The Importance of Print

Democratisation of knowledge helped lead to a National Printing Spheres

participatory political sphere
 New media made public and more
accessible what was priorly expensive,
especially concerning political matters
(domestic and international).
o Politicus and The Gazzette both had
an international aspect.
 Spread of news was perceived as such a
threat by the regime of the time that
‘Charles II’s gov. considered suppressing
coffee-houses during the second and third
Anglo Dutch wars (1664-54 and 1672-74)’.
 This increased public perception in turn
led to a 'participatory political culture’ as,
thanks to the advent of pamphleteering
propaganda and newspapers, large number
of politicians, including ministers, were
criticised and ridiculed, with ‘the aim… to
ensure that old parliamentarians were held to
account’.
 CONSEQUENCE: The spread of
information was used to raise public
awareness of political issues and
consequently greatly expand the political
sphere, in some way or another, to those that
The creation of a public participatory sphere only possible due to the growth of literacy in the period.
 At the same time, print was heavily centralised in
London. In Scotland, Ireland and Wales,
newspapers began as reprints of English journals,
 But these were ‘displaced by in-digenous
newspapers, which facilitated the construction of a
sense of national community and thus national
identity’ .
 Whilst the British, London-based public sphere
extended throughout the British isles, a separate
national public sphere developed in these places.
The outlying case of Ireland
 In Ireland, the picture of literacy and the existence
of a participatory political culture is much more
difficult to measure, as most Irish people spoke
Gaelic, not English, and Gaelic culture was ‘oral
and scribal, rather than printed’ .
 The im-port of Latin counter-reformation print to
Ireland, despite efforts by the English government
to not allow this, shows that there was demand
within the Irish religious sphere for such texts and
contemporary evidence points to a development of
a public sphere in which Catholicism was seen as
the primary definition of their identity.

 Both a political and social significance, as not only was the political news carried by print, but it is
thought that the ‘emergence of a print of culture’ in England led to an increase in the literacy of the
English people, and thereon kickstarted the growth of formal education.
 Mass illiteracy dropped from 90 per cent of men in circa 1500 to 50 per cent by 1700, and from 98 per
cent to 70 per cent of women in the same timeframe.
 As a result, not only were socio-economic benefits afforded to those who were educated, but the public
sphere was able to become wide enough to touch everyone, either directly or through someone literate,
and create a wide participatory political culture

Censored and Commercial nature of Print, but still effective in allowing the development of a public
participatory political sphere

 Whilst prior to 1695 licensing laws controlled public debate, pressure continued afterwards. This
‘harassment, financial and legal, of the Jacobite press was effective’ and meant that ‘eco-nomic
circumstances perpetuated government and party interest in publishing’ .
o This is significant, for Politicus and The Gazette, as discussed earlier, were impacted by
ideological and commercial interests, and yet they were still thought-provoking and provided a
‘heterogenity of persepective … [that] was… the basis for a political education’ hence meaning
that
 Conclusion: ‘‘The prin-ciple of non-instrumentality’ which Habermas presents as a prerequisite for the
establishment of a public sphere (which he admits exists) ‘ill fits the realities of seventeenth century
debate, which was sponsored, rather than impeded, by commercial and ideological interests’.
Disclaimer: Print does not necessarily lead to the emergence of a participatory political culture

 Peacey argues that ‘print was not responsible for the emergence of a participatory politi-cal culture
during the middle decades of the 17th century’... and as such the ‘“impact” of print needs to be
assessed’ in terms of its intensification of the public debate .
o There is certainly logic to this argument – the mere existence of a printing press does not
provide for neither a public forum of discussion nor a participatory political culture –
countless illiberal, heavily censored dictatorships of past and present exemplify this – however
this statement leaves historians with a few fundamental questions which must be addressed
before more progress is made in under-standing the impact of print.

Questions as a Result:

1. Firstly, is the intensity not a defining aspect of a ‘participatory po-litical culture’ – how much intensity
warrants one? Moreover, how exactly can the increase in intensity be practically measured; what didn’t
happen can’t be known. Was a sustained, easily transmitted public sphere not created, and is this not
therefore a completely new type of political culture? If public discourse was intensified by the printing
press, and this intensity warranted a public sphere of participatory political culture, is the printing press
not therefore at least ‘a’ re-sponsible factor for its emergence?
2. This question extends to the development of national con-sciousness – was it there before throughout
Britain, and especially Ireland and Scotland, or was it created?