Not Just the Tudors – "Origins of Free Speech"

Host: Professor Suzannah Lipscomb
Guest: Professor Farah Dababala
Date: November 24, 2025
Podcast by: History Hit

Overview

In this episode, Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by Professor Farah Dababala to explore the historical roots and contradictions in the idea of free speech. Drawing on Dababala’s latest book, What Is Free Speech? The History of a Dangerous Idea, the episode traverses the journey from the policing of speech in medieval and early modern society through the Enlightenment and up to the birth of "free speech" as a political right in the 18th century. Along the way, discussion highlights the pivotal—yet often self-serving and exclusionary—roles played by figures like Cato’s Letters in shaping this right, and critically examines how issues of power, gender, race, and media intertwine with the freedom to express.

Main Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Seriousness of Speech in Pre-Modern Societies (05:00–09:41)

• Speech as Action:
  • Speech, in pre-modern societies across the globe, was considered an action with meaningful consequences—often more damaging than physical violence.
  • “Speech is an action in the world. When you speak or you write something or publish something, you're trying to have an effect in the world."
    — Professor Farah Dababala (05:21)
  • Harm could be directed both at individuals—by damaging reputations in closely-knit, face-to-face communities—as well as the public, via rumors inciting violence.
• Legal Regulation:
  • Medieval societies had laws against slander and “false news,” with the earliest English statute dating to 1275. Women could be punished as “scolds,” and under Henry VIII, words could amount to treason.

2. The Early Modern Period: Political and Religious Speech (07:49–21:39)

• Heightened Regulation & Political Loyalty:
  • Expanding monarchies post-Reformation increased their efforts to police speech, introducing sedition as a vague, catch-all crime for disloyalty.
• Popular Participation & Double-Edged Litigation:
  • Ordinary people frequently pursued litigation to defend their reputations, showing that speech controls weren’t just top-down—though always biased toward the powerful.
• Mob vs. Public:
  • Contemporary celebrations of the public sphere often mask the fact that “public opinion” was and is easily misinformed, susceptible to rumors and conspiracy that inspired real-world violence (e.g., the British Civil Wars).
  • “Public opinion is often deluded…conspiracy theories spread like wildfire, and…the truth…is something that you need to prove with evidence."
    — Professor Farah Dababala (13:36)

3. Shifting Ideas: Toleration, Individual Conscience, and Protestantism (16:41–22:25)

• Religious Freedom Experiments:
  • The Reformation sowed the seeds for the idea that only God knows the path to salvation; therefore, coercing conscience is wrong—a radical Protestant innovation.
  • Yet, freedom of speech often remained narrowly defined: only for devout Protestants, within spiritual (not secular) matters.
  • John Milton’s Areopagitica and John Locke’s works are critical texts—but do not map directly to modern free speech concepts.

4. The Birth of Political Free Speech: Cato’s Letters and the 18th Century (23:00–33:50)

• Exploding Print & Partisan Newspapers:
  • The lapse of press censorship in England (1695) led to an unprecedented explosion of printed debate, with Whigs and Tories locking horns in print.
• Cato’s Letters:
  • John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon publish a series of influential columns (1720s) arguing for liberty of the press as the foundation of all liberty and warning that its abridgement signals tyranny.
  • Their theory, however, is more rhetorical than coherent—emerging from personal grievances, partisan endeavors, and self-interest.
  • “Free speech is not a coherent doctrine. It's a weaponized slogan…it means speech that I believe should be free.”
    — Professor Farah Dababala (13:36)
• Duplicity and Hypocrisy:
  • Gordon, initially a government critic, switches sides and becomes a government propagandist, revealing the cynical, self-serving underbelly of the era’s free speech advocacy.

5. Exclusion and Bias: Gender and Race (36:43–41:55)

• Gendered Free Speech:
  • Cato’s Letters and similar contemporary theories distinguished between “public” (male) speech and “private” (female/gossip), ignoring and excluding women’s genuine participation in public debate and media.
  • “Public speech is the foundation of political liberty. Private speech…is the same as the distinction between male speech and female speech. Male speech is powerful…Female speech is meaningless.”
    — Professor Farah Dababala (37:05)
• Racialized Limits:
  • The age of “free speech” was also an age of imperial, colonial silencing—particularly of enslaved and indigenous voices.
  • “Free speech as a political right is invented by the same kinds of European men who then go around the world telling other people to shut up…It's…baked into how people think about freedom and who it applies to.”
    — Professor Farah Dababala (40:18)

6. Models Across Europe: Enlightened Absolutism & the Republic of Letters (42:28–47:12)

• Different National Variants:
  • Monarchs like Frederick the Great embraced “freedom of expression” as a way to modernize, but drew strict lines—allowing free debate about religion or arts, but forbidding criticism of the ruler or government.
• Limits and Enlightenment Reasoning:
  • A new Enlightenment consensus, stressing the rationality and potential of (male) citizens, drove support for free speech, but debates about who counted as rational and deserving of a public voice persisted.

7. The American and French Divergence: Formulations of Free Speech (49:05–55:41)

• Cato’s Letters’ American Afterlife:
  • The text became a standard-bearer for the American Revolution, cited in early state constitutions and, crucially, inspiring the free speech clause of the First Amendment.
  • Notable quote: “Liberty of speech is a bulwark of all liberty; it can't be infringed…” (summary from segment, 49:20)
• The French Contrast:
  • At the same time, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man took a balancing approach: “Every citizen has the right to free expression, but not to abuse that. This right needs to be exercised responsibly.” (52:30)
• Enduring Consequence:
  • Because the First Amendment was written just before the French version became available, it remains uniquely absolutist and libertarian in its phrasing—shaping American legal doctrine for centuries.

8. Limits “Understood” and the Reality of Harm (55:18–59:02)

• Historical Understanding of Limits:
  • Early Americans understood there were bounds to speech—licentiousness, libel, and certain types of dangerous dissent were always subject to law.
  • “It's never been an American principle that harmful speech should be allowed, and that's understandable.”
    — Professor Farah Dababala (55:41)
• Suppression of Abolitionism:
  • Anti-slavery speech was often criminalized; the First Amendment did little to protect Black Americans or even white abolitionists.
  • “Throughout the 19th century, speech about slavery is routinely deemed…as beyond the pale.”
    — Professor Farah Dababala (56:54)

9. Private vs. Public: Modern Implications (58:48–60:16)

• First Amendment Scope:
  • The First Amendment only limits government; private entities are free to police and punish speech as they wish, meaning the reality of American free speech is both uniquely strong and uniquely weak.
  • “Any private employer…may sanction and sack people and ruin their lives for the same kinds of speech…most of life and most of expression…[is] not engaging with the government, but with each other…”
    — Professor Farah Dababala (59:02)

10. The Critical Take: Media Power and the Real Third Player (60:51–65:51)

• Free Speech Isn’t Just “Individual vs. Government”:
  • Modern debates neglect that mass media corporations shape public opinion, amplify certain voices, and silence others—often for profit, not truth.
  • “The incentives of the mass media are…to make money and to increase the power of their owners and shareholders.”
    — Professor Farah Dababala (63:26)
• Online Speech & the Challenge of Regulation:
  • Social media algorithms exert unprecedented influence, and are under-regulated compared to earlier mass media; the need for thoughtful scrutiny and reform has never been greater.

11. Concluding Reflections: The Seriousness of Speech (64:30–65:51)

• Speech as Deeply Powerful and Sometimes Harmful:
  • While most speech is trivial, society must grapple with defining and dealing with genuinely harmful forms—especially as amplification and repetition multiply their effects.
  • “We need to focus more on defining as a society what those harms are…rather than being sidetracked into shouting about free speech.”
    — Professor Farah Dababala (65:02)

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• “The stroke of the whip maketh marks in the flesh, but the stroke of the tongue breaketh the bones.” — Professor Farah Dababala, quoting the Old Testament (05:48)
• “Free speech is not a coherent doctrine. It's a weaponized slogan.” — Professor Farah Dababala (13:36)
• “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it…” — Jonathan Swift, cited by Professor Dababala (15:20)
• “Public speech is powerful and important and public. Female speech is meaningless.” — Professor Farah Dababala (37:05)
• “The free speech of some is always established through the silencing of others.” — Professor Farah Dababala (60:16)

Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|----------------------------------------------------------| | 05:00 | Seriousness and policing of speech in medieval society | | 07:49 | The early modern period: new political crimes, speech regulation | | 13:36 | The instability and subjectivity of free speech doctrines | | 17:13 | Radical Protestant moves toward conscience and toleration | | 23:00 | Birth of political free speech: Cato’s Letters | | 36:43 | Gender and race in the evolution of “free speech” | | 42:28 | Variations in Europe: Enlightenment, absolutism, and the press | | 49:05 | Cato’s Letters in America; First Amendment v. French model | | 55:18 | Understood limits on speech, harm, and abolitionism | | 58:48 | Public v. private speech; First Amendment limitations | | 60:51 | The overlooked third player: the mass media | | 64:30 | Reflections on the power and harm of speech |

Final Thoughts

This episode challenges simplistic, absolutist understandings of free speech by recovering the messy, contingent, and power-laden history of the concept. Professor Dababala’s research flips familiar narratives—exposing the exclusionary roots, partisan self-serving, and ongoing dilemmas in our pursuit of liberty of expression. The take-home: free speech must always be weighed not just against governmental constraint, but against broader structures of power, harm, and media amplification.