During the 18th century, the increasing availability of books and the emergence of an educated and critical public sphere fueled Enlightenment thought. The ideas of reason, liberty, tolerance and natural rights spread widely, becoming the theoretical basis for events and orders that celebrated the birth of modern Western democracies, beginning with the French Revolution and the American Constitution.
Alexis de Toqueville attributes to the printed word the ability to unify the peoples of a nation, as was the case in France in the 18th century. In 1789, the new literati and lawyers sparked the French Revolution. The political role of the press is later made explicit by Napoleon’s following statement, “Three hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.” In the English Revolution, on the other hand, the co-presence of the oral traditions of the common law mitigates the effects of the printing revolution. In the United States, there are no medieval institutions to counteract, so print culture imposes itself more easily and succeeds in creating a strong uniformity and continuity.
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