The Establishment of Periodicals | 49matters and became more centralised and bureaucratic. The Era of Enlight-
enment by no means signified an uninterrupted advance towards press
freedom. In fact, international developments proved to be rather different.
Whereas a change of sovereign entailed stricter censorship in 1780s Prussia,
Austria moved in the opposite direction; for although censorship regula-
tions were stringent, they were badly organised (Küster 2004: 70; Haefs
and Mix 2006). Towards the end of the 1750s, France began to tolerate an
increasing number of foreign papers; at the same time, however, foreign
newspapers were newly produced with government support for the domes-
tic market, such as the Journal de Genève in 1772 and two years later the
Journal de Bruxelles (Censer, in Barker and Burrows 2002: 173). Freedom
of the press was established in stages in Sweden and Denmark in the 1770s,
where only a very few loyal newspapers had been permitted in the seven-
teenth century.
Even in liberal England development did not proceed smoothly. Between
1712 and 1819, newspaper taxes were increased eight times, leading to a price
rise and a consequently reduced circulation. Additionally, members of the gov-
ernment were bribing newspapers and suing publishers for libel. But although
one should not idealise freedom of the press in England, such measures started
to wane in the mid-eighteenth century. The illegal Unstamped Press, which
entirely dispensed with tax stamps, was already on the increase in the 1740s.
Higher profits resulting from a rise in advertisements and circulation made the
press less vulnerable to corruption. The Republican politician and journalist
John Wilkes succeeded in achieving a reduction in libel cases from the 1760s
onwards by means of his campaigns and court cases (Barker 2000: 31, 72,
92). Particularly in the 1770s and 1780s, the media in Europe were generally
granted more freedom of reporting before fears of upheaval triggered a back-
lash towards the end of the century.
Innovations pertaining to content are evident in eighteenth century North
America. Initially newspapers established themselves rather tentatively: after
a failed attempt in 1690, the first long-standing newspaper emerged in 1704
under the name Boston Newsletter. A gradual development of the newspaper
market commenced in the 1720s, resulting in the publication of a dozen
papers in 1740. The stringent licensing policies and the bribery of the colonial
administration impeded the development of the press at first; however the
scope of these limitations varied within the American colonies (Copeland,
in Barker and Burrows 2002: 145–48). The centre of the press was located
on the coast and mainly represented by Boston, which counted twenty thou-
sand inhabitants and formed the hub of the postal system. The slow pace of
urbanisation, a decayed infrastructure, and the disconnection from European
lines of communication all seemed to militate against the development of an
innovative and expanding press.