{
  "id": 9,
  "slug": "press-control-before-1900",
  "title": "Before 1900: how governments controlled the press",
  "dek": "Press licensing, seditious libel trials, newspaper taxes and press laws from 1643 to 1878, with the documents behind each one.",
  "body_md": "Governments controlled printing and news for centuries before 1900, when the dated incident record begins. The briefs below cover the main press laws, licensing systems and prosecutions from the first English licensing orders to the end of the nineteenth century. Each brief links to the documents and reference works it rests on and quotes them directly. The dated, claim-by-claim record of incidents starts in [the 1900s](/eras/1900s); see [all eras](/eras).\n\n## 1643: England's Parliament orders licensing of printed books\n\nEngland's Long Parliament passed a printing ordinance in 1643 requiring every book or pamphlet to receive advance approval from a licenser appointed under Parliament's authority, and made the Stationers Company its agent for enforcing that licensing. The poet John Milton published Areopagitica in 1644, an unlicensed pamphlet arguing that pre-publication licensing would weaken people's ability to reason toward truth. Milton was not penalized for publishing without a license. Parliament kept licensing controls over the English press in force for decades afterward, until they finally lapsed in 1695. ([First Amendment Encyclopedia](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/printing-ordinance-of-1643/); [Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/608/608-h/608-h.htm))\n\n> \"England's printing ordinance of 1643 prohibited the printing, binding, or sale of books except by persons licensed under the authority of Parliament\"\n\n## 1662: England's Licensing of the Press Act\n\nParliament passed the Licensing of the Press Act in 1662, restoring state control over printing under King Charles II after the upheaval of the civil war years. The act declared that no person could print or cause to be printed any book or pamphlet without first obtaining a license, and it required printers to register with the Stationers Company. Enforcement of licensing controls over the press in England continued for more than three decades under this and earlier measures. Parliament finally let licensing of the press lapse in 1695, twenty years after Milton's death, ending systematic prior approval of English printing. ([The National Archives (legislation.gov.uk)](https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/Cha2/14/33); [First Amendment Encyclopedia](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/john-milton/))\n\n> \"That no private person or persons whatsoever shall att any time hereafter print or cause to be printed any Booke or Pamphlet whatsoever unlesse the same Booke and Pamphlet\"\n\n## 1735: The Zenger seditious libel trial in colonial New York\n\nNew York printer John Peter Zenger was arrested and prosecuted for seditious libel after his newspaper, the New York Weekly Journal, published articles and ballads criticizing the colony's royal governor, William Cosby. Cosby had two judges appointed to hear the case, and the judges ruled that the disputed statements were libelous as a matter of law, leaving jurors only to decide whether Zenger had published them, a fact he did not dispute. At the urging of defense lawyer Andrew Hamilton, the jury instead acquitted Zenger of the charge. The trial and acquittal became a widely cited early episode in the history of American press freedom. ([First Amendment Encyclopedia](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/seditious-libel/); [Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/54836/pg54836-images.html))\n\n> \"The conflict between those views came to a head in 1735 with the trial of John Peter Zenger, who had published articles critical of the governor of New York.\"\n\n## 1765: Britain's Stamp Act taxes colonial newspapers\n\nThe British Parliament passed the Stamp Act in 1765, requiring colonial printers to buy and affix revenue stamps to newspapers, legal documents and other papers sold throughout the American colonies. Colonial printers organized against the tax, and several newspapers published in black mourning borders resembling a tombstone over the death of press liberty. Not one newspaper in the colonies appeared on the stamped paper the act required. Parliament repealed the Stamp Act about a year later, on March 18, 1766, unable to enforce it against colonial printers. ([First Amendment Encyclopedia](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/stamp-act-of-1765/); [First Amendment Encyclopedia](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/taxation-of-newspapers/))\n\n> \"It is notable that not a single newspaper published on stamped paper.\"\n\n## 1798: The United States Sedition Act\n\nThe Federalist controlled Congress passed the Sedition Act on July 14, 1798, making it a federal crime to write, print or publish any false, scandalous and malicious writing against the government of the United States, either house of Congress or the president, done with intent to defame them. Federalist judges enforced the law against editors of Democratic Republican newspapers who criticized President John Adams's administration, including Congressman Matthew Lyon, who owned a Vermont newspaper. The act was written to expire on March 3, 1801, before an incoming administration could apply it against its own opponents. ([First Amendment Encyclopedia](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/sedition-act-of-1798/); [Yale Law School](https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/sedact.asp))\n\n> \"made it illegal, among other actions, to write, print, utter or publish…any false, scandalous and malicious writing…with intent to defame the…government\"\n\n## 1819: The Carlsbad Decrees in the German Confederation\n\nMinisters from the states of the German Confederation met at Carlsbad in August 1819, under the influence of Austria's Klemens von Metternich, and drafted the Carlsbad Decrees after the killing of the writer August von Kotzebue. Their Federal Press Law provided that no daily paper or periodical work under twenty printed sheets could go to print in any German state without the prior knowledge and approval of state officials. The law also let the Confederation's Diet suppress on its own authority any writing it judged dangerous to the union's honor or internal peace. The decrees restricted liberal and nationalist writing at German universities and in the press for years afterward. ([Hanover College Department of History (Hanover Historical Texts Project)](http://history.hanover.edu/texts/carlsbad.htm); [German Historical Institute](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/from-vormaerz-to-prussian-dominance-1815-1866/carlsbad-decrees-confederal-press-law-september-20-1819))\n\n> \"no publication which appears in the form of daily issues, or as a serial not exceeding twenty sheets of printed matter, shall go to press in any state of the union without the previous knowledge and approval of the state officials\"\n\n## 1830: France's July Ordinances suspend the periodical press\n\nKing Charles X signed four ordinances on July 25, 1830, the first of which suspended the liberty of the periodical press outright. It required publishers to obtain government authorization, renewable every three months and revocable at any time, before any newspaper or periodical could appear in Paris or the provinces, and allowed immediate seizure of any newspaper printed without it. A second ordinance dissolved the Chamber of Deputies. Parisians rose in three days of street fighting that followed, known as the July Revolution, and Charles X abdicated within days, replaced by Louis Philippe under a revised constitutional charter. ([Portland State University](https://web.pdx.edu/~swalton/fr335U/july-ordinances.pdf))\n\n> \"The liberty of the periodical press is suspended.\"\n\n## 1863: Newspaper suppression during the United States Civil War\n\nUnion Gen. Ambrose Burnside ordered the suspension of the Democratic newspaper the Chicago Times in 1863 under his general order making expressions of sympathy for the Confederacy a military offense. President Abraham Lincoln revoked Burnside's order, saying he was embarrassed by his general's failure to balance what was due the Union against the liberty of the press. The next year Lincoln ordered the arrest of the New York World's editors and the seizure of its office after the paper printed a fabricated presidential proclamation calling for more soldiers. He rescinded that order once the fabrication became clear. ([First Amendment Encyclopedia](https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/civil-war-u-s/))\n\n> \"In 1863 Lincoln revoked Gen. Ambrose Burnside’s order suspending the Democratic Chicago Times\"\n\n## 1874: The German Empire's Imperial Press Law\n\nThe German Empire's Reichstag passed the Imperial Press Law on May 7, 1874, replacing the patchwork of state controls that had followed the Carlsbad Decrees with one law for the whole empire. The law barred prior review of print before publication, but made an editor criminally responsible before the courts for what appeared in his newspaper, and required every periodical to name a qualified commissioning editor who bore that responsibility as a perpetrator when its content amounted to a criminal act. Because this freedom rested on ordinary legislation rather than the constitution, the Reichstag could and later did restrict it again, banning Social Democratic newspapers under the 1878 Anti-Socialist Law. ([German Historical Institute](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/forging-an-empire-bismarckian-germany-1866-1890/imperial-press-law-may-7-1874))\n\n> \"an editor remained criminally responsible before the courts for what appeared in his newspaper or journal. Editors often served jail terms for lèse majesté\"\n\n## 1878: Bismarck's Anti-Socialist Law bans Social Democratic newspapers\n\nChancellor Otto von Bismarck's government pushed the Anti-Socialist Law through the Reichstag on October 21, 1878, after blaming the Social Democratic Party for two attempts on Kaiser Wilhelm I's life. The law banned societies, meetings and publications found to advance social democratic, socialist or communist aims, providing that publications endangering the public peace in this way were to be prohibited outright. A Reichstag majority supported banning Social Democratic newspapers and other printed matter judged subversive for as long as the law lasted. About 1,500 people were eventually imprisoned under the law before it lapsed in September 1890. ([German Historical Institute](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/forging-an-empire-bismarckian-germany-1866-1890/anti-socialist-law-october-21-1878); [German Historical Institute](https://germanhistorydocs.org/en/forging-an-empire-bismarckian-germany-1866-1890/imperial-press-law-may-7-1874))\n\n> \"Publications in which social-democratic, socialistic, or communistic endeavors aimed at the overthrow of the existing political or social order are manifested in a manner calculated to endanger the public peace, and particularly the harmony among all classes of the population, are to be prohibited\"\n\n## Where the record continues\n\nFrom 1900 the record lists incidents one by one, each with its date, the government that acted, the reason it gave and the outcome, and every fact tied to a quoted source. Start with [the 1900s](/eras/1900s) or browse [by tactic](/tactics).",
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  "published_at": "2026-09-26T18:10:25Z",
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  "created_at": "2026-09-26T18:10:24Z",
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  "url": "https://thewaronnews.com/explainers/press-control-before-1900",
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      "title": "Printing Ordinance of 1643 (1643)",
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