ABSTRACT
A recurring phenomenon in history is that literacy appears to flourish, when large, complex states and cities are organised together with a good deal of craft, industry and trade. The opposition to the spread of literacy in England raises the issue of a technology which is no longer naked and attached only to its original uses. Literacy in England in the nineteenth century had accrued round its base uses of aiding memory and communication a complex of cultural connotations. That literacy and the technologies which have multiplied its media were indispensable to this result is not in doubt. Literacy is of course a major medium for the spread of the contagion. Literacy is a deliberate and required instrument of instruction, reflection, and independent and divergent expression. Literacy would be employed as an innovation to help do the same, only better, and to conserve the status quo – by no means to embark on adventure, let alone revolution.
