Abstract

The text deals with the well known first-in-the-world Swedish act of free press and access to public dossiers of 1766. The act is first contextualized in the swedish institutional development, which is defined as an oscillation between more absolutist and more parliamentarian institutional balance. Then, the political and geostrategic factors of the so called «age of freedom» are reconstructed and explained, including those more tightly intertwined with the making of the act itself. The freedom of press act is then explained in detail, together with some of its effects.