3 ms·
Really? "The literacy rate in England in the 1640s was around 30 percent for males, rising to 60 percent in the mid-18th century." - Wikipedia
by a3voices 11y ago
Really? "The literacy rate in England in the 1640s was around 30 percent for males, rising to 60 percent in the mid-18th century." - Wikipedia
- ceejayoz 11y agoThere's more to Europe than England, and if England's rate was 60% at the beginning of it, I'd suspect the more feudal parts of Europe were a lot lower.
- oblio 11y agoAdd on top of it the "for males" tidbit and things looked even bleaker overall.
- a3voices 11y agoAnd even if the rest of Europe was 10%, that was possibly 1000x higher than Africa at the time.
- dang 11y agoPlease stop turning this HN thread into a flamewar.
- puredemo 11y agoSounds like an accurate statement to me, how is it incendiary?
- dang 11y agoThat's not a factual statement, it's a made-up one taking the form of one. But that doesn't matter. Scattering dramatic claims with no common element other than a generic colonialism-was-good guarantees a flamewar whether factual bits are in there or not. Repeatedly moving the goalposts to keep the drama going is a sign of flame-fanning as well.
- eveningcoffee 11y agoWell, I do not know nothing about Catholic part of Europe, but there was a man named Martin Luther who lived between 1483 and 1546. The whole point (or cover story at least) of European protestant movement (in contrast to the English one) was to make the word of God accessible to the people (i.e. remove the Church monopoly of scripture reading). Printing press was already invented in 1440 to print all the bibles necessary.