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What Is Free Speech?: The History of a Dangerous Idea
'Eye-opening, thought-provoking and deeply enjoyable, What is Free Speech? is a work of great profundity and brilliance’ William Dalrymple
A fresh and exciting approach to one of the most controversial subjects of our time
‘Free Speech!’ is a clarion call all over the world, yet what it means today is more contested than ever. Many cultures regard it as in China, India, and across the Islamic world, unorthodox views about politics, sex, and religion are repressed and people are often punished for expressing them. Even in the western world, where it is held up as a core value, there is widespread discord and disagreement about what freedom of expression means. Amidst perennial imbalances of power, continually evolving cultural taboos, dramatic new technologies and a fast-changing global media landscape, where free speech comes from – and how we might think about it – are critical questions.
Through the lens of history, What Is Free Speech? shows us that freedom of speech is not an absolute from which societies and regimes have drifted or dissented at different times, but something more complicated and interesting.
Our modern conceptions of press and speech liberty, Dabhoiwala shows, were invented in Britain around 1700. The real history of freedom of expression is a story of countless fascinating men and women whose lives have shaped its principles and practices over the past 300 years – slaves and imperialists, poets and philosophers, plutocrats and revolutionaries. Ranging across Europe, North America and South Asia, and not neglecting other parts of the world, Dabhoiwala rejects celebratory platitudes about the past and present of free expression. Instead, his book explains how to think more deeply about free speech as a global as well as a local question — by tracing how we got into our current predicaments, showing that history complicates our contemporary presumptions, and suggesting fresh possibilities for the future.
A fresh and exciting approach to one of the most controversial subjects of our time
‘Free Speech!’ is a clarion call all over the world, yet what it means today is more contested than ever. Many cultures regard it as in China, India, and across the Islamic world, unorthodox views about politics, sex, and religion are repressed and people are often punished for expressing them. Even in the western world, where it is held up as a core value, there is widespread discord and disagreement about what freedom of expression means. Amidst perennial imbalances of power, continually evolving cultural taboos, dramatic new technologies and a fast-changing global media landscape, where free speech comes from – and how we might think about it – are critical questions.
Through the lens of history, What Is Free Speech? shows us that freedom of speech is not an absolute from which societies and regimes have drifted or dissented at different times, but something more complicated and interesting.
Our modern conceptions of press and speech liberty, Dabhoiwala shows, were invented in Britain around 1700. The real history of freedom of expression is a story of countless fascinating men and women whose lives have shaped its principles and practices over the past 300 years – slaves and imperialists, poets and philosophers, plutocrats and revolutionaries. Ranging across Europe, North America and South Asia, and not neglecting other parts of the world, Dabhoiwala rejects celebratory platitudes about the past and present of free expression. Instead, his book explains how to think more deeply about free speech as a global as well as a local question — by tracing how we got into our current predicaments, showing that history complicates our contemporary presumptions, and suggesting fresh possibilities for the future.
469 pages, Kindle Edition
First published March 27, 2025
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May 16, 2025
Not a bad book, just somewhat disappointing. Dabhoiwala, a senior researcher and professor at Princeton, does a good job bringing up the important historical contexts of the development of the debates around free speech around the world, but the overall argument lacks coherence and seems to be at some points painting a very much critique-worthy position of ‘free speech absolutism’ into too much of a carricature.
Dabhoiwala opens the book with a broader historical overview of the complex history of free speech regulations. Originally, speech was seen (in pre-16th century anywhere around the world) to be as harmful as physical acts (or to be a physical act in itself) and legislation concerning speech focused exclusively on the protection against slander, false accusations or blasphemy, etc. Throughout the book, there are examples of quite extreme laws prosecuting not just published speech but also generally almost private writings about contentious subjects (like critiques of monarchs or religious authorities in some examples).
But Dabhoiwala makes sure it’s not all seen as bleak - a core argument of the book is that no speech is fully and completely free, because we need grammar and other linguistic rules to communicate or for communication to be legible (at some points it felt like an ad absurdum argument). Freedom requires constraints.
Historical examples are abound: Censors in China saw themselves as ‘useful collaborators to tailor the book to the public’. Even in Roman times, ‘censors’ were public-spirited civil servants, protecting the public morals.
It was the free speech ‘absolutists’ who are the rather villainous characters of this book. Dabhoiwala states at various points that free speech was ‘always a weaponised mantra, not a completely coherent concept’. It is always about unequal distribution of power and either reinforcing it or fighting against it.
And while early on, Dabhoiwala states that the book deals not with ‘what to think about freedom of speech, but how to think about it’, one thing is clear - he really does not like the absolute language of the American First Amendment.
The First Amendment, and generally, the understanding of the absolutist freedom of speech in first the British and later American context, freedom of speaking the truth developed from the religious freedoms and freedoms of religious speech. In the political arena, it originated early on from the ‘right’ of truthful counsel for the more powerful - an early version of the latter defence of the right to freely debate public affairs, so that people can both resist tyranny and also induce good governance.
The American First Amendment is built upon Cato’s letters, a collection of early 18th-century newspaper columns by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, two English journalists of the early 18th century, arguing for a specific type of free speech, modelled on religious liberty. Dabhoiwala effectively demonstrates his argument about the inherently flawed nature of the absolutist concept of free speech by Trenchard and Gordon’s corruption and susceptibility to being influenced in their writings by powerful interests and government figures.
The approach of the First Amendment is globally and historically anomalous (and asymmetrical), and Cato’s letters are misunderstood. Rather than eliminating falsehoods, free speech can often falsify them. But even in Anglo-American countries with strong or absolutist free speech laws, the speech wasn’t ’free’ in the sense of without consequences, as these countries still had libel laws. In the mid-18th century, there was a development of the idea (including by William Blackstone) that free speech is a tool of government, not an inalienable right.
The chapters on Scandinavian developments of the free speech laws were a huge disappointment in how brief and relatively unstructured they were. Danish press freedom was created almost unilaterally by Johann Friedrich Struensee, the chief minister to the passive King Christian VII, as a part of broader enlightenment reforms. But it was cancelled after his downfall caused by the fact that he had an illegitimate child with the wife of the King.
In Sweden, it was passed (for just 6 years initially) by the estates in the Riksdag to explicitly allow for a free discussion of social and economic policies - as a tool for improvement of public policy (I do not know much about Swedish history so it was interesting to read about the strenght of the Rikstag during the Age of Liberty and the fact that they for instance created a rubbert stamp with King’s signature after he refused to sign one of the laws passed by them). But even the Swedish freedoms were curtailed by the reemergence of the power of the King.
Early American ‘freedom of speech’ understanding was coming from the Anglo-Dutch principle of being able to publish newspapers without prior government approval, not anything about a complete lack of consequences for those writing of publishing things in newspapers.
Dabhoiwala argues that the absolutist wording of the First Amendment, was a historical accident, and if the Bill of Rights was passed just a couple months later, it would have been influenced by the Article XI of the French Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen - which is seen on the states’ constitutions passed just a couple years later, which take a more ‘balanced approach’, based on the French Article XI – The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
The middle of the book has an interesting chapter on the colonial history of free speech, particularly in relation to India, which did not have a history of either free speech laws or restrictions. Colonial territories didn’t have press freedoms like metropoles - in India, colonial administrators explicitly limited press freedoms to limit the ability of the local population to resist the domination of the British. Dabhoiwala argues that the British colonialists effectively created restrictions on free speech (relating to protecting religious speech) in India, fostering artificial divisions between the religious groups.
The author argues that John Stuart Mill couldn’t shake the legacy of his colonialist father (who wrote a large history of India without ever visiting it) and essentially believed that there were civilizational developmental stages. The author argues that Mill’s greatest contribution was in for the first time theorising the concept of free speech as an individual right (thus going beyond the pragmatic arguments of Cato’s letters). But for all the author’s discussions about the genderisation of free speech and how much it was just for men, he does not mention Harriet Taylor Mill even once (even though her contribution to On Liberty is generally understood now to be pivotal).
The conception of the spoken words changed in the 18th century (Dabhoiwala relates this to the growth of mass print), and libel litigation significantly decreased - speech was split from physical action (also done theoretically by Mill). There is also a part of the penultimate chapter on the critiques of the communist class-based free speech doctrine, which is collective and class-based, although even the author concedes its insincerity in the reality of the USSR.
The influence of European models continued until 1919, which is in the US considered the birth of the American ‘century of free speech’, but it was also the time of the first Red Scare. Dabhoiwala argues that the conception of libertarian freedom of speech from was strongly influenced by socialist ideas in the first half of the 20th century and that the extreme libertarian understanding of today’s First Amendment (and decline of libel lawsuits in the US) came about in the 1960s as a result of anti-racist and civil rights lawsuits. But this also constituted a fall of the role of ‘public good’ in free speech regulations in the United States.
In the conclusion, Dabhoiwala calls free speech ‘an artificial construct’ and argues that one should always be suspicious if anyone invokes absolutist free speech in a debate. He claims that free speech is not just about content but also about process. Instead, he proposes two questions to be asked in every debate about the extent of free speech:
1. What is free speech invoked for?
2. How far do I support these aims?
Overall, the book is well written and entertaining. It is not as comprehensive as I would maybe like it to be, a large parts of the argument against the absolutist free speech are repeated, like the emphasis on the 18th century division between speech and actions, or about the relatively unique position of the First Amendment. Although the author explicitly states in the beginning that it is not his goal to provide a full definition of what free speech regulation ought to be, the book is not balanced enough to provide the reader enough space to create a coherent own conception of what free speech could be.
Ultimately, I do not agree with the author’s cynicism about the potential of free speech in the democratic process. Although flawed, I share his reservations about the calls for absolute speech by public personas and journalists alike - I still think it often serves as a beacon of hope for people resisting tyranny in many places around the world, even if it is never perfect.
Dabhoiwala opens the book with a broader historical overview of the complex history of free speech regulations. Originally, speech was seen (in pre-16th century anywhere around the world) to be as harmful as physical acts (or to be a physical act in itself) and legislation concerning speech focused exclusively on the protection against slander, false accusations or blasphemy, etc. Throughout the book, there are examples of quite extreme laws prosecuting not just published speech but also generally almost private writings about contentious subjects (like critiques of monarchs or religious authorities in some examples).
But Dabhoiwala makes sure it’s not all seen as bleak - a core argument of the book is that no speech is fully and completely free, because we need grammar and other linguistic rules to communicate or for communication to be legible (at some points it felt like an ad absurdum argument). Freedom requires constraints.
Historical examples are abound: Censors in China saw themselves as ‘useful collaborators to tailor the book to the public’. Even in Roman times, ‘censors’ were public-spirited civil servants, protecting the public morals.
It was the free speech ‘absolutists’ who are the rather villainous characters of this book. Dabhoiwala states at various points that free speech was ‘always a weaponised mantra, not a completely coherent concept’. It is always about unequal distribution of power and either reinforcing it or fighting against it.
And while early on, Dabhoiwala states that the book deals not with ‘what to think about freedom of speech, but how to think about it’, one thing is clear - he really does not like the absolute language of the American First Amendment.
The First Amendment, and generally, the understanding of the absolutist freedom of speech in first the British and later American context, freedom of speaking the truth developed from the religious freedoms and freedoms of religious speech. In the political arena, it originated early on from the ‘right’ of truthful counsel for the more powerful - an early version of the latter defence of the right to freely debate public affairs, so that people can both resist tyranny and also induce good governance.
The American First Amendment is built upon Cato’s letters, a collection of early 18th-century newspaper columns by John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, two English journalists of the early 18th century, arguing for a specific type of free speech, modelled on religious liberty. Dabhoiwala effectively demonstrates his argument about the inherently flawed nature of the absolutist concept of free speech by Trenchard and Gordon’s corruption and susceptibility to being influenced in their writings by powerful interests and government figures.
The approach of the First Amendment is globally and historically anomalous (and asymmetrical), and Cato’s letters are misunderstood. Rather than eliminating falsehoods, free speech can often falsify them. But even in Anglo-American countries with strong or absolutist free speech laws, the speech wasn’t ’free’ in the sense of without consequences, as these countries still had libel laws. In the mid-18th century, there was a development of the idea (including by William Blackstone) that free speech is a tool of government, not an inalienable right.
The chapters on Scandinavian developments of the free speech laws were a huge disappointment in how brief and relatively unstructured they were. Danish press freedom was created almost unilaterally by Johann Friedrich Struensee, the chief minister to the passive King Christian VII, as a part of broader enlightenment reforms. But it was cancelled after his downfall caused by the fact that he had an illegitimate child with the wife of the King.
In Sweden, it was passed (for just 6 years initially) by the estates in the Riksdag to explicitly allow for a free discussion of social and economic policies - as a tool for improvement of public policy (I do not know much about Swedish history so it was interesting to read about the strenght of the Rikstag during the Age of Liberty and the fact that they for instance created a rubbert stamp with King’s signature after he refused to sign one of the laws passed by them). But even the Swedish freedoms were curtailed by the reemergence of the power of the King.
Early American ‘freedom of speech’ understanding was coming from the Anglo-Dutch principle of being able to publish newspapers without prior government approval, not anything about a complete lack of consequences for those writing of publishing things in newspapers.
Dabhoiwala argues that the absolutist wording of the First Amendment, was a historical accident, and if the Bill of Rights was passed just a couple months later, it would have been influenced by the Article XI of the French Declaration of Rights of Man and of the Citizen - which is seen on the states’ constitutions passed just a couple years later, which take a more ‘balanced approach’, based on the French Article XI – The free communication of thoughts and of opinions is one of the most precious rights of man: any citizen thus may speak, write, print freely, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
The middle of the book has an interesting chapter on the colonial history of free speech, particularly in relation to India, which did not have a history of either free speech laws or restrictions. Colonial territories didn’t have press freedoms like metropoles - in India, colonial administrators explicitly limited press freedoms to limit the ability of the local population to resist the domination of the British. Dabhoiwala argues that the British colonialists effectively created restrictions on free speech (relating to protecting religious speech) in India, fostering artificial divisions between the religious groups.
The author argues that John Stuart Mill couldn’t shake the legacy of his colonialist father (who wrote a large history of India without ever visiting it) and essentially believed that there were civilizational developmental stages. The author argues that Mill’s greatest contribution was in for the first time theorising the concept of free speech as an individual right (thus going beyond the pragmatic arguments of Cato’s letters). But for all the author’s discussions about the genderisation of free speech and how much it was just for men, he does not mention Harriet Taylor Mill even once (even though her contribution to On Liberty is generally understood now to be pivotal).
The conception of the spoken words changed in the 18th century (Dabhoiwala relates this to the growth of mass print), and libel litigation significantly decreased - speech was split from physical action (also done theoretically by Mill). There is also a part of the penultimate chapter on the critiques of the communist class-based free speech doctrine, which is collective and class-based, although even the author concedes its insincerity in the reality of the USSR.
The influence of European models continued until 1919, which is in the US considered the birth of the American ‘century of free speech’, but it was also the time of the first Red Scare. Dabhoiwala argues that the conception of libertarian freedom of speech from was strongly influenced by socialist ideas in the first half of the 20th century and that the extreme libertarian understanding of today’s First Amendment (and decline of libel lawsuits in the US) came about in the 1960s as a result of anti-racist and civil rights lawsuits. But this also constituted a fall of the role of ‘public good’ in free speech regulations in the United States.
In the conclusion, Dabhoiwala calls free speech ‘an artificial construct’ and argues that one should always be suspicious if anyone invokes absolutist free speech in a debate. He claims that free speech is not just about content but also about process. Instead, he proposes two questions to be asked in every debate about the extent of free speech:
1. What is free speech invoked for?
2. How far do I support these aims?
Overall, the book is well written and entertaining. It is not as comprehensive as I would maybe like it to be, a large parts of the argument against the absolutist free speech are repeated, like the emphasis on the 18th century division between speech and actions, or about the relatively unique position of the First Amendment. Although the author explicitly states in the beginning that it is not his goal to provide a full definition of what free speech regulation ought to be, the book is not balanced enough to provide the reader enough space to create a coherent own conception of what free speech could be.
Ultimately, I do not agree with the author’s cynicism about the potential of free speech in the democratic process. Although flawed, I share his reservations about the calls for absolute speech by public personas and journalists alike - I still think it often serves as a beacon of hope for people resisting tyranny in many places around the world, even if it is never perfect.
August 21, 2025
TLDR: Great for history, look elsewhere for free speech debate analysis. If you're interested in histories of ideas, I recommend also "Arsistocracy of Talent" by John Wooldridge & "Democracy, A Life" by Paul Cartledge. Further suggestions in comments appreciated.
What is free speech I think can be separated into two sections: historical review (5 stars) and analysis (3 stars). I averaged to 4.
The history part is well done. It is robust in its review, further than anything I know of. It at times does well to consider the factors under free speech, and its development. Its progression from religious toleration to political toleration to individual freedom, considering the who, what & why is well done.
It also does well to create a story. History, as the narrative of chaotic events, isn't always easy to do. He does well to go into detail of the Cato letters and their impact, and implications of their grifty context. He does well to strcture the arguments and context of those in history, such as the racial and colonial views of creators which would be considered now a double standard. He does well to choreograph the changing attitudes of Americans and the first amendment, with implications through their rulings.
Despite saying he would not give a view on Free Speech, the author generally goes out of his way to lambast the "free speech asbolutist" position, making (often fair) criticisms on the way. My issue here is either (a) stake your name on a position (he doesn't) or (b) give a fair viewing (again, doesn't). I think Aristocracy of Talent, that does (b) incredibly well has spoiled me.
Though at times he gives a fair historic view, his considering of theory is haphazard. He does not consider the tradeoffs of positions he clearly has personal dislike of or consider these views on merits alone, on both sides.
More importantly, his considering of policy is where it breaks down. Sure free speech absolutists are hypocritical on their own bug bears. Agree, and fair enough. But does that make policy making of hate speech and other areas easy? Can we make a policy, and considering wind chamges highlighted by US judges on the first amendment, be happy application will be done well? The imprisonment in the UK of people over free speech for years e.g. Count Dankula and post riots instinctively irks many (I'll put my hands up for not knowing details of these cases, but follow the instinct in concern). When putting up blockers to speech you do have to ask these questions: am I happy to sanction state violence to prevent this? Can it be misinterpreted conveniently? I'm not a fan of the first amendment, but cures often seem worse than the illness. This gets even more uncomfortable when an otherwise law abiding citizen gets put behind bars. I think the author would do himself credit for considering the consequences of positions he digs out but then refuses to defend.
What is free speech I think can be separated into two sections: historical review (5 stars) and analysis (3 stars). I averaged to 4.
The history part is well done. It is robust in its review, further than anything I know of. It at times does well to consider the factors under free speech, and its development. Its progression from religious toleration to political toleration to individual freedom, considering the who, what & why is well done.
It also does well to create a story. History, as the narrative of chaotic events, isn't always easy to do. He does well to go into detail of the Cato letters and their impact, and implications of their grifty context. He does well to strcture the arguments and context of those in history, such as the racial and colonial views of creators which would be considered now a double standard. He does well to choreograph the changing attitudes of Americans and the first amendment, with implications through their rulings.
Despite saying he would not give a view on Free Speech, the author generally goes out of his way to lambast the "free speech asbolutist" position, making (often fair) criticisms on the way. My issue here is either (a) stake your name on a position (he doesn't) or (b) give a fair viewing (again, doesn't). I think Aristocracy of Talent, that does (b) incredibly well has spoiled me.
Though at times he gives a fair historic view, his considering of theory is haphazard. He does not consider the tradeoffs of positions he clearly has personal dislike of or consider these views on merits alone, on both sides.
More importantly, his considering of policy is where it breaks down. Sure free speech absolutists are hypocritical on their own bug bears. Agree, and fair enough. But does that make policy making of hate speech and other areas easy? Can we make a policy, and considering wind chamges highlighted by US judges on the first amendment, be happy application will be done well? The imprisonment in the UK of people over free speech for years e.g. Count Dankula and post riots instinctively irks many (I'll put my hands up for not knowing details of these cases, but follow the instinct in concern). When putting up blockers to speech you do have to ask these questions: am I happy to sanction state violence to prevent this? Can it be misinterpreted conveniently? I'm not a fan of the first amendment, but cures often seem worse than the illness. This gets even more uncomfortable when an otherwise law abiding citizen gets put behind bars. I think the author would do himself credit for considering the consequences of positions he digs out but then refuses to defend.
October 5, 2025
3.5 stars. Higher because the content is important and relevant and more people should know that the idea is far more complex (historically and ideologically) than it seems. Lower because it drags a bit (not surprisingly so, though).
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November 20, 2025
I listened to the audio version at 1.15x speed. Good historical analysis.
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