Reporting a Revolution: a Failed Propaganda Campaign

Abstract

During the English Civil War, both royalists and parliamentarians made great strides in the development of sophisticated propaganda machinery. Parliamentarian politicians in particular sought to exert influence over the media, and to effect `control’ over the press. Such control manifested itself in ways which were both negative, in terms of a system of censorship, and positive, in terms of influencing the content of books, pamphlets and newspapers in a substantive way. I have traced elsewhere the development of propaganda techniques during the 1640s,¹ one key to understanding the sophistication of which lies in the integration of pre-publication licensers with authors, printers, publishers, and distributors, all of whose efforts could be coordinated by politicians. Another key is the way in which the appearance of propaganda came to be timed in order to offer maximum support to individual actions, events and initiatives. Beyond identifying works of propaganda, and the nature of the propaganda machine operated by parliament during the 1640s, there are more difficult questions.