64 | Mass Media and Historical Change
1800 had trebled to about 145,000 copies, with 234 newspapers vying for the
readers’ favour (Copeland, in Barker and Burrows 2002: 149). Thus it is clear
that the American Revolution not only decisively changed the structure of the
press but also proved lucrative for publishers.
The French Revolution and the Media in Europe
Researchers have devoted more attention to the role of the media during the
French Revolution. Newspapers, magazines and professional journals were
certainly of lesser importance in France during the time preceding the Rev-
olution than had been the case in North America. Before 1784 the official
French press expressed almost no criticism of the Ancien Régime (cf. Censer
1994: 213). Licensing and censorship policies, which had always been strict
and were made even more restrictive in the late 1750s and again after 1776,
simply left too little leeway for free expression. Nevertheless the role played by
newspapers was not wholly without significance. First and foremost they reg-
ularly reported on events in North America and thus presented an alternative
state model. Affluent Frenchmen could find detailed information, primarily
in French-language newspapers published abroad such as the Gazette des Leyde
which was published in the Netherlands and which also printed the text of the
Declaration of Independence (Popkin 1990: 22).
The so-called underground media played a crucial role. In view of cen-
sorship restrictions, pamphlets, illustrated flyers or scandal sheets were more
suitable instruments for mobilising the populace (Baecque, in Darnton and
Roche 1989: 165–76). At their centre was the ‘disclosure’ of secrets and the
‘true’ character of the rulers (Engels, in Mauelshagen and Mauer 2000: 185).
Pamphlets and suchlike resembled vernacular speech and enjoyed spinning
rumours. In the process they were not chary of sexual mockery, and spun
stories about the sexual escapades of the King and Queen. These tactics, in
conjunction with rationalist, informative writings, served to reduce the almost
sacred status of the monarchy (Darnton 1982: 1–40).
At the same time, pamphlets provided a field of endeavour for journal-
ists from those newspapers that had shot up like weeds after the outbreak of
the Revolution. The important Revolution-era journalist Louis-Marie Prud-
homme was said to have authored fifteen hundred pamphlets during the two
years preceding its outbreak before he began publishing the paper Les Rev-
olutions de Paris in 1789. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the
Citizen, declared on 26 August 1789, also established freedom of the press as
a human right and ushered in a press boom hitherto without parallel. During
the first years of the Revolution, three hundred new newspapers and magazines
appeared annually, so that by 1799 about two thousand different ones were