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How big & immediate (powerful) leaders' reach were 200 years ago? Were they able to send their message to 10s millions of people instantly and lead them to thi

How big & immediate (powerful) leaders' reach were 200 years ago? Were they able to send their message to 10s millions of people instantly and lead them to things? or how long would it take them to reach all those people. I wonder if today's leaders have a very different power compared to when most of these laws and systems were put in place?

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
It was less immediate, but anyone who wanted to respond was similarly constrained, so there wasn't much difference in actual power. The coup against Peter III of Russia is an instructive historical example; Catherine couldn't instantly send her message everywhere, but neither could anyone else, so she just had to visit power centers one by one and convince them that she was in charge.
- owl57 6y ago
  Mention of Russian coups reminded me of the following quite relevant Lenin quote[1] that for some reason was repeated enough times by Soviet media to be easily recognizable by anyone born in the USSR: "Our three main forces—the fleet, the workers, and the army units—must be so combined as to occupy without fail and to hold at any cost: (a) the telephone exchange; (b) the telegraph office; (c) the railway stations; (d) and above all, the bridges." [1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/08.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/08.htm
DenisM 6y ago
In the 1830 King Charles the 10 of France has issued certain proclamations, but nobody found out out because the printers refused to print them, and instead spent their energy and paper on liberal revolutionary materials. Charles pissed them off a couple days earlier by trying to hoist onerous censorship so they showed him a middle finger. Don’t fuck with people who buy ink by the barrel.
- read_if_gay_ 6y ago
  Nobody elected those people though. In a democracy, they shouldn't have that much power.
  - intended 6y ago
    But isn't it the core Republican platform that business should be able to decide who they work for and how they conduct their business? In essence there should simply be more printers, so that the King could get someone else to print his pamphlets.
    - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
      I think that'd be one solution everybody could agree on, but sadly social networks strongly tend towards becoming monopolies.
zokier 6y ago
You don't need to go back 200 years even. First Oval Office address was made by Hoover in 1929, less than 100 years ago. Television appearances started happening post-war, first apparently by Truman in 1947, but really more common from 50s onward. In the 18th and 19th centuries you heard what the president said through newspapers, subject to whatever editorial policies each happened to have.
rsynnott 6y ago
> Were they able to send their message to 10s millions of people instantly and lead them to things? No, definitely not. Some states would have had mechanisms for distributing stuff that the leaders wanted publicised, but it wouldn't generally have been all that common. And, in practice, in many cases, if the leader happened to be insane, the system would suppress it. George III wasn't bothering everyone in Britain with weird rants every few hours, say. The ability of leaders to harangue the general public whenever they feel like it is, in practice, _very_ new; basically since Twitter became popular.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

It was less immediate, but anyone who wanted to respond was similarly constrained, so there wasn't much difference in actual power. The coup against Peter III of Russia is an instructive historical example; Catherine couldn't instantly send her message everywhere, but neither could anyone else, so she just had to visit power centers one by one and convince them that she was in charge.

owl57 6y ago
Mention of Russian coups reminded me of the following quite relevant Lenin quote[1] that for some reason was repeated enough times by Soviet media to be easily recognizable by anyone born in the USSR: "Our three main forces—the fleet, the workers, and the army units—must be so combined as to occupy without fail and to hold at any cost: (a) the telephone exchange; (b) the telegraph office; (c) the railway stations; (d) and above all, the bridges." [1] https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/08.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/oct/08.htm

DenisM 6y ago

In the 1830 King Charles the 10 of France has issued certain proclamations, but nobody found out out because the printers refused to print them, and instead spent their energy and paper on liberal revolutionary materials. Charles pissed them off a couple days earlier by trying to hoist onerous censorship so they showed him a middle finger. Don’t fuck with people who buy ink by the barrel.

read_if_gay_ 6y ago
Nobody elected those people though. In a democracy, they shouldn't have that much power.
- intended 6y ago
  But isn't it the core Republican platform that business should be able to decide who they work for and how they conduct their business? In essence there should simply be more printers, so that the King could get someone else to print his pamphlets.
  - read_if_gay_ 6y ago
    I think that'd be one solution everybody could agree on, but sadly social networks strongly tend towards becoming monopolies.

zokier 6y ago

You don't need to go back 200 years even. First Oval Office address was made by Hoover in 1929, less than 100 years ago. Television appearances started happening post-war, first apparently by Truman in 1947, but really more common from 50s onward. In the 18th and 19th centuries you heard what the president said through newspapers, subject to whatever editorial policies each happened to have.

rsynnott 6y ago

> Were they able to send their message to 10s millions of people instantly and lead them to things? No, definitely not. Some states would have had mechanisms for distributing stuff that the leaders wanted publicised, but it wouldn't generally have been all that common. And, in practice, in many cases, if the leader happened to be insane, the system would suppress it. George III wasn't bothering everyone in Britain with weird rants every few hours, say. The ability of leaders to harangue the general public whenever they feel like it is, in practice, _very_ new; basically since Twitter became popular.