After the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes of 1685, which ended roughly one hundred years of limited toleration of French Protestantism, groups of peasants, shepherds and wool carders of the Cevennes, an area of southern France, sparked a religious revival in which, initially, young girls began trance-preaching, exhorting their followers to repent of their sins and expect the Day of Judgment. Their eschatological fervor soon attracted followers who gathered in secret, often outdoor locations. These secret Protestant assemblies alarmed Catholic and royal officials who attempted to suppress the gatherings. Their efforts at suppression failed and led in 1702 to Louis XIV's War of the Cevennes.

This paper does not address the actual religious revival of the Camisards, as these poor peasants and others came to be called, but focuses instead on the literate appropriation of the Camisard cause. The north European press seems to have been obsessed with the Camisards and their cause for roughly twenty five years. I examine what I've divided -- according to both generic and chronological criteria -- into three groups of printed sources on the Camisards. The first accompanies the original religious revival, often takes the form of compilations of testimonies, and reflects what Habermas and others have seen as a precursor to the independent public sphere. The second group is the mass of propaganda addressing the War of Cevennes:  an international, educated, Protestant class criticizing what are presented as the tyrannical abuses of the French king, who himself hires writers and other propagandists to take part in the debate. The third group dates from 1706 when a small group of Camisards made their way to London and attracted followers there. Hundreds of pamphlets and books appeared in just a four-year period in London, reflecting a public preoccupation with the appropriate sources of religious authority. At issue was the fact that the Camisards were illiterate and their religious message was passed on orally, rather than through the printed Bible interpreted by educated ministers.

So this paper addresses an international debate in the printed media at a time when the relationship between the press and political authorities was itself a controversial subject. It also addresses the relationship between print culture and oral culture, since the subjects of the debate -- and, in fact, some of the participants -- were a group of illiterate peasants. 

The paper examines the transition from the popular broadside and chapbook presses of the early nineteenth century to the mass-circulation newspaper press of the late nineteenth century. It demonstrates the importance of violence to the success of old and new medias. It suggests that the development of the mass press and its spread of the practice of reading resulted from its adaptation to, and not in its break with long-standing popular traditions. 

[The complete text of Walsh's paper is also available.]

In providing access to resources once restricted to a few, the World Wide Web has seriously challenged established authority in many fields. In most periods of history, information exchange and access is in reality an information hegemony -- knowledge carefully controlled and manipulated by elite groups, who thus gain power and status as experts. As with earlier  technical innovations, the World Wide Web threatens to disrupt the established relationship between information and the Expert Paradigm. This paper will compare the shocks the Web has brought to the Expert in three areas: political journalism, the visual arts, and intellectual property.