The Origins of a Free Press in Prerevolutionary ... - Web Publishing

that this was a reading public. The research here finds the medium of print itself as
an actual forum for civic discourse, in addition to perceiving it as merely something
that spurs discourse within the actual physical spaces of taverns and coffeehouses
that host interpersonal conversations. This rise of civic discourse and its connection
to an increasing print culture was key to the changes being observed here, changes
that are consistent with Habermas’ “transformation.” The idea developed in the
current work is that it was not simply the printed content providing common topics
for discussion but also that the expanding medium of print helped to transform
individuals and society in ways that enabled new dissenting thought and action. 117
While Habermas theorized his “public sphere” as evolving in England and
Germany in the eighteenth century, and did not locate these developments in the
colonies, many historians of America have largely ignored that important detail.
Michael Warner and others saw its equivalent in the British-American colonies,
with some modifications. Discussion of political affairs had moved out of elite
political bodies, into print, and from there into the taverns and streets. Elites were
for the first time seen questioning and even attacking each other in the local public
prints, allowing decision-making for the colony to be visible to the public for the
first time. Print thus became an important element of public discourse, legitimizing
such criticism of government. As print materials became more widely available and
political conflicts among the elite came to be mediated by print, non-elites started
to be drawn into the political debate.
Warner creatively adapted Habermas’ public sphere to colonial America,
and saw a transformation in the mid-eighteenth century, consistent with the
research findings here. He pointed out that technology such as print has no separate
and individual agency. Rather, it operates within a cultural context, and print itself
is changed just as it changes the political environment. Warner’s observations and
117 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgeois Society (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought), trans. Thomas
Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
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