Asking questions is appropriate here, I hope

[rohajavongareth.livejournal.com]

I was wondering how widespread education was in the Revolutionary era and/or the decades immediately prior to that.

To be a little more precise, how many people were actually literate and how was that spread over the different social classes? How much farther than that did the average education go? For example, who would have been able to understand Latin? Would you need to attend a special institution to get that degree of education?

On a related note, how widespread was the knowledge of different political theories? Who would have been well versed in those?

Comments

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

It's unfortunate no one has yet answered to this (I guess they are still on holidays?), so I will!

There has been works to evaluate the literacy of the second half of the 18th century until the French Revolution and to study the level of reading/understanding of the population of the philosophical theories. The historian I can think of right now who wrote a lot about this (and who wrote in English, which means you can read him!) is Robert Darnton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Darnton#References). I particularly think of:

- The Business of Enlightenment: A Publishing History of the Encyclopédie, 1775-1800 (1979)
- Revolution in Print: the Press in France 1775-1800 (1989) edited with Daniel Roche
- The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Prerevolutionary France (1995)
- The Corpus of Clandestine Literature in France, 1769-1789 (1995)

He gives examples of the social classes who had access to the books, of the books they had ordered from librarians or the inventories of their private libraries, etc. You can find a lot of answers to your questions in these books, I'm sure. However, not to leave you here on your historical appetite, I'll give you some quick answers:

how many people were actually literate and how was that spread over the different social classes? (...) On a related note, how widespread was the knowledge of different political theories? Who would have been well versed in those?
We know that people were more literate in this period from one very clear sign: before, people used to sign with an 'x', as we know -- but in this period, people usually knew at least how to sign their own name. (I think the 'x' was more and more rare, if it hadn't disappeared already -- it'd need to be checked obviously; I don't have the reference for that, but it's one of those things my profs (specialist of the 18th) say and repeat, so they may have read it from Darnton.) Literacy was thus more spread, but also: we mustn't neglect the role of the oral culture. The café was a whole new "institution" that truly participated in the diffusion of the Enlightenment thoughts and on the creation of the "public opinion" (Keith Baker and Jürgen Habermas (and this one is German!) are those to read on this concept): those who knew how to read would read the news or the philosophers (more often, vulgarisations) to the others in the cafés. On this, Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique, which was a pocket book and a vulgarisation of the Encyclopédie, was greatly useful. Darnton also wrote on the Encyclopédie, as mentioned above, and he also wrote on the "forbidden best-sellers" and the role of "clandestine literature": there was a lot of short, tiny books, some that we may not have anymore, that were bought or exchanged (illegally, obviously) which were a blend of vulgarized philosophical principles, political and religious pamphlets, and pornography (because in 18th century porn, sex scenes were intercut with philosophical discussions and critiques of the established powers -- so much that "livres philosophiques" (philosophical books) was a commonly used synonym (or euphemism?) of "pornographic books" then). All of these forms of transmissions (and I may forget some, obviously) of the Enlightened or just critical culture participated in the destruction of the bases of the Ancien Régime: the censorship was less and less efficient, because the circles of power were themselves eaten away by the philosophical poison (as the rigid reactionaries said). Louis XV's mistress, Madame de Pompadour, was a protector of the Philosophes and of the Encyclopédie, such as Malesherbes... who was yet responsible of the royal censorship!