What Is Free Speech?

[A] brilliant history of a weaponised mantra. – Joe Moran * The Guardian *There could be no better guide [to free speech] than Fara Dabhoiwala…Every chapter…makes you think afresh about the subject. – Ferdinand Mount * London Review of Books *Excellent…the real lesson of this book is that fights about free speech are almost always proxies for something else. – David Runciman * BBC History Magazine *[A] brilliantly incisive argument about the ways in which free speech has been used—not just to liberate but also to put in bondage…An enlightening and field-defining history about the right to speak and the social consequences of its exercise. * Kirkus Reviews *Tracing a global history of speaking freely is no small task. Dabhoiwala tracks the vicissitudes of the idea with gusto, through religious prohibitions (heresy and blasphemy), monarchical edicts (sedition, abolished in Britain in 2009), colonial suppression of slave speech, and the perennial existence of what our betters now call ‘misinformation’, which takes giant leaps forwards (or backwards) in the era of printing, newspapers and the internet. – Nina Power * The Telegraph *A rich and wide-ranging history which reminds us that disagreement over what may be printed or said in public has long been ferocious…[and] confirms how most arguments over speech are arguments at the same time about something else. – Edmund Fawcett * Financial Times *Fara Dabhoiwala’s remarkable global history of free speech is written with wit, fluency, and dazzling erudition. Constantly surprising, and full of subtlety and nuance, it reveals what a new and innovative idea free speech was when it was first upheld as a civilized goal in the eighteenth century—and how many extraordinary twists and turns it has taken ever since, into the present. Examining who in history could speak and who was silenced, Dabhoiwala reminds us of the crucial relationship between speech and power. Eye-opening, thought-provoking, and deeply enjoyable, What Is Free Speech? is a work of great profundity and brilliance. – William Dalrymple, author of The Golden RoadThis is a magisterial cultural and comparative history of the idea of free speech. Loaded with novel insights on almost every page, this book is meticulously documented with original and frequently surprising research on countless previously unexplored topics. – Frederick Schauer, author of Free Speech: A Philosophical Inquiry and Thinking Like a LawyerWhat Is Free Speech? couldn’t be a more timely question, and Fara Dabhoiwala provides exactly the capacious history we need to address it. Dabhoiwala shows how an emphasis on free speech as an individual right has crowded out tougher considerations about the purpose, context, and audience for free speech. At once wide-ranging and trenchant, erudite and engagingly written, What Is Free Speech? represents the history of ideas at its smart, topical best. – Maya Jasanoff, author of The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global WorldElegantly and resourcefully, What Is Free Speech? rescues an important principle from ideological abuse and journalistic simplification and enables a clear understanding of it. This essential book also grippingly relates the inseparably intertwined histories of liberalism and colonialism. – Pankaj Mishra, author of Bland Fanatics: Liberals, Race, and EmpireFake news and distrusted information are not inventions of our internet era, but recurrences of disputed practices abounding in eighteenth-century America. With telling details and sweeping perspective, Fara Dabhoiwala offers histories of disputes over speech and its regulation. This bracing book shows the forging of contemporary conceptions of ‘free speech’ in the crucibles of colonialism, slavery, capitalism, and technological disruption out of materials drawn from England, America, Scandinavia, India, and beyond. Anyone interested in understanding freedom of speech, its scope, and its limitations should read this arresting book.” – Martha Minow, author of Saving the News: Why the Constitution Calls for Government Action to Save Freedom of Speech

Fara Dabhoiwala is Senior Research Scholar at Princeton University and author of The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution. Formerly on faculty at the University of Oxford, he is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, All Souls College, and Exeter College.