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The rare noun papyrocracy has had several meanings:
– originally: the rule, or the power, of paper money (as opposed to metallic currency)—cf., below, quotations 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 & 7;
– later also: the rule, or the power, of bureaucracy—cf., below, quotations 8, 9, 10 & 11.
—Cf. also, below, in quotation 5, an isolated use of papyrocracy in reference to newspapers.
The noun papyrocracy is composed of the prefix papyro- and of the suffix -cracy:
– borrowed from Greek παπυρο-, the prefix papyro- is used to form nouns with the sense: of, or relating to, paper or papyrus—cf., for example, the noun papyrophobia, designating the fear of paper;
– borrowed from Greek -κρατία, the suffix -cracy means: rule, power—cf., for example, the noun bureaucracy, designating a system of administration by a hierarchy of officials following clearly-defined procedures in a routine manner.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the noun papyrocracy that I have found:
1-: From The Times (London, England) of Tuesday 26th January 1830 [page 2, column 5]:
—Here, probably on the model of the noun aristocracy, designating the privileged ruling class, the noun Papyrocracy (with capital initial) designates the influential banking class advocating the use of paper money without security:
A wholesome proposal was made some few years ago,—viz., that bankers should be forced to give security to the amount of the notes which they might desire to circulate. It was a wise and sound expedient, and if realized, might have enabled us to dispense with the cost of a metallic currency, and to confide securely in one of paper, resting on the basis of solid property. But what was the consequence? Why the bankers did all but rebel. They raised such an outcry about oppression, inquisition, persecution, and the Lord knows what, that the country gentlemen, many of whom these innocents had got pretty deeply into their books, were dragooned, against their own conviction, to join the chorus of the ragmen 1, and so the Minister, whose hands were as much tied up by the aristocracy as those of the latter were by the Papyrocracy, was compelled, whether he would or not, to forego a scheme supported by good sense and upright feeling. No, without security, no more small notes, if it so pleases the Esquires and their keepers.
1 From the slang use of the noun rag to designate paper money, the noun ragman was a derogatory appellation for a banker.—Cf. also, below, the plural noun rags in quotation 3.
2-: From The Times (London, England) of Wednesday 18th November 1835 [page 4, column 2]:
The wildest of the currency doctors do not pretend that we should return to an inconvertible paper currency. Then what, in the name of wonder, would they desire? Will they assert that every man ought to have a facility of raising money, whether he has property wherewith to repay his loans or not? A pretty state the creditors would soon be reduced to in that case! Well, then, if that extravagance be given up, what further? Do the papermongers affect to say that, taking paper and gold together, there is too contracted a currency in this country? Why, so far from it, that money never was so cheap, the current interest on mortgages being not so much as 4 per cent., whereas during the blessed papyrocracy the market price of money exceeded the legal rate of interest—namely, 5 per cent., and country gentlemen were forced to cheat the law, raising loans by way of annuity at 7 or 8.
3-: From a letter, by ‘A Metallist’, published in The Evening Post (New York City, New York, USA) of Saturday 25th November 1837 [page 2, column 2]:
If then this course is to be continued, our paper fetters are rivetted, and we shall continue to exhibit to the world a new form of civil polity—a papyrocracy. But all will be remedied if we have the good sense to be taught wisdom, and concentrate upon the true and only point at issue—whether rags shall be in future foisted upon us as money, to the pecuniary loss of many and the moral ruin of the state.
4-: From Hanging, Past and Present, published in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine (Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland) of April 1843 [page 238, column 2]:
A simple countryman, who had acquired the dangerous accomplishments of reading and writing, having come into possession of a five-pound note, altered the five, in a rude manner, with the pen, to ten, and presented it, in that form, to be exchanged for cash, at a bank in Waterford. For this attempt, which, of course, did not succeed, he was tried and condemned to death; but the simplicity of the man was so apparent, that the jury strongly recommended him to the mercy of the crown; and the judge who presided supported the application with all his influence.
That Government, however, had a “vow in heaven” against sparing one drop of blood which the tribunals had once devoted to the altars of the Papyrocracy 2.
2 The only occurrence of papyrocracy that the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has recorded is that from the above-quoted text published in Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine in April 1843. In its 1st and 2nd editions (1909 and 1989), s.v. papyro-, the OED erroneously defined papyrocracy as meaning: “government by paper, i.e. by newspapers or literature”. And, in its current online edition (August 2025), s.v. papyrocracy, the OED erroneously defines the word as meaning: “government by excessive paperwork”.
5-: From a letter to the Editor, dated Sydney, Wednesday 7th February 1844, by ‘Verbum Sat’, published in The Sydney Record (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) of Saturday 10th February 1844 [page 150, column 3]:
I have always considered it an excellent custom, that the personality of the Editor of a newspaper is kept out of public view. No one looks to him as the responsible individual. The publisher is the acknowledged scapegoat for all his offences. An Editor is in fact a Sultan, who “can do no wrong;” the publisher is his vizier, who promulgates his fiats to the people. If any gross wrong be done to the State, the vizier, and not the Sultan, is the sufferer. There is, however, one important difference; for when the Sultan and the vizier happen to quarrel between themselves, the practice of the Ottoman Porte and of the Celestial Empire is, to chop off the subordinate’s head, or, as recently occurred to the unfortunate Ke Shin, to cut him in halves. But in what may be styled the Atramento 3—Papyrocracy of Britain, the reverse is the case; for, in the event of a quarrel, the vizier most disloyally throws up his heels, and dislodges the Sultan from his croupe.
3 The word atramento refers to the Latin noun ātrāmentum, meaning: writing-ink.
6-: From The Spelling Bee Manual for Competitors. Comprising a Selection of upwards of six thousand scientific and other difficult Words [&c.] (London: George Routledge and Sons, [1876]), by Thomas Edmondson [page 125]:
Papyroc’răsy (papyrocracy), s.—the power of paper money.
7-: From a correspondence from St. Petersburg, Russia, dated Sunday 19th November 1876, published in The Daily Telegraph (London, England) of Monday 27th November 1876 [page 5, column 4]:
It must be admitted that there is a prodigious quantity of soft money about. St. Petersburg is par excellence the City of Unlimited Paper; and I have been reading this morning, with much edification, the Imperial ukaze decreeing the emission of an additional one hundred millions of roubles in bank notes, bearing interest at the rate of five per cent. per annum. With patriotism and a paper-mill Russia can never want money, I hear the sanguine say. But there are people outside the Russian frontiers—persons who sell things or who hold bonds—and these want gold instead of paper. Is it to be Peace or War? War, I should say, means Pelions upon Ossas of paper; and the end of a papyrocracy is usually a smash.
8-: From Officialdom, published in the Grimsby Evening Telegraph (Grimsby, Lincolnshire, England) of Wednesday 16th October 1940 [page 4, column 3]:
The conditions of war necessitate a much greater control than would be tolerable in peace time over the lives and work of the community; in other words, we have to suffer a larger degree of bureaucracy, along with the other disadvantages imposed by a state of belligerency. The bureaucrat is by nature a paper addict; he seeks to rule by memoranda, orders, bye-laws, and a hundred thousand forms of one kind and another. This papyrocracy consumes vast quantities of paper. It is also generally grossly inefficient.
9-: From Official Paper: How Many More Forms?, published in The West Sussex Gazette and South of England Advertiser (Arundel, Sussex, England) of Thursday 28th March 1946 [page 8, column 7]:
Without the printing press, bureaucracy would not be possible to anything like the extent to which this abuse has developed during the last several years. Domesday Book was regarded as a thorough-enough job at the time of its compilation; but judged by modern standards of inquisition into people’s private affairs it would be a sketchy statistical effort.
[…]
Papyrocracy—by which word we may describe the rule by paper—is […] an attempt to control from a distance the million and one details that together make up the complexity of modern life, which cannot be crammed into the confines of a card-index filing cabinet, however convenient that might be to the official.
10-: From an account of a visit to Turkey, by Derek Walters, published in the Rochdale Observer (Rochdale, Lancashire, England) of Saturday 6th October 1962 [page 9, column 6]:
I could not see any necessity for the Customs officials to take 18 hours to clear approximately 30 passengers. It had always been my complaint that Turkey was ruled by a papyrocracy—that there were endless forms to fill up, and infinite wastage of time spent on administrative red-tape.
11-: From Memoirs Found in a Bathtub (New York: The Seabury Press, 1973), a science-fiction novel by the Polish author Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), translated by Michael Kandel and Christine Rose [Introduction; page 2]:
That entire period is rightly named the Era of Papyrocracy, for not only did papyr regulate and coordinate all group activities, but it determined, in some obscure way, the fate of individuals (for example, the “identity papyrs”). […] In that era one could not be born, grow up, obtain an education, work, travel, marry or die except through the aid and mediation of papyr.
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