Much like there is no sign of interdependence between the legislation on freedom of the press in the two Scandinavian monarchies, there seems to have been little reporting in newspapers and other channels on the development of freedom of the press and the public sphere from the neighbouring country. This is a topic where more study needs to be done, and we can only offer a few preliminary observations.
Since Swedish freedom of the press preceded Dano-Norwegian press freedom, it might be expected that reporters in Sweden would have found it easier to relate the later development in Denmark. This does not seem to have been the case, however. On 25 October 1770 the Swedish semi-official newspaper Stockholms Post-Tidningar included a single report that censorship had been abolished in Denmark through a royal decree the preceding month. The content of the king’s proclamation was rendered almost verbatim and without comment among a host of other recent decrees of seemingly lesser importance. The Swedish weekday newspaper Dagligt Allehanda ignored the matter altogether. There are less than a handful of pamphlets from the relevant period that discuss Dano-Norwegian politics, and we have found no mention of the freedom of the press in any of them. Again, this topic needs further investigation, but it appears as though the previous caution about expressing opinions concerning foreign powers was still prevalent, although the 1766 Ordinance expressly stated (Section 5) that it should ‘be permitted to write and print material concerning the relations of the kingdom with other powers and the advantage or harmfulness of former or more recent alliances, or statements made regarding them’.
Similarly, the introduction of the Swedish Freedom of the Press Ordinance was met with silence in the Dano-Norwegian newspapers. Although the Copenhagen newspaper
De til Forsendelse med Posten allene privilegerede Kiøbenhavnske Tidender (‘Berlingske Tidende’), which owned the monopoly on communicating foreign news, presented lengthy reports from the debates and decisions in the Swedish Diet, there is no sign of any mention of the Freedom of the Press Ordinance.
1 We have examined all issues printed from December 1766 to April 1767. It is not improbable that the editors considered the news of a Swedish freedom of the press, adopted by the Estates in a semi-republican political process, as a piece of information too controversial to be published in an absolutist Dano-Norwegian public sphere still subject to censorship.
It seems unlikely that the two Scandinavian legislations were widely known among the European public at large, but they did not go entirely without notice. However, this is another question were much work remains to be done, and at this point we can only offer a few observations. Anders Burius has examined the reports from the Prussian, English, French, Dutch, Danish and Imperial envoys to Stockholm. The first three did not mention the Freedom of the Press Ordinance with a word, the Dutch representative itemised the ordinance in an uncommented list of all decisions at the Diet, while the Danish ambassador mentioned the decision in the passing after the final vote in October 1766. The only one who added his own reflection was a secretary at the Imperial legation. Nearly two months after the law was signed by the king he made a statement on the benefits of freedom of the press for the sciences and the arts as well as the economy. In this general declaration he especially pointed out the Netherlands, and he told his principals in Vienna that the initial disagreements of the Swedish Diet had ceased now that everyone saw the benefits of a free press. This was apparently an insinuation to his own government, so in this one instance the Swedish ordinance might have had some, however slight, impact on a foreign context.
2 Burius, Ömhet om friheten, pp. 273f.When it comes to foreign press reports, we can offer a closer look at one important source: the Gazette de Leyde. It was a leading francophone journal with intense coverage of European politics, including the Scandinavian kingdoms. Since it was published in the liberal climate of the Netherlands, policy matters of a potentially sensitive character probably also stood a better chance of being reported than in environments that were more suppressive.
To examine reports about Sweden, we have studied the
Gazette de Leyde from early October 1766 to the end of April 1767. The first mention of interest was on 20 January 1767 when the journal reported that the Swedish king had approved freedom of the press and that a special ordinance would be published soon.
3 ‘le 2. Janvier, 1767. Le Roi a approuvé la liberté de la Presse: Ainsi, il va paroître dans peu une Ordonnance à ce sujet’, ‘Gazette de Leyde’: Nouvelles extraordinaires de divers endroits, No. VI: 20 January 1767, Supplement. The
Gazette got the date wrong by a month, but although the law was signed 2 December 1766, it took a while before it was distributed, probably due to the Christmas break. Another report on 6 February once again proclaimed that the ordinance was to be published ‘before long’ and that it was expected to produce a happy effect among the public.
4 ‘L’Ordinnance touchant la liberté de la Presse va être publiée dans peu : On s’attend, qu’elle produira un effet très-salutaire au Public.’ Gazette de Leyde, no. 11, 6 February 1767, Supplement. On 17 March the journal published a report marked Stockholm, 27 February, which briefly announced that the ordinance was now published, but the journal’s readers had to wait another fortnight before being informed of its content.
On 3 April the Gazette finally issued an extensive account of nearly half a page outlining the main points of the Freedom of the Press Ordinance. In line with the general news reports of the time, the content was chronicled without comments or interpretations, but the detailed account suggests that this was news of great interest. It was in fact the lengthiest report from Sweden in the seven months we have studied. Special interest seems to have been directed towards the public access to official records. In Sweden from now on, the journal conveyed:
Everyone has the right to demand from all of the Branches of Administration ‒ from the Senate to the registrars of the smallest courts ‒ the release of records or minutes, which contain the decisions on various matters, and to publish the content in its entirety or in extract, as well as the advice of each individual in the deliberations, and especially the verdicts of judges; and anyone who refuses to communicate the registers etc. will lose his employment. Only the Senate may refuse to disclose matters relating to foreign affairs that need to be kept secret for a certain time.
5 ‘Chacun a droit de demander à tous les Collèges de l’Administration, depuis le Sénat jusqu’aux Greffes de la plus petite Jurisdiction, la communication des Régîtres ou Protocoles, qui contiennent la décision des différentes affaires, d’en faire imprimer le contenu en entier ou par extrait, ainsi que l’avis de chaque Particulier dans les délibérations, & sur-tout la décision des Juges; & quiconque refusera de communiquer les Régistres, &c. perdra son Emploi. Le Sénat seul pourra refuser la communication des déliberations rélatives aux affaires etrangères, qui doivent étre tenuës sécrettes pendant quelques tems.’ Gazette de Leyde, no. 27, 3 April 1767, Supplement.In an age of cabinet politics, where governing and foreign affairs was an arcanum reserved for a chosen few, the conceding of extensive public inspection certainly stood out. The
Gazette de Leyde was ‘the European paper of record, read by Statesmen throughout the Continent’.
6 A. Pettegree, The Invention of News. How the World Came to Know About Itself (New Haven, London, 2014), p. 235. How they reacted to this news, we do not know at this point.
In the following number, 7 April, the Gazette returned with an addendum on how the legal responsibility was to be divided between the printer and the author according to the ordinance. The printer answered for the content if he could not produce the author’s name, which he otherwise had to keep in a sealed envelope; either way, only one of them could be prosecuted. This arrangement was a clever solution to a division of responsibilities that was undefined in many jurisdictions and certainly something to ponder on for the gazette’s readers.
The Danish freedom of the press a few years later did not catch the attention of the
Gazette de Leyde, although it reported, as did many other international newspapers and periodicals, extensively on the coup against Struensee, his subsequent execution, the queen’s exile and the measures of the new regime. The most notable consideration we know of remains Voltaire’s famous poem celebrating the Dano-Norwegian king and press freedom in January 1771.
7 Voltaire’s celebration was published in both French (18 February 1771) and Danish (8 March 1771) in Copenhagen. The French original, see Œuvres de Voltaire, ed. A. J. Q. Beuchot, 13 (Paris, 1833), pp. 290‒9. See H. Horstbøll et al., Grov Konfækt, 1, p. 230. On the Struensee case in the British periodicals, see M. Roos, ‘Struensee in Britain: The Interpretation of the Struensee Affair in British Periodicals, 1772’, in E. Krefting et al. (eds), Eighteenth-Century Periodicals as Agents of Change, pp. 77–92. Actually, the Dano-Norwegian government unsuccessfully attempted to intervene against the coverage of events in the Gazette de Leyde, see J. W. Koopmans, ‘Dutch Censorship in Relation to Foreign Contacts (1581–1795)’, in Trade, Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange: Continuity and Change in the North Sea Area and the Baltic c. 1359–1750, ed. H. Brand (Hilversum, 2005), pp. 220–37, at p. 231. The international reception of the Struensee case is explored in U. Langen and F. Stjernfelt, The World’s First Full Press Freedom, ch. 12 and 13.Nevertheless, when press freedom was introduced in Denmark‒Norway a few examples of Swedish inspiration and communication can be traced. One of the first new pseudonymous writers to appear after the introduction of the Dano-Norwegian freedom of the press was Gormsen Biering, who was launched as a columnist under the name of
Den danske Argus (The Danish Argus) in the periodical
Fruentimmer-Tidenden (Woman Times).
Den danske Argus declared that he was inspired by
Then Swänska Argus (The Swedish Argus), published by the litterateur Olof Dahlin in Stockholm 1732‒4. Although
Den danske Argus was a self-proclaimed press freedom writer, it was not the Swedish freedom of the press that had inspired this new venture, rather it was the snide
Spectator style of
Then Swänska Argus, which Biering used as a model for his literary persona. A Danish translation of
Then Swänska Argus had been published in Copenhagen as far back as 1740, thus preceding the Danish translation of the famed
Spectator by two years.
8 On the Danish Argus, see U. Langen, ‘Kragen ved nok hvad Soe den skal ride paa: Fruentimmer-Tidenden og trykkefrihedens første debat’, Temp: Tidsskrift for historie, 9, 17 (2018), 67‒88.In a private letter dating from 28 June 1771 the Danish privy archivist Jakob Langebek described the impact of press freedom in Denmark‒Norway to his Swedish colleague Johan Henrik Lidén, who was a lecturer in history of science at the university in Uppsala. ‘Ever since we were given the otherwise noble freedom of writing and printing,’ Langebek reported, ‘the entire nation has suddenly become quite political and partly so evil that hardly anything is thought of or talked or written about other than with the purpose of offending the neighbour or turning everything upside down.’ ‘You cannot image,’ he continued, ‘what a terrible and sorrowful winter we have had, and we are still not without daily fear and danger’.
9 ‘De kan ikke forestille sig, hvad for en skreksom og sorrigfuld Vinter vi har haft, og endnu er man ikke uden daglig Frygt og Fare’, H. Fr. Rørdam, Breve fra Langebek (Copenhagen, 1895), p. 494. The last part of the sentence referred to a seemingly widespread fear of becoming the target of unscrupulous writers. For his own part, Langebek had not experienced any direct attacks, but he knew of several cases among his friends and other ‘brave men’ who were being troubled.
In his eyes, the transformation of the public sphere since September 1770 was so overturning and the atmosphere created by the new writers was so troubling that he was convinced that the extraordinary Dano-Norwegian situation was vividly discussed in other countries. As an example of historical irony, Langebek himself anonymously wrote an aggressive pamphlet against Struensee and the king in August 1771, which was partially translated into Swedish where it was used, contrary to the author’s intention, as anti-absolutist ammunition.
10 H. Horstbøll et al., Grov Konfækt, 2, ch. 27, n. 13. One more exception to the general rule of mutual silence is the mention of comments by Carl Linnaeus on historian Peter Frederik Suhm’s cheeky public letter admonishing the Dano-Norwegian king immediately after the coup against Struensee.
11 H. Horstbøll et al., Grov Konfækt, 1, p. 417.