Copeland, 2006, pp. 22-47; Johns, 1998, p. 207). In contrast to small-scale printers and booksellers, the wholesalers “who gave their name to the neworganization” were richer and well connected capitalists with exclusive printingcontracts from government (Siebert, 1952, pp. 21, 64- 65; also Bourne, 1966, pp.32-41; von Stutterheim, 1934, p. 27). Beginning in 1559, the clerk of theCompany was authorized to maintain a list of works (“copies”) that were eligi-ble for protection, hence the term “copyright.” As gatekeeper, he was responsi-ble to ensure that only authorized works by approved stationers were registered.The system rested not upon law in the contemporary sense, but on a series of“patents,” which were privileges granted as favors by the monarch. In exchangefor individual patents, as well as one granted to the Company as a whole, theauthorized stationers took on the role of policing the print marketplace for anyblasphemous and seditious works, while avoiding the printing of controversialworks themselves. Because “subversive” or “offensive” copies were often pub-lished by printers who were not members of the Company, this policing roleserved both the group’s corporate interest in minimizing competition, as well asthe interest of the state and dominant church. Siebert (1952, p. 64) called thisreliance on pliant stationers to suppress unauthorized publications “a master-stroke of Elizabethan politics.” By respecting the rights of others, a stationercould remain a member of the Company that ensured protection of his works inreturn. Through this arrangement, a veritable publishing mafia came to establishexclusive claim for its members to all intellectual print property in England(Johns, 1998, pp. 187-188, 217, 246, 248-249, 261; Starr, 2004, p. 29).

A Licensing Act, which was passed in 1662 and would remain in force until1695, emphasized political justifications for censorship over religious ones. Thisattempt at control of the domestic trade brought an unintended flood of piratedworks and books with anti-bishop messages smuggled from Holland, whichEnglish authorities tried to staunch in 1637 with a ban on the importation of allworks deemed injurious to the church or government. The Licensing Act soughtboth to protect the interests of large-scale capitalist publishers from having theirworks pirated and to check the spread of anti-monarchical propaganda and pros-elytizing by religious dissenters. It required pre-publication licensing and theregistration of all printed materials (with the names of authors, printer and pub-lisher) at headquarters of the monopolists known as Stationers’ Hall. The Actalso authorized the search for, seizure and destruction of offensive publications,together with the arrest and imprisonment of writers, printers and publishersresponsible for them (“An act for preventing Abuses in Printing Seditious,Treasonable and Unlicensed Books and Pamphlets, and for Regulating ofPrinting and Printing Presses”; Patterson, 1968, p. 134; Sutherland, 1986, p. 2;Ingelhart, 1987, pp. 41, 42).

It was in reaction to this law that the phrase “liberty of the press” burst intothe English language in the mid-1600s. The process of liberalization was aidedby the fact that the Star Chamber was abolished in 1641, which drasticallyreduced the frequency of libel prosecutions. Examples of protest pamphletsagainst censorship from that period include Areopagitica: A Speech by Mr. JohnMilton for the liberty of unlicenc’d printing (1644); John Lilburne’s Englandbirth-right justified against all arbitrary usurpation (1645), by a leader of a mod-erate wing of the Leveller’s movement; Vox Plebis, or the peoples out-cry againstoppression, injustice, and tyranny (1646) which argued for the press to enjoy

free and open access to Parliament whenever that body was in session and pub-lished while its author, Richard Overton, a Leveller arrested with Lilburne inMarch 1649, was imprisoned by the House of Lords; and Charles Blount’s A justvindication of learning; or a humble address to the high court of Parliament inbehalf of liberty of the press (1679) (Hill, 1980, pp. 256-257; Ingelhart, 1987, p.42; Copeland, 2006, pp. 40-45; Frank, 1969). Prior to that period, titles address-ing “press freedom” were exclusively by the government, such as one in 1537,“for the reformation of vagabondes, tellers of newes, sowers of sediciousrumours, players, and printers without license & divers other disordred per-sons.”5

After 1689, when Parliament replaced the crown as the main power in theBritish government, the regulatory principles of the earlier period were updatedto protect the legislature. Initially the purview of a handful of clerics, licensingafter the Civil War came to be entrusted to some 33 authorities with expertise insuch diverse disciplines as heraldry, philosophy, morality, history, poetry, arts,“Physick,” “Chysurgery,” “Mathematicks,” “Almanacks,” and “prognostica-tions.” In this post-War revision, parliament retained authority for licensingworks of parliament, while delegating the judging of pamphlets to the Stationers’Company’s clerk (Johns, 1998, pp. 230-239). This system of copyright was over-turned in 1710 by an Act of Queen Anne of England that vested ownership overoriginal works with authors for 14 years, renewable for another 14 if the authorwas still alive, but permitted their transfer to publishers through contracts. Analternative bill, sponsored by booksellers, would have established their controlin perpetuity. The passage of a law favoring authors meant the booksellers imme-diately lost capital they had invested in old copyrights as those works now fellinto the public domain. This law served as the model for Americans when theyestablished their copyright standard in 1790 (Febvre & Martin, 1997, pp. 163-164; Starr, 2004, pp. 115, 117-118).

After many false starts and reversals, the demise of censorship in Britainwas sealed by the Glorious Revolution of 1688, thanks to the demands posed bygroups like the Levellers. One year later, Parliament issued “An Act Declaringthe Rights and Liberties of the Subject and Settling the Succession of theCrown.” Along with the Magna Carta of 1215, this Act is one of the constitutiveelements of English constitutional law. Known simply as the Bill of Rights, itserved as a model, in some respects, for the first eight amendments of the U. S.Bill of Rights (Barone, 2007, pp. 232-234; Levy, 1999, pp. 41, 231). The Britishgovernment finally shifted from a reliance on prior restraint as the primary formof censorship to suits for alleged wrongs brought after publication in 1694, whenParliament refused to renew the Licensing Act (Harris, 1978, pp. 83-84;Ingelhart, 1987, p. 61; Hill, 1980, pp. 256-257; Copeland, 2006, p. 54; Black,1987, pp. 2-11; Buel, 1981, p. 64).

In the battle to overturn licensing in particular, two practical arguments pre-vailed: First, censorship unfairly restricted trade. In a petition to the House ofCommons in 1693, a group of independent bookbinders and booksellers urgedrepeal of the Regulation of Printing Act on the grounds that it “destroys theProperties of Authors in their Copies; and sets up many Monopolies” (Siebert,1952, p. 260, emphasis added). Another early objection to the perpetual proper-ty rights of the Stationers was published by Locke, who called these “unreason-able” and “absurd” (Johns, 1998, p. 351; also Copeland, 2006, p. 56). Whereas




these arguments objected to censorship as an unfair restriction on trade, a sec-ond set of objections simply argued that pre-publication controls were difficultto administer efficiently. In the emerging two-party political system, both theWhigs and the Tories were uneasy about providing the other with legal authori-ty to control publications because, as noted by Siebert (1952, p. 263), “A Whigwas likely to turn Tory, and a Tory, Whig” (Harris, 1978, pp. 83-84; alsoIngelhart, 1987, p. 61; Hill, 1980, pp. 256-257; Copeland, 2006, p. 54; Black,1987, pp. 2-11; Buel, 1981, p. 64).

Immediately following the end of licensing, an unprecedented range of rad-ical ideas burst into print, some of which had probably long existed under-ground in oral form. In addition, the number of newspapers began a quick andsteep increase that several historians have attributed variously to the new con-ditions of political freedom (Hill, 1978, p.49; Bond, 1957, p. 8; Siebert, 1952;Black, 1987, pp. 12-18), lower cost of printing (Hill, 1978, p. 50), and an expand-ed market (Buel, 1981, p. 64). Another significant factor was a shift in control ofthe publishing industry, from printers, who had enjoyed earlier monopolisticcontrol under patents provided by the crown, to booksellers, who increasinglysupplied the capital for publishing in response to popular demands (Botein,1981, p. 14). This efflorescence provoked a backlash as the state came to increas-ingly apply a broadly reinterpreted law of seditious libel, along with a stamp taxon publications. Whereas sedition had historically been interpreted as defama-tion of individual officials, Chief Justice John Holt in 1704 radically expandedits meaning to criminalize any words that brought the government into disre-pute. While this redefinition of sedition proved harmful in ways that were selec-tive and limited, the number of English newspapers was reduced by 50 percentthrough the application in 1712 of the stamp duty act, so-called because itrequired the affixing of stamps on publications as evidence that the tax had beenpaid (Starr, 2004, pp. 37-38; Hill, 1980, pp. 256-257).

By 1720, following the repeal of the original stamp act, the London news-paper market was so saturated that coffee houses were refusing to take newpapers. Reacting to this “paper war,” Daniel Defoe noted, “while there arePrinting-Presses, there seems to be some assurance that we shall never want forAuthors to quarrel, or Subjects to quarrel about” (Black, 1987, p. 21, citingDaniel Defoe, Manufacturer: or, the British Trade truly Stated, 1 June 1720). Inthe 1700s journalists and editors began to refer to their readers as the “public.”There was a multiplier effect at work that extended the influence of publicationsbeyond their print runs because each copy of a paper on average was read by asmany as a dozen persons. Public opinion – pictured as representative and rea-soned – increasingly came to be evoked as a “legitimizing tribunal” againstwhich to judge the arbitrary commands of political authorities on the one handand sentimental attachments to traditional institutions on the other (Barker &Burrows, 2002, pp. 9-11). By 1762, press freedom had become so accepted thatJohn Wilkes (1725-1797), whom historian Stulterheim (1934, p. 41) called “thestormy petrel of English journalism,” could term it the “birthright of a Briton,and is justly esteemed the foremost bulwark of the liberties of this country”(John Wilkes, North Briton, June 1762).

Wilkes, the chief writer and publisher of the North Briton newspaper, regu-larly laced his exposés of alleged official malfeasance with ridicule, which hejustified on the basis that the public bestowed support only to those political

papers that were “well seasoned with satire.” In 1763, he published an essay thataffronted the king for which he was thrown in the Tower of London, althoughhis status as a member of parliament should have conferred immunity fromarrest. Released after a week, he won a suit that barred the government frombringing illegal warrants against the press and won permission to publishreports on parliamentary proceedings, thus widening the scope of free expres-sion (Eijnatten, 2008, p.15; also Blanning, 2007,p. 328; Cash, 2006, pp. 65-108,1-4; Barker, 2002, p. 99). By 1771, a French visitor to England described “cen-sorial power … as resting with the people, supported by a free press” (Barker,2002, p. 101, citing Jean de Lolme). Between 1807 and 1821, there were at least120 prosecutions for seditious libel in England. However, the stamp tax wouldprove an especially effective weapon in the arsenal of censors because it couldhave a devastating economic impact while seeming unobjectionable on politicalgrounds (Starr, 2004, pp. 37-38; Hill, 1980, pp. 256-257).

Where freedom of expression in Britain had emerged through the implicitnegation of the licensing act, it had developed more organically in NorthAmerica due to the absence of a rigid feudal structure and of aristocratic patronsto provide support to writers and publishers (Starr, 2004, pp. 60, 114). A water-shed event that helped stem the tide of seditious libel charges against the pressin colonial America was the case of John Peter Zenger in 1735. Although thelegal standard in sedition held that a true statement could be harmful to the gov-ernment and, therefore, punishable, Zenger’s lawyer drew upon the writings ofCato’s Letters published 12 years earlier to argue that only false claims should beconsidered defamatory because publication of the truth ought not be prevented.Defying the judge’s instructions, the jury acquitted Zenger, who had alreadyspent eight months in jail while awaiting trial. Although the Zenger case is cel-ebrated for effectively ending seditious libel prosecutions by the colonial author-ities, the jury was probably motivated as much by its antipathy for the royal gov-ernor who had brought changes against Zenger as it was by a principled commit-ment to free expression (Starr, 2004, pp. 58-59; Botein, 1981, pp. 23-31, 34; Levy,1985, pp. 37-45; Buel, 1981, p. 69).

Thirty years later, the imposition by Britain of a stamp tax on printed mat-ter circulating in its North American colonies, helped boost the colonists alonga course toward independence. The Stamp Act of 1765 was a crucial miscalcu-lation by the British government because printers, given their shaping influenceon public opinion, were able to conflate their narrow economic interest withthose of the commonwealth (Botein, 1981, p. 56; Tanselle, 1981, p. 315; Starr,2004, pp. 65-66; Levy, 1985, p. 87; Pasley, 2001, pp. 36, 38). Like the struggle ofbooksellers against the monopolistic claims of the Stationers Company, proper-ty interests were an animating factor in the fight against the Stamp Act. As in theEnglish Civil War, the American War of Independence brought a shift in printlanguage, from the “classical allusions and complex allusions” that were under-stood mainly by elite audiences to plain and practical prose suited for the mobi-lization of popular support in a revolutionary situation (Starr, 2004, p. 67).Emblematic of this shift was Thomas Paine’s Common Sense (1776), which pre-sented the case for a republic in unadorned populist language. Within one year,between 150,000 and 250,000 copies had been published in 25 editions(Tanselle, 1981, p. 350; Nelson, 2006, pp. 78-100, especially p. 92).

Press freedom came to be proclaimed in a declarative manner by Americans




in the context of the U. S. War of Independence. The colonists were in the throesof rebellion when their First Continental Congress highlighted freedom of thepress as one of five foundation stones of English liberty that they were fightingto defend against monarchic encroachment. In an address to the “Inhabitants ofthe Province of Quebec,” the Congress noted that a free press, in addition toadvancing “truth, science, morality, and arts in general,” also facilitates discus-sions “whereby oppressive officers are shamed or intimidated, into more hon-ourable and just modes of conducting affairs” (Starr, 2004, p. 76; also Levy, 1985,pp. 173-174). In 1776, as British North America was declaring its independence,the Virginia Declaration of Rights advanced through the lobbying efforts ofBaptists and other dissenters offered the world’s first explicit list of civil liber-ties that included freedom of the press. Although ten of the former 13 coloniesincluded explicit language enshrining press freedom in their state constitutions,no such provision appeared in the U. S. Constitution, as originally drafted. Aftersome states refused to ratify the federal constitution because it lacked protec-tions for civil liberties, a bill of rights was added in 1791. It included the FirstAmendment, which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establish-ment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the free-dom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble,and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” It is not surprisingthat protection of religious freedom and freedom of expression were groupedtogether, given the long, interconnected manner in which struggles for those twodomains had unfolded (Berg, 2004; also Hunt, 2007, p. 31; Zagorin, 2003, p. 30).The ratification of this Amendment marked the first time any nation haddeclared “freedom of printed expression as a basic right” (Barker & Burrows,2002, p. 8; also Buel, 1981, p. 59; Hunt, 2007, p. 25).

Despite the simple declarative language of the First Amendment, its mean-ing was – and remains – highly contested. This is so in part because its claimsare advanced with language that is essentially negative in its restraining of gov-ernment (e.g. “Congress shall make no laws …”) rather than offering a positiveassertion of liberty (Arendt, 1965, p. 22). In order to free individuals, it hobbledgovernments, but not other institutions. In contrast to the U. S. Supreme Court,which has interpreted this restraint as giving free reign to non-governmentalbodies, especially corporate monopolies, Innis noted (2004, p. 58), “Surely acommand that government itself shall not impede the free flow of ideas does notafford non-government combinations a refuge if they impose restraints upon thatconstitutionally guaranteed freedom.” While widely celebrated as the source ofa multiplicity of previously unavailable freedoms, a narrower interpretation ofthe Amendment holds that it was intended solely to repudiate the British law ofsedition. According to another interpretation, this Amendment specifically bars“Congress” (representing the majority) from imposing limitations on speech andpress to ensure the protection of minority group rights, not just the rights of indi-viduals. Also cited as evidence in support of this minoritarian perspective arethe clauses barring the establishment of a national religion and providing for thepeaceable assembly, both protecting dissenting groups from persecution by themajority (Levy, 1985, p. 348; Emerson, 1970, p. 101). In the view of Carey (1987,p. 11), “Freedom of the press was an individual right to be sure, but the right waspredicated on the unspoken promise of the existence of the public,” which was,he argued, in addition to being “a location, a sphere, a sector of society,” also

was “a seat of political power.”Notwithstanding the official focus on inhibiting government restrictions, an

alternative meaning of press freedom circulated during the colonial era at leastamong some printers, which held that the press was only “free” if it providedaccess to competing perspectives. This position was best articulated byBenjamin Franklin, who argued, after local clergy expressed displeasure at anadvertising handbill produced in his shop, printers “cheerfully serve all con-tending Writers that pay them well without regarding on which Side they are ofthe Question in Dispute.” Going beyond consideration of narrow business inter-ests, Franklin added, “Printers are educated in the Belief that when Men differin Opinion, both Sides ought equally to have the Advantage of being heard bythe Public.” This justification of toleration on the basis of social utility echoed acenturies-old tradition that extended back through Luzac to Milton and theLevellers (Pennsylvania Gazette, June 10, 1731; also Botein, 1981, pp. 19-20;Buel, 1981, pp. 60-61, 82, 84).

Although France was predominantly Catholic, the Vatican’s various regula-tions had gone largely unenforced in the kingdom, which supported the largestnumber of printers in Europe. That laissez faire approach would end because ofwhat came to be known as the “affaire des placards” in October 1534, whenprinted posters denouncing the Catholic mass were surreptitiously placedthroughout the country. According to some reports, placards were even postedon the bedroom door of King François I, who, although nominally Catholic, hadpreviously maintained a tolerant policy regarding publication and religiousdiversity. In the aftermath of the “affaire,” 24 printers were burned at the stake,who, on the basis of evidence available today, were probably innocent. The kingin February 1535 launched a mission against “heresies” that included givingexclusive publishing rights to 12 printers, who were themselves banned fromissuing new, unauthorized works. Ten years later, the French government issuedits own index of banned books. A major element was added to the edifice of cen-sorship in 1551, when the state banned importation of printed works fromGeneva and other territories known for being permissive toward the productionof anti-Catholic works (Febvre & Martin, 1997, pp. 309-311; MacCulloch, 2003,p. 194).

As in England, the system of press control ultimately came to rest on priv-iléges granted by the monarchy to entrepreneurial allies who operated presseson condition that they would seek prepublication approval for all items(Darnton, 1971, p. 94, 51, 85, 98). While censorship worked to tame domesticnewspapers (given their reliance on a state-operated mail system for their circu-lation), it was less effective against privately distributed books and pamphlets.Moreover, it proved counterproductive against French exiled publishers whoorganized successful networks to smuggle from neighboring countries the polit-ical news that was not being published locally. Until censorship was loosenedafter 1780, French powerbrokers developed a symbiotic relationship with theoutlawed papers by planting stories in them because both the circulation andcredibility of extraterritorial papers were often better than their domestic coun-terparts, while the papers in turn benefited from highly placed sources leakinginsider information. Like the larger pre-existing transnational print industry,these extraterritorial French newspapers in exile sustained themselves financial-ly by selling mostly to markets outside the countries in which they were based.




Their audience consisted of elites across Europe who turned to them for transna-tional news, including stories about their countries that were not available indomestic papers. As state power was becoming more centralized in the 1700s,papers with transnational audiences were able to maintain relative freedom fromcontrol by the government of the countries in which they operated. Their cover-age of the workings of the British parliament and other forms of representativepolitics, as well as the publication of republican documents by American patri-ots, proved subversive (Starr, 2004, pp. 43-46).

Aimed in part at curbing French extraterritorial publications, a Dutch planfor preventive censorship in 1749 led to the publication of Holland’s most cele-brated argument for press freedom, when several booksellers hired Élie Luzac, aHuguenot lawyer and fellow bookseller, to write a rebuttal. Luzac’sMemorandum opposed the censorship proposal on the bases of its vaguenessand impracticability, the ambiguity of legal terms it contained, its potentiallydetrimental effect on the book trade, its violation of natural freedom of citizens,and its contravention of the Republic’s tradition of commercial and culturalopenness. Moving beyond Milton and Locke, both of whom had favored deny-ing freedom of expression to “atheists” (many so-called simply because theyrejected traditional standards of chivalry and sexual behavior), Luzac broke newground by omitting that exception (Eijnatten, 2008, pp. 13-14; also Gibbs, 1971,p. 324-334, 343, 347; Laursen & van der Zande, 2003, p. 4; Luzac, 2003, p. 62;Schama, 1990, pp. 177, 525-526; Ingelhart, 1987, pp. 140, 149; Kennedy, 1989,pp. 320, 325; Gough, 2002, pp. 182, 195; Barker & Burrows, 2002, p. 16; Censer,2002, p. 159; Burrows, 2002, p. 35; Copeland, 2002, p. 196; Darnton, 1982, p. 38;Hunt, 2007, p. 25).

The decisive shift toward press freedom in France came in 1789, when theEstates General established freedom of speech and freedom of the press – oneyear after the elite classes lost their consensus on political matters. As in theGlorious Revolution in Britain and the struggles for independence from Britainin the United States, press freedom in France emerged out of “a revolutionaryintervention – a cataclysmic collapse or reorganization of state power.” It is pre-cisely during such periods that social movements were able to force concessionsfrom those with entrenched power, in the forms of a wider public sphere and theproduction of rights. These developments in turn facilitated periodicals func-tioning as a Fourth Estate, both in terms of their increased numbers and in theirroles as shapers of public opinion (Barker & Burrows, 2002, p. 16; also Gough,2002, p. 189; Copeland, 2002, pp. 40-47,196; Lee, 1991). In revolutionary France,“(j)ournalism became an essential cog in the wheel of politics, newspapers adaily necessity and journalists politically important for the first time in Frenchhistory” (Gough, 2002, p. 189). As noted by Hobsbawm (1965, p. 126), theAmerican Revolution, together with the French, were “the first mass movementsin the history of the world which expressed their ideology and aspirations interms of secular rationalism and not of traditional religion.” Nonetheless, asnoted earlier, religious movements had prepared the soil that made the rise ofsecularism possible (Copeland, 2006, p. 21).

Sometime in the early decades of the nineteenth century the “fourth estate”came into use in reference to the press, collectively in some instances and thejournalistic profession or its members in other cases. Reflecting the powerfulrole of newspapers in shaping public opinion, the phrase implies a link between

press freedom and property, by positing the media as a countervailing force tothe three previously existing seats of power.6 The coining of the phrase FourthEstate was an acknowledgment of the on-going changes in its material and struc-tural dimensions, which were evident to all observers (Schama, 1990, p. 525;Siebert, 1952, p. 263; Hill, 1980, pp. 256-257; Harris, 1978, p. 97; Black, 1987, p.115). One of the first recorded English-language uses of the phrase was by Britishhistorian Thomas Carlyle (1993, pp. 349-350; first published in 1840), whoattributed to Conservative philosopher Edmund Burke the observation that therewere:

Three Estates in Parliament; but, in the Reporters’ Galleryyonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important than they all.... Whoever can speak, speaking now to the whole nation,becomes a power, a branch of government, with inalienableweight in law-making, in all acts of authority. It matters notwhat rank he has, what revenues or garnitures: the requisitething is that he have a tongue which others will listen to; thisand nothing more is requisite.

In light of Burke’s conservatism, his alleged reference to reporters in the pressgallery of Parliament as the “Fourth Estate” can be appreciated as a sarcastic dis-missal of public opinion because he viewed it as corrosive of traditional author-ities.

In summarizing the recent revisionist historiography on the public sphere,Fraser (1991, p. 523) argues that the official bourgeois public sphere involved ashift “from rule based primarily on acquiescence to superior force to rule basedprimarily on consent supplemented with some measure of repression.” A simi-lar point is made by Hill (1981, p. 265), who argued that, despite the temporaryemergence of civil liberties, the powerless failed to win their freedom, whilemembers of the propertied class won “freedom from arbitrary taxation and arbi-trary arrest, freedom from religious persecution, freedom to control the destiniesof their country through their elected representatives, freedom to buy and sell.They also won freedom to tyrannise over their villages, to hire unprotected laborin the open market.” Since the majority of people were too poor to publish news-papers or, in many cases, to even buy them, their relationship to the “free press”was limited, ironically, to selling the papers; they came to constitute the “float-ing and semi-destitute population of hawkers,” especially in cities like London(Harris, 1978, p. 91; also Fraser, 1991, pp. 523; Landes, 1988; Ryan, 1990; Eley,1992). In other words, the freedom secured in this context was available to aselect few .

While the French Revolution raised the demand for newspapers interna-tionally, the tremors of panic engendered by it resulted in a loss of press freedomon both sides of the Atlantic. Britain banned incitement of hatred of the govern-ment, suspended habeas corpus, required newspaper registration, and increasedsedition prosecutions, all of which met with public acquiescence. But these cur-tailments of press freedom paled in comparison to the repression that occurredelsewhere in Europe. In German territories, censorship intensified in the 1790s,but the print industry did not experience a precipitous decline until theNapoleonic occupation, which placed spies in public places, opened suspicious




letters from opposition figures and tightened controls in other ways (vonStutterheim, 1934, p. 47; Starr, 2004, p. 79; Barker, 2002, p. 97; Hellmuth &Piereth, 2002, pp. 80-81).

The period of license in French publishing that accompanied the declara-tion of rights was followed by a backlash of restrictions, as had occurred inBritain after its republican revolution. The repression in France began in 1792,when the revolutionary Paris Commune banned royalist newspapers and seizedtheir presses, which were turned over to allied journalists. One year later, theNational Convention passed a law that punished with death anyone publiclyadvocating the restoration of the monarch. In addition, two journalists were exe-cuted, 45 editors and publishers exiled, 42 journals suspended and 11 editorsarrested and their presses smashed (Popkin, 1999, p. 171; Ingelhart, 1987, p.150). From 1793 to 1974, one in every six Parisian journalists was killed in theinternecine fighting known as The Terror (Kennedy, 1989, p. 325; also Popkin,1999, p. 179; Starr, 2004, pp. 69, 82; Burrows, 2002, pp. 38-39; Barker, 2002, p.101).

How could press freedom have suffered such widespread and dramaticreversals shortly after being loudly proclaimed? A possible answer is that con-stituents for freedom of expression had demobilized, as had occurred with reli-gious toleration in Britain after the Clarendon Code of 1664 and in France begin-ning in 1655, as both states rescinded what they had previously “allowed”(Garrett, 1940, pp. 308-310; Hill, 1980, p. 167; Eijnatten, 2008, p. 4). Anotherexplanation can be found in nationalism and alterity, two sets of ideas thataccompanied the rise of press freedom and were themselves facilitated by thedevelopment of print culture. The denial of civil liberties to non-citizens,including French royalists who were ruled out of eligibility, undercut the claimthat rights were “universal” and “natural,” which laid the basis for them to bewithheld from citizens as well.

The linkage between domestic and foreign repression was nowhere moreevident than with Napoleon, whose suppression of internal liberties occurredalongside two notable efforts to impose autocratic control on people deemeduncivilized: Egyptians and Haitians. His Egyptian adventure was launched in1798, when he led a fleet of 335 ships and 40,000 soldiers to “liberate” the coun-try from rulers of Turkish origin whom he regarded as overlords. Rather thanbeing welcomed as heroes, as he had expected, his army was ground down todefeat by irregulars fighting a war of attrition (Strathern, 2007). Napoleon’s inva-sion of Haiti was laced with even more irony and pathos because it was the egal-itarian promise of the French Revolution, together with the republican senti-ments associated with the American War of Independence, that had inspired arevolt by the slaves in the most lucrative colony in the French empire in 1798.Incensed by this development, Napoleon four years later sent some 10,000 sol-diers, led by this brother-in-law, General Leclerc, to restore the status quo. By1804, the black slaves had defeated the French army and declared themselvesindependent of France, making Haiti the second republic in the Western hemi-sphere after America (Geggus, 2002; Jordan, 1971, p. 375). Repression practicedagainst Egyptians and Haitians would come home to roost as Bonaparte came towield state power in a more focused way against the opposition press. By 1811,only four newspapers were permitted in Paris and exactly one in each départe-ment, all of them subject to editorial control by local prefects. Three years later,

a defiant Nuremburg publisher was executed, which served to intimidate otherpublishers. Through suppressions, forced mergers and decrees, Napoleon creat-ed “the most tightly controlled press in French history” (Kennedy, 1989, p. 325;also Popkin, 1999, p. 179; Starr, 2004, pp. 69, 82; Burrows, 2002, pp. 38-39;Barker, 2002, p. 101).

In the decades following adoption of the First Amendment, restrictions onrights of expressions in the United States were especially focused on non-citi-zens and their apparent sympathizers. Because the American Revolution wasdirected against an external enemy, Americans ruthlessly suppressed the loyal-ist press, even as they were asserting liberty of expression for a nationalist per-spective. Censorship continued in a variety of forms, including mob attacksagainst authors of works expressing unpopular views (Pennsylvania Gazette,June 10, 1731; Botein, 1981, pp. 19-20; Buel, 1981, pp. 60-61, 82, 84). Less than10 years after declaring “Congress shall make no laws abridging freedom of thepress,” America enacted a Sedition Act in 1798, making it a federal crime to“write, print, utter or publish … any false, scandalous and malicious writing …against the government of the United States.” Inspired by controls enacted inBritain and fueled by a broad xenophobia, this federal sedition law was passed,along with an act aimed at controlling aliens. It was selectively used by theFederalist administration to hound, punish, fine and imprison editors alignedwith their Republican opponents, who were perceived as sympathetic to theFrench Revolution. Many of those targeted were recent immigrants working inPhiladelphia and New York as journalists and pamphleteers. Although theSedition Act was allowed to expire in 1802, prosecutions of opposition journal-ists for sedition continued through the rest of the century under the laws of var-ious states. Similar prosecutions continued even in nations previously noted fortolerance and press freedom, including Britain, Holland and Ireland (Buel, 1981,pp. 60-61, 82, 84; Pasley, 2001, p. 118; Starr, 2004, p. 82; Barker & Burrows, 2002,pp. 14-15). This dramatic reversal, together with earlier retrenchments in boththe United States and France, showed how nationalism and alterity had servedto undermine the view that liberties are universal and natural, a trend that hascontinued over the course of several centuries.

ConclusionThis paper employed a theoretical framework that combined political econ-

omy and cultural studies to uncover the forces driving the development of pressfreedom in early modern England, France and what is now the United Statesfrom 1640 to 1789. The factors found to be determinant were a transnationalprint industry, a public sphere characterized by empathy and brought to life incoffeehouses, salons, taverns and similar settings where diverse audiences gath-ered to debates and discuss public affairs, as well as religious movements guid-ed by egalitarianism, sectarian passions and a quest for toleration. These ele-ments contrast sharply with the emphasis on the nation-state as the unit ofanalysis, rationality, liberalism and the dynamic role of philosophers that arehighlighted in communication studies. It is not surprising that this monograph,which is informed by critical theories and draws upon recent historical scholar-ship, produced results that are consistent with the broader non-communicationsscholarship yet at variance with the press-freedom literature, which remainsfrozen in a fifty-year-old episteme. The findings presented here on the emer-




gence of press freedom differ from traditional press-freedom histories, not inregards to important dates and events, but in offering a new interpretive frame-work and in highlighting contributors whose roles were previously rarely recog-nized, such as the Levellers and Jansenists.

The use of holistic frameworks like cultural studies and political economyproved valuable in this context in recovering the intimate linkages that existedbetween the struggles for liberty of religion, association and expression. By over-coming the rationalist bias and media-centrism of traditional communicationstudies, cultural studies in particular facilitated an uncovering of the role playedby empathy in turning early modern European societies away from ghastly pun-ishments, such as the burning at the stake of Tyndale and other “heretics,” andtoward a more universalized application of rights, at least among citizens. In asimilar vein, political economy highlighted the production of rights in the realmof social relations, which have cultural, economic and political dimensions. Oneeconomic dimension consists of oppositional relations forged in the course ofproducing, distributing and consuming goods and services, such as the tradeactivities of printers. The cultural dimension consists of the linguistic and othersymbolic codes linked to struggles between groups within society. As for thetiming of rights creation, this was often precipitated by mass movements that areanimated by the perceived need for change in the existing economic and cultur-al relations.

During the period under consideration, “freedom of the press” involved adecrease both in the number of prosecutions and the severity of criminal penal-ties meted out for expression of ideas perceived to be critical of government poli-cies and officials (“sedition”), but also of hegemonic religious ideas (“blasphe-my”). In contrast to the traditional literature which defines press freedom inpurely legal ways, equally important measures documented in this study werethe incorporation of tradesmen, women and other previously excluded personsinto audiences and, to a lesser extent, as writers; publication in vernacular lan-guages; and innovation of styles, including the emergence of colloquial prose inprint and the use of irony in the treatment of public subjects. A critical benttoward social institutions culminated in an outpouring of satirical works, inEngland in 1726 and in America during its War of Independence. During theFrench Revolution, the best-selling genres were libels, vitriolic attacks againstreligious and political authorities. In Holland these libels were known aspasquinade, a form of writing that exposed the moral shortcomings of knownand named individuals. In short, freedom of speech meant, not only a widerrange of voices in the public sphere, but their expression in an equally widerange of styles and accents.

To summarize, the print industry helped shift control over knowledge pro-duction and dissemination from the Church into the hands of profit-seekingpublishers. Within 100 years, mechanical reproduction had grown into a highlyprofitable industry, given its ability to satisfy pent up demand for publicationsamong previously underserved groups. The printing industry enabled widelydispersed authors to reinforce the ideas of like-minded readers through books,then pamphlets and ultimately newspapers in what was a pan-continental enter-prise. By the mid-1600s, publishers shifted production from being almost entire-ly in Latin to a predominance of vernacular languages, which contributed to theemergence of national literatures, the “nationalization” of the Bible and the

emergence of nascent nationalisms. In the 1730s, opposition journals foundmass audiences for the first time in England, while in America the Zenger casehelped stem the tide of sedition libel charges against the colonial press. Thescope of free expression widened in 1763, when the British courts barred thegovernment from bringing illegal warrants against journalists and granted thepress permission to publish reports on parliamentary proceedings. In 1789, free-dom from prior restraint came to be proclaimed in France as a right of man basedon an assertion of natural law, unlike earlier claims of press freedom as a rightderived from citizenship.

Whether in the Glorious Revolution in Britain, the American War ofIndependence or the French Revolution, press freedom during this periodemerged out of a social rupture that resulted in the reorganization of state power.It is precisely during such periods that social movements were able to force con-cessions from those with entrenched power, in the forms of a wider publicsphere and the production of rights, which in turn facilitated periodicals func-tioning as a Fourth Estate, both in terms of their increased numbers and in theirroles as shapers of public opinion. In similar ways, the Puritans in England, thePresbyterians in Scotland, the Calvinists in the south of France and theJansenists in the French Catholic Church, all won greater toleration based oncampaigns for equality rooted in an imagined model of the early church. Facedwith relentless persecution, they went from arguing for toleration for themselvesto defending it as a general principle to be extended to non-Christians and athe-ists. Beginning as challenges to the hegemonic interpretation of Christianity,egalitarian movements succeeded in securing greater participation in sacred andsecular governance by commoners. Their expanding calls for popular sovereign-ty and more equitable distribution of economic resources fueled several consti-tutional crises that pitted parliament against the monarch and resulted in regi-cide in England in 1649 and France in 1793. Because acts of toleration served asmodels for later action of other factions of the population, they were importantpreconditions for the emergence of civil liberties broadly and press freedom inparticular. In pressing claims for equality, dissenters from this period Lollardsand Levellers in England, colonists in America and the parlement inFrance justified their actions on the basis of historical antecedents, whichhelped to establish a timeless basis for rights. In all of these cases, rights were infact being invented. The roots of civil liberties laid, not in the rationalist dis-course of secularism as portrayed by liberal writers, but in the passionate reli-gious and partisan wars that wracked early modern Europe.

Effaced in the traditional literature, but noted here, was the censorial roleof non-governmental institutions, especially the dominant churches. ALicensing Act passed in 1662 was the first to emphasize political justificationsfor censorship over religious ones. It was in reaction to this law that the phrase“liberty of the press” burst into the English language. Also evident were the per-sistent efforts by owners of large, entrenched publishing interests, like theStationers’ Company, to block the growth of small-scale rivals, inhibit the pub-lication of materials they did not own, and consort with allies in church andstate to maintain regimes of censorship. The original copyright system rested,not upon law in the contemporary sense, but on privileges granted as favors bythe monarch to monopolistic stationers. In exchange, authorized printers tookon the role of policing the print marketplace for any blasphemous and seditious




works. As in the struggle of booksellers against the monopolistic claims of theStationers Company, property interests were an animating factor in the fightagainst the Stamp Act in America, which fueled the struggle for independence.The centrality of property claims in battles over press freedom, both for the pow-erful and those seeking a redress of power imbalances, needs to be more fullyharnessed in contemporary strategies for safeguarding liberty of expression. Themonopolistic and censorial actions of the Stationers, which are generally down-played in the traditional literature, given its bias specially against governmentalrestrictions, is relevant in a contemporary international media system character-ized by increased economic concentration and copyright laws that allow foralmost indefinite renewals by corporations at the expense of the public domain.

Regarding the constitution of power in particular, a key element in theupending of the British system of censorship was the growth of balance in rela-tions between the Court and power holders linked to new sources of capitalisteconomic activities. The increased symmetry and balance among religious fac-tions that developed during this period was another important precondition forthe emergence of religious and press freedom. The spatial density of dissentersin specific regions invested their values with a strength beyond their minoritystatus and gave adherents within their region the power to defy standardsimposed by the state and dominant church. The existence of a wide latitude offree expression in Britain during the 1640s and in the Dutch Republics in 1579-1795, can be traced to countervailing balances among power holders. In France,the decisive shift toward press freedom came in 1789, one year after divisionsdeveloped among power holders. Another indication of the critical importanceof a balance in power is the fact that states were likely to rescind what tolerationthey had previously “allowed,” once constituents for freedom of religion andexpression had demobilized, as occurred with religious toleration in Britainafter the Clarendon Code of 1664 and in France beginning in 1655.

This study showed the struggle for press freedom to be an open-endedquest, consisting of advances and reversals. When Parliament refused to renewthe Licensing Act in 1694, the state came increasingly to apply a broadly rein-terpreted law of seditious libel, along with a stamp tax on publications. As hadoccurred in Britain after its republican revolution, the period of license in pub-lishing during the French Revolution was followed by a backlash of restrictions.A possible explanation is that constituents for freedom of expression had demo-bilized, as had occurred with religious toleration in Britain after the ClarendonCode of 1664 and in France beginning in 1655, as both states rescinded whatthey had previously “allowed.” In addition, even as former enemies were beingreconciled through the nexus of citizenship, the “rights of man” were beingdenied to large swaths of humanity, essentialized as polar opposites of citizens.These findings are a corrective to accounts in the press-freedom literature thatdepict Britain, America and France as progressing without reversals towardever higher levels of commitment to civil liberties, especially since the ratifica-tion of the Bill of Rights, the U. S. Constitution and the Declaration of the Rightsof Man respectively.

Notwithstanding the focus of this study on Britain, France, and the Britishcolonies of North America, the early modern period was characterized by theexistence of a pan-European public sphere with books and pamphlets in partic-ular helping to cultivate like-minded communities through an international

press, published mainly in French. The persecution of religious dissenters,which drove thousands into exile, had the unintended consequence of fueling atransnational printing industry along major trade routes. Future press-freedomstudies should acknowledge — both at the level of theory and in research design— the global character of interlocking power relations, even in earlier eras.Historical studies of press freedom across national boundaries would permit theperiodization of restrictions on a global basis. This in turn would facilitate amore subtle and refined grasp of world-systemic processes that affect the politi-cal economy of media and conditions of censorship. If the public sphere andfreedom of expression are to be strengthened in the contemporary context, itmight be necessary to circumvent constraints of nation-sates with transnationalmedia and actions, especially within peripheral, formerly colonized regions ofthe world.

A major limitation of this study is its reliance on the English-language his-torical literature on three societies only to explore the early modern print indus-try and struggles for greater liberty, all of which were transnational. It is recom-mended, therefore, that studies of other early modern societies be undertaken tosee what patterns emerge, with particular attention being paid to documents andsources in languages other than English. Countries that deserve especially closeinvestigation include Germany and Italy, because of their roles as significantcenters of the early print industry, as well as Holland, which played an impor-tant nurturing role both in the development of print and of tolerance toward dis-senting religious and political opinions, and Moorish Spain, which exhibited awell-documented toleration towards Judaism and Christianity. Another poten-tially fruitful direction of research would involve testing the cultural-bounded-ness of the framework derived from this examination of early modern society byapplying it to major non-Christian scribal cultures like Egypt, India, Japan, Koreaand China during the period prior to European contact. Future studies shouldalso examine distribution systems more carefully, given their place in the polit-ical economy of media in particular and power balances more broadly. InFrance, for example, censorship worked to tame domestic newspapers (giventheir reliance on a state-operated mail system for their circulation), but it wasless effective against privately distributed books and pamphlets. Moreover, cen-sorship proved counterproductive against French exiled publishers who organ-ized successful networks to smuggle from neighboring countries the politicalnews that was not being published locally.

During the early modern era, governments actively facilitated the growth ofthe press, whether, as in England, through subsidies to newspapers, or in theUnited States, through postal subsidies, which were distributed without favor toone religious or partisan perspective over another. This finding, which runscounter to the traditional press-freedom literature (e.g., Siebert, 1952; Siebert,Peterson & Schramm, 1969; Weaver, 1977) and the original conceptualization ofthe public sphere, highlights the potential role of governments in developingnew manifestations of public sphere, such as the Internet, as long as done on acontent-neutral basis. Current efforts at building a public sphere and monitoringpress freedom, which have focused almost exclusively on newspapers, shouldbe expanded to consider pamphlets and other ephemera, given their historicalrole. The extension of press freedom beyond the corporations headquarteredwithin the core of the world system will require the creation locally of public




spheres and rights through struggles for the transformation of social relationsthat significant portions of the population have outgrown. In short, “rights” willhave to be collectively produced in each society in order to be ultimately drawnupon or “consumed” by individuals.

Endnotes1. References to both “feudal government” and “feudal system” had first appeared in AdamSmith’s (1776) Wealth of Nations (Cheyette, 2005, p. 828).

2. These two sources provide the number of papers for different years during the period underconsideration, but their estimates are remarkably close, providing reason for confidence.

3. As noted by Starr (2004, p. 17), “’Information’ often refers specifically to data relevant todecisions, while ‘knowledge’ signifies more abstract concepts and judgments. As knowledgeprovides a basis of understanding, so information affords a basis of action.”

4. For libertarianism used as a synonym for liberalism, see Siebert et al., 1969, p. 39.

5. A search conducted on June 6, 2007, 11:15 p.m., using an Internet interface of the EnglishShort Title Catalogue of over 460,000 items published between 1473 and 1800, housed in theBritish Library and over 2,000 other libraries, revealed 101 items in which the words “libertyof the press” appear. The chronological breakdown of these titles was as follows: 1473-1643 =0 items; 1644-1695 = 10 items; 1700-1799 = 88 items (with spikes when multiple items werepublished in one year including six items in 1755; four in 1784, provoked by a disingenuous-ly named “An amended bill to secure the liberty of the press, by preventing the abuses arisingfrom the publication of traitorous, seditious, false and slanderous libels by persons unknown”;17 in 1793, mainly reprints of a speech by the Hon. Thomas Erskine at a meeting of “theFriends of the Liberty of the Press”; six in 1798, due to multiple reprints of William Colbert’s“The Democratic Judge; or the American liberty of the press, as exhibited, explained, andexposed” in his prosecution; and three in 1800. An alternative search using the words “pressfreedom” (without regard to whether the phrase was used to argue for or against censorship)revealed 184 items. The chronological breakdown was: 1423-1535 = 0; 1536-1553 = 6; 1554-1622 = 0 ; 1623-1699 = 52; 1700-1799 = 120; 1800 = 6, with two peaks: 1763 = 5 items, linkedto the trial of John Wilkes, who was imprisoned at the Tower by His Majesty’s messengers byreleased by the Court of Common Pleas; and 1776 = 9, linked to America’s declaration ofindependence.

6. Carlyle’s attribution of this phrase to British politician and philosopher Edmund Burke has notbeen confirmed despite a thorough search of Burke’s voluminous published writings.According to the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest use of this phrase datesto 1823 or 1824, some 17 years before the publication of Carlyle’s book (Simpson and Weiner,1989, p. 407).




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