There were no modern democracies, where entire populations could truly say that they governed themselves, until after the Gutenberg revolution. Printing presses broke literacy out of the cloistered elite, and when entire populations became capable of reading and writing about the issues that affected their lives, they demanded and won the power to determine their fate. There was a long struggle over the Crown's power to control the press. The American Revolution was founded in that struggle for individual liberties from State interference, and freedom of the press was at the core. This has all happened before, with the ultimately doomed effort to control and suppress the effects of the printing press