The Republic of Letters

REVOLUTIONS IN EUROPE AND NORTH AMERICA HIST 1301 | History The Republic of Letters Public discourse and discussion were intrinsic to the thriving print culture of the Enlightenment. In late seventeenth-century French cities, the percentage of literate males was around 30 percent, while the percentage of literate women was about 14 percent. By the middle of the eighteenth century, the percentage had risen to 27 percent for women and 48 percent for men. An burst of books, pamphlets, periodicals, and political cartoons resulted from these soaring rates. The proliferation of printed materials not only contributed to the standardisation of spelling and knowledge systems, but it also made information of all kinds— including news, opinion, poetry, political philosophy, and scientific texts—available to a far larger audience than could have been achieved through spoken word alone. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a group of writers known as the Republic of Letters corresponded with one another over great distances across Europe and the Atlantic, exchanging handwritten letters and published materials of all kinds that were vital to the international exchange and dissemination of ideas. Unlike the people of a political republic, who reside in the same physical region, the residents of the Republic of Letters were bound together by ideas disseminated via literature. Every literate person may be a member of the Republic of Letters, regardless of where they lived in Europe or the Atlantic region. Like theoretically free and equal citizens of a political republic, they interacted with one other on the basis of intellectual equality and freely shared ideas. Prominent political figures and intellectuals including Catherine the Great, Benjamin Franklin, and Voltaire were among the luminaries. Because the participants in the Republic of Letters were multilingual and came from a variety of nations, a large portion of their work was either in Latin, which was the universal language of scholarship throughout multilingual Europe at the time, or required the assistance of skilled translators. The majority of people found it challenging to actively engage in the print culture of the Enlightenment because of this barrier. The comparatively low literacy rates among the craftsmen, peasants, and tradespeople of the era limited the direct impact of Enlightenment books among the general population, despite the ubiquitous influence of print culture. While rates of literacy among the urban elite, notably affluent merchants and nobles, were fast rising, for individuals at the lowest end of the social hierarchy, especially in rural regions, they remained considerably below 20 percent. In theory, the Enlightenment promoted democratic ideas regarding the sharing of information, but in reality, only those with sufficient resources and free time were able to engage in this exchange. Books remained unaffordable for all but the richest sections of society due to their outrageously high cost. For the majority of labourers and peasants in the eighteenth century, even inexpensively printed pamphlets were a substantial price. Lending libraries had developed during the latter part of the eighteenth century to increase the reading public's access to printed literature, but book borrowing was restricted to a small group of academics and government officials. However, reading clubs that charged an annual fee for access to books and periodicals started to grow the number of readers and raise middle-class literacy rates by the end of the century.