Passage of the Law on the Freedom of Printing
- When
- December 1766
- Where
- Sweden, where the act was passed
Sweden enacted the Freedom of the Press Act in 1766, abolishing censorship and becoming the first country with legally protected press freedom, aided by Anders Chydenius.
The Swedish Freedom of the Press Act was introduced in 1766, due in part to Anders Chydenius, a classical liberal member of parliament and Ostrobothnian priest. The law abolished censorship and guaranteed freedom of the press, making Sweden the first country in the world to adopt a legally protected freedom of the press. The legacy row dates the Law on the Freedom of Printing to 2 December 1766 in Stockholm; the supplied passages confirm the year 1766 but do not state an exact day, so the precise date of passage remains unverified.
Sources
- Freedom of the press Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-26
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.