Comprehensive theory, key formulas, diagrams, and memory aids for Print Culture and the Modern World.
It is difficult for us to imagine a world without printed matter. We find evidence of print everywhere around us – in books, journals, newspapers, prints of famous paintings, and also in everyday things like theatre programmes, official circulars, calendars, diaries, advertisements, cinema posters at street corners. We read printed literature, see printed images, follow the news through newspapers, and track public debates that appear in print. In this chapter, we will look at the development of print, from its beginnings in East Asia to its expansion in Europe and in India.
The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan, and Korea. This was a system of hand printing. From AD 594 onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper against the inked surface of woodblocks. As both sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional Chinese 'accordion book' was folded and stitched at the side. Superbly skilled craftsmen could duplicate, with remarkable accuracy, the beauty of calligraphy.
The imperial state in China was, for a very long time, the major producer of printed material. China possessed a huge bureaucratic system which recruited its personnel through civil service examinations. Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast numbers under the sponsorship of the imperial state. By the seventeenth century, as urban culture bloomed in China, the uses of print diversified. Print was no longer used just by scholar-officials. Merchants used print in their everyday life, as they collected trade information. Reading increasingly became a leisure activity.
Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing technology into Japan around AD 768-770. The oldest Japanese book, printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations. Pictures were printed on textiles, playing cards, and paper money. In medieval Japan, poets and prose writers were regularly published, and books were cheap and abundant.
For centuries, silk and spices from China flowed into Europe through the silk route. In the eleventh century, Chinese paper reached Europe via the same route. Paper made possible the production of manuscripts, carefully written by scribes. Then, in 1295, Marco Polo, a great explorer, returned to Italy after many years of exploration in China. He brought the knowledge of woodblock printing back with him. Now Italians began producing books with woodblocks, and soon the technology spread to other parts of Europe. Luxury editions were still handwritten on very expensive vellum, meant for aristocratic circles and rich monastic libraries which scoffed at printed books as cheap vulgarities. Merchants and students in the university towns bought the cheaper printed copies.
The breakthrough in print technology occurred at Strasbourg, Germany, where Johann Gutenberg developed the first-known printing press in the 1430s. Gutenberg was the son of a merchant and grew up on a large agricultural estate. From his childhood, he had seen wine and olive presses. Subsequently, he learnt the art of polishing stones, became a master goldsmith, and also acquired the expertise to create lead moulds used for making trinkets. Drawing on this knowledge, Gutenberg adapted existing technology to design his innovation. The olive press provided the model for the printing press, and moulds were used for casting the metal types for the letters of the alphabet. By 1448, Gutenberg perfected the system. The first book he printed was the Bible. About 180 copies were printed and it took three years to produce them. By the standards of the time, this was fast production. Between 1450 and 1550, printing presses were set up in most countries of Europe. Printers from Germany traveled to other countries, seeking work and helping start new presses. The shift from hand printing to mechanical printing led to the print revolution.
What was the print revolution? It was not just a development, a new way of producing books; it transformed the lives of people, changing their relationship to information and knowledge, and with institutions and authorities. It influenced popular perceptions and opened up new ways of looking at things.
With the printing press, a new reading public emerged. Printing reduced the cost of books. The time and labor required to produce each book came down, and multiple copies could be produced with greater ease. Books flooded the market, reaching out to an ever-growing readership. Access to books created a new culture of reading. Earlier, reading was restricted to the elites. Common people lived in a world of oral culture. They heard sacred texts read out, ballads recited, and folk tales narrated. Knowledge was transferred orally. People collectively heard a story, or saw a performance. But the transition was not so simple. Books could be read only by the literate, and the rates of literacy in most European countries were very low till the twentieth century. How, then, could publishers persuade the common people to welcome the printed book? To do this, they had to keep in mind the wider reach of the printed work: even those who did not read could certainly enjoy listening to books being read out. So printers began publishing popular ballads and folk tales, and such books would be profusely illustrated with pictures.
Print created the possibility of wide circulation of ideas, and introduced a new world of debate and discussion. Even those who disagreed with established authorities could now print and circulate their ideas. Through the printed message, they could persuade people to think differently. Not everyone welcomed the printed book. Many were apprehensive of the effects that the easier access to the printed word and the wider circulation of books could have on people’s minds. It was feared that if there was no control over what was printed and read, then rebellious and irreligious thoughts might spread. In 1517, the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote Ninety-Five Theses criticizing many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. A printed copy of this was posted on a church door in Wittenberg. It challenged the Church to debate his ideas. Luther’s writings were immediately reproduced in vast numbers and read widely. This led to a division within the Church and to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Luther said, "Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one."
Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, literacy rates went up in most parts of Europe. Churches of different denominations set up schools in villages, carrying literacy to peasants and artisans. By the end of the eighteenth century, in some parts of Europe literacy rates were as high as 60 to 80 percent. As literacy and schools spread in European countries, there was a virtual reading mania. People wanted books to read and printers produced books in ever-increasing numbers. New forms of popular literature appeared in print, targeting new audiences. Booksellers employed pedlars who roamed around villages, carrying little books for sale. There were almanacs or ritual calendars, along with ballads and folktales.
Many historians have argued that print culture created the conditions within which the French Revolution occurred. 1. Print popularized the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers. Collectively, their writings provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition, and despotism. They argued for the rule of reason rather than custom. 2. Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate. All values, norms, and institutions were re-evaluated and discussed by a public that had become aware of the power of reason, and recognized the need to question existing ideas and beliefs. 3. By the 1780s, there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and criticized their morality.
Let us see when printing began in India and how ideas and information were written before the age of print.
India had a very rich and old tradition of handwritten manuscripts – in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, as well as in various vernacular languages. Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper. Pages were sometimes beautifully illustrated. They would be either pressed between wooden covers or sewn together to ensure preservation. Manuscripts continued to be produced till well after the introduction of print. They were highly expensive and fragile and had to be handled carefully.
The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid-sixteenth century. Jesuit priests learnt Konkani and printed several tracts. By 1674, about 50 books had been printed in the Konkani and in Kanara languages. Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 at Cochin, and in 1713 the first Malayalam book was printed by them. From 1780, James Augustus Hickey began to edit the Bengal Gazette, a weekly magazine that described itself as 'a commercial paper open to all, but influenced by none'. By the close of the eighteenth century, a number of newspapers and journals appeared in print.
From the early nineteenth century, there were intense debates around religious issues. Different groups confronted the changes happening within colonial society in different ways, and offered a variety of new interpretations of the beliefs of different religions. Some criticized existing practices and campaigned for reform, while others countered the arguments of reformers. Print tracts and newspapers not only spread the new ideas, but they shaped the nature of the debate. Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from 1821 and the Hindu orthodoxy commissioned the Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinions.
Lives and feelings of women began to be written in particularly vivid and intense ways. Women's reading, therefore, increased enormously in middle-class homes. Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their womenfolk at home, and sent them to schools. But not all families were liberal. Conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed, and Muslims feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances. Yet, many women learned to read and write in secret. Rashsundari Debi, a young married girl in a very orthodox household, learnt to read in the secrecy of her kitchen. Later, she wrote her autobiography Amar Jiban which was published in 1876.
The advent of print culture was a transformative force in the modern world. Originating in East Asia with woodblock printing, the technology migrated to Europe where Gutenberg’s mechanical press sparked a revolution in the 15th century. Print drastically reduced the cost of books, democratized knowledge, and fostered a new reading public. It played a critical role in major historical movements, including the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment, providing the intellectual framework for the French Revolution. In India, the transition from fragile manuscripts to printed texts accelerated social reform, facilitated public debates on religion and tradition, and increasingly gave voice to marginalized groups, including women, fundamentally altering society's relationship with information.