| This dissertation explains why French revolutionaries went from declaring the freedom of the press in The Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen in 1789 to repressing, monitoring, and managing opinions by the time of the Terror. After identifying key concepts and practices rooted in Enlightenment and Old-Regime culture (policing, public opinion, calumny, honor, religion, and civic morality), it traces these factors through the early years of the Revolution. I argue that in declaring the freedom of the press, revolutionaries repudiated only pre-publication censorship, leaving open the question of post-facto punishment. Still steeped in what I identify as the culture of calumny, revolutionaries continued to express political contest through libel and to treat libel as a highly punishable offense. Moreover, the initial breakdown of judicial institutions, the absence of libel laws, and the explosion of libels after 1789 created a highly antagonistic environment in which animosities accumulated. This, combined with lingering notions of the sacredness of authority, made political pluralism and tolerance of dissent difficult to establish.;As for state surveillance of public opinion and its spread of civic values, this study shows that revolutionaries remained attached to the Enlightenment belief that policing should be approached as a social, pedagogical, and moral science. They believed that a well policed society---which was synonymous with a civilized society---required the scientific assessment of opinions and state tutelage in civic values. Although most revolutionaries believed that these values would be secured through religion in 1789, once counterrevolutionaries began exploiting religion, revolutionaries sought to anchor their increasingly secular civic morality in non-confessional waters. The stridency with which they tried to secure these values in 1792--1793 mirrored the ardor with which religion was used to reverse liberal revolutionary measures, particularly religious pluralism.;This study argues against the revisionist view that sees all policing during the Terror as inherently totalitarian. Although repression was indeed brutal, it was rooted in lingering Old-Regime obsessions with calumny and honor. However, revolutionary surveillance and spread of civic consciousness---practices common to subsequent liberal regimes---were motivated by efforts to escape civil strife. |
