In 2013 two hundred and fifty years have passed since Peter Forsskål (1732 - 1763), one of Carl Linnæus’s most promising adepts, perished during a scientific expedition to Yemen. This was commemorated on 24th October with a seminar at Kungl. biblioteket, The National Library of Sweden, on freedom of expression and freedom of the press. The participants – a mix of scholars, professionals and a learned general public – listened to presentations on Forsskål and his legacy by myself, from Kungl. biblioteket, David Goldberg, from the international Forsskål project, Helena Jäderblom, from the European Court of Human Rights, and Ola Larsmo, from the Swedish branch of PEN International. The seminar was chaired by emeritus professor Ove Bring, distinguished expert on human rights.

Only thirty-one years of age at the time of his death, Forsskål was well accomplished in many fields. Today, he is renowned for his advocacy of the freedom of expression and the press. In 1759, Forsskål published a pamphlet, Thoughts on Civil Liberty, consisting of twenty pithy paragraphs championing civil rights in Sweden – freedom of trade, security of life and property, land reforms, access to vocational schools, the principle of appointment by merit, curbing exercise of power beyond right… The most important means of achieving these ends, Forsskål believed, was a “limited Government and unlimited freedom of the written word.”

All in all, Forsskål’s pamphlet was a proclamation similar to the American Declaration of Independence of 1776, and the French Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen of 1789. He was, by no means, a forerunner of the more famous American and French declarations. But his pamphlet does prove how widespread the new Enlightenment ideas – deeply rooted in natural law theory – had become by the mid-eighteenth-century. Moreover, the peculiar Swedish polity also provided quite unique opportunities to put these new ideas into practice, but this did not happen without struggle.


The years between 1719 and 1772 are known as the Age of Liberty in Swedish history. Characteristic of this period was the formation of a republican polity in which the king’s powers were severely circumscribed and political control rested within the Council and the Diet. The constitution of 1719/1720 had been drafted as a countermeasure to royal absolutism, but it soon began to be interpreted with inspiration from Enlightenment values and presupposition. Although it took several decades for a radical stance to evolve, the process was more or less inevitable since change was integral to the parliamentary system.

With his pamphlet Forsskål drew attention to the prevailing gap between official rhetoric and political practise. The King’s Chancellery (Kanslikollegium) interrogated Forsskål. Given the chance to renounce his convictions, he stubbornly refused to admit that there could be anything wrong with defending “Swedish Liberty,” which was almost an official motto of the age. Forsskål’s interrogators were unable to refute his arguments and reluctantly had to let him go. Nevertheless, his pamphlet was confiscated and banned the following spring, but only seventy-nine copies could be tracked down out of a print run of five hundred. Forsskål’s employer at the Faculty of Uppsala University was instructed to give him a serious warning for his lack of judgement, but no punishment was inflicted. Forsskål was obviously prepared to continue his tussle with the authorities, but since it was the king (i.e. the Council) that had forbidden his pamphlet, the ban could only be revoked by the Diet. Its next session was scheduled for the middle of October 1760, but by that time Forsskål had already embarked on his fateful Arabian expedition.

Forsskål was not alone in his struggle for civil rights. Freedom of the press became one of the recurring issues during the Diets of the 1760s. Other political radicals continued to challenge censorship until the first Freedom of the Press Act was finally issued in December 1766. The enactment gave rise to a flood of partisan pamphlets and an intensified public discussion with a radical stance. This political radicalisation, which for all practical reasons led to the dissolution of noble privileges, came to a sudden stop in 1772, when King Gustav III carried out a coup-d’état, restored royal powers, and annulled all the constitutional laws of the preceding century. As a response to the uncertainty regarding print restrictions, Gustav III issued a new and, what was labelled, improved Freedom of the Press Act in 1774. In a performance of propagandistic self-righteousness the King also sent a copy of his new law to Voltaire, who most likely had no knowledge of the previous ordinance.

Voltaire was most certainly unaware of the principal differences between the two ordinances. Whereas the old act had permitted everything to be printed that was not expressly forbidden, the new act made it possible to prosecute authors and printers for having published any material that was not expressly allowed. Gustav III did not reintroduce pre-censorship, but by reversing the essence of the ordinance he managed to put an end to political debate. A proper Freedom of the Press Act was not reintroduced until 1810 and even then not without opposition.


In 2016, Sweden will commemorate the drafting of the world’s first freedom of the press act. Unfortunately, the historical importance of this piece of legislation is all too little known among the general populace in Sweden. Furthermore, discussions at the recent Forsskål seminar proved that freedom of speech still needs to be defended not only in contemporary dictatorships, but also in today’s western democracies. Sophisticated surveillance involves new challenges to personal integrity and civil rights; governments are more inclined to withhold information about its actions from its citizens. Peter Forsskål’s concluding admonition has therefore not lost its validity and relevance:


“Finally, it is also an important right in a free society to be freely allowed to contribute to society’s well-being. However, if that is to occur, it must be possible for a society’s state of affairs to become known to everyone, and it must be possible for everyone to speak his mind freely about it. Where this is lacking, liberty is not worth its name.”