Print Culture and the Modern World

The First Printed Books

The earliest print technology was developed in China,
Japan and Korea.

China:
• Books in China were printed by rubbing paper against
wood blocks. (Woodblock Printing Technology)
• They could not print on both sides as the paper was
thin and porous.
• The Chinese ‘Accordion
Book’ was printed and
stitched on one side.
• Before the books were
printed, the text was
copied by skilled craftsmen with accuracy.
The art of writing beautifully is called Calligraphy.
Why was China the major producer of printed material?
• China recruited its large number of bureaucrats
(civil services officers) through examinations which
was sponsored by the imperial state and the
examination required a large number of textbooks
for students to prepare from.
• Use by Traders : As urbanization and trade grew,
merchants started using print to collect and store
trade information.
• Leisure Activity: Reading also became a leisure
activity. Rich women began to read and write, and a
lot of fiction, poetry, anthologies and
autobiographies were also written.

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 • New technology such as mechanical press and
western printing techniques were also used and soon
Shanghai became the hub of new print culture.
• The western ways of writing (schools) also began to
flourish and there was a gradual shift from hand
printing to mechanical printing.

Print in Japan
• Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand
printing technology to Japan. The Buddhist ‘Diamond
Sutra’ was the oldest Japanese book.
• Pictures began to be printed on
various materials such as textiles,
playing cards and money.
• The illustrated collections of
paintings depicted an elegant
urban culture involving artisans,
courtesans and teahouse
gatherings.
• Libraries and bookstores were
packed with hand-printed material of various types
– books on women, musical instruments, calculations,
tea ceremony, flower arrangements, proper
etiquette, cooking and famous places.

What is ‘Ukiyo’?
• Kitagawa Utamaro an artist born in Edo (Tokyo)
contributed to the development of the ‘ukiyo’ art
form.
• It refers to ’pictures of
the floating world’ or
depiction of ordinary
human experiences,
especially urban ones.

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Print Comes to Europe:
• Chinese paper reached Europe through the silk route
in the 11th century.
• Marco Polo brought the knowledge of print to Italy,
which eventually spread to entire
Europe.
• The wealthy employed scribes or
skilled hand writers to increase the
production of handwritten
manuscripts.
• Luxury editions were still
handwritten on very expensive vellum
(calf skin), 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.
• However, the handwritten manuscripts could not
satisfy the ever-increasing demand for books
because the manuscripts were fragile, awkward to
handle and could not be carried around or read
easily.
• Copying also was an expensive, laborious and time-
consuming business.

Gutenberg and the Printing Press:

• In the 1430s, Johann Gutenberg developed the
printing press.

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 • He learnt the art of polishing stones, became a
master goldsmith, and also acquired the expertise to
create lead moulds used for
making trinkets.
• The first book printed on
Gutenberg’s printing press was the
Bible and it took three years to
print 180 copies of the Bible.
• He used existing technology of
olive press to make his printing
machine.
• But this new printing technology did not displace
the old art of handwritten manuscripts. The first
printed books closely resembled the written
manuscripts in appearance and layout.
• Borders were illuminated by hand with foliage and
other patterns, and illustrations were painted.
• In the books printed for the rich, space for
decoration was kept blank on the printed page.
• Each purchaser could choose the design and decide
on the painting school that would do the
illustrations.

A New Reading Public

• Between 1450 -1550 Printing presses were set up in
most countries of Europe.
• 20 million copies of printed books flooded the
European markets during the second half of the 15th
century.
• The time and labour required for producing each
book decreased and multiple copies could be
produced with greater ease.
• Common people now had access to books and
therefore the oral culture of a hearing public was
now replaced by a reading public.

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How did oral culture enter print, and the printed
material was orally transmitted?
• Printers began publishing new ballads and folktales
with illustrated pictures.
• These were then sung and recited at gatherings in
villages and in taverns in towns for those people
who could not read.
• Oral culture thus entered print and printed material
was orally transmitted.
• The line that separated the oral and reading
cultures became blurred.
• And the hearing public and reading public became
intermingled.

Religious Debates and the Fear of Print

• The new printed literature was criticized as it was
feared that if there was no control over what was
printed and read, then rebellious and irreligious
thoughts might spread.
• Those who disagreed with established authorities
could now print and circulate ideas.

Martin Luther:
• 1517: A religious reformer, Martin Luther wrote
‘Ninety-five Theses’ criticizing many of the
practices and rituals of the
Roman Catholic Church.
• It challenged the Church to
debate his ideas.
• Deeply grateful to print,
Luther said, ‘Printing is the
ultimate gift of God and the
greatest one.’
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 • Luther’s writings were immediately reproduced in
vast numbers and read widely and led to a division
within the Church and to the beginning of the
Protestant Reformation.
• 1558: The Roman Church, troubled by effects of
popular readings and questionings of faith, imposed
several controls over publishers and booksellers
and began to maintain an Index of Prohibited Books.
• Menocchio, a miller in Italy, was hauled up twice and
ultimately executed because he reinterpreted the
message of the Bible and formulated a view of God
and Creation that enraged the Roman Catholic
Church.
• Several scholars think that print brought about a
new intellectual atmosphere and helped spread the
new ideas that led to the Reformation.

The Reading Mania:

1. Setting of up Schools: By the end of the 18th century,
literacy rates in Europe were as high as 60 to 80%.
Churches of different denominations set up schools
in villages, carrying literacy to peasants and
artisans.
2. Marketing: Publishers targeted different types of
audiences and produced books according to them.
Many times, booksellers employ people to roam in
the villages to sell smaller books. New forms of
literature appeared in print that targeted new
audiences. There were almanacs (astronomical
calendar) or ritual calendars, along with ballads and
folktales.
3. Ballads: Poem, song narrating a story in short stanza
and folktales i.e. cultural stores narrated in spoken
languages.

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 4. Chapbook: In England, penny chapbooks were carried
by petty pedlars known as chapmen. They were sold
for a penny and could be afforded even by the poor.
5. Bibliotheque Bleue: In France, were the
“Bibliotheque Bleue”, which were low-priced small
books printed on poor quality paper, and bound in
cheap blue covers.
6. Other Books: There were other books such as romance
printed on 4 to 5 pages, ‘histories’ stories about the
past.
7. Development of Periodical Press: From the 18th
Century, with the development of periodical press,
people started publishing current affairs and
entertainment. Newspapers and journals publish
information about ongoing trade.
8. Information Sharing: Ancient and medieval scientific
texts were compiled and published. Maps and
scientific diagrams were widely printed. The
discoveries of Isaac Newton and the writings of
Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau
were also widely printed and read.

Print Culture and the French Revolution

Print culture created the conditions within which the
French Revolution occurred. It did not directly shape
their minds, but it did open up the possibility of thinking
differently.
1. Print popularized the ideas of thinkers: Print culture
made the writings of Enlightenment thinkers like
Voltaire and Rousseau widely available. Their
writings challenged the authority of the Church and
the state, and promoted reason and rationality over
tradition
2. Creating a culture of debate and Discussion: Print
culture encouraged people to re-evaluate their
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 values and norms, and to question existing ideas and
beliefs.
3. Criticizing the Royalty and its morality: Literature
in the 1780s mocked the monarchy and highlighted its
disconnect from the suffering of the common people.
Cartoons and caricatures depicted the monarchy's
indifference to the common people's hardships. This
contributed to growing anti-monarchy sentiments.

‘Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world!:

• Louise-Sebastien Mercier, a novelist in eighteenth-
century France, declared: ‘The printing press is the
most powerful engine of progress and public opinion
is the force that will sweep despotism away.’
• In many of Mercier’s novels, the heroes are
transformed by acts of reading.
• They devour books, are lost in the world books
create, and become enlightened in the process.
• Convinced of the power of print in bringing
enlightenment and destroying the basis of
despotism,
• Mercier proclaimed: ‘Tremble, therefore, tyrants of
the world! Tremble before the virtual writer!’

Children, Women and Workers (19th Century)

1. Children:
• As primary education became compulsory from
the late nineteenth century, children became an
important category of readers.
• 1857: A children’s press devoted to literature
for children alone was set up in France.
• This press published new works as well as old
fairy tales and folk tales.

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 • The Grimm Brothers in Germany spent years
compiling traditional folk tales gathered from
peasants.
• Anything that was considered unsuitable for
children or would appear vulgar to the elites,
was not included in the published version.
• Rural folk tales thus acquired a new form.
• In this way, print recorded old tales but also
changed them.
2. Women:
• Women became important readers and writers.
• Penny magazines were especially meant for
women, as were manuals teaching proper
behaviour and housekeeping.
• The writings of George Eliot, Jane Austen and
the Bronte sisters were read and enjoyed. Their
writings became important in defining a new
type of woman: a person with will, strength of
personality, determination and the power to
think.
3. Workers:
• Lending Libraries: Originated in the 17th
century, evolved in the 19th century to educate
white-collar workers, artisans, and the lower-
middle class.
• Shortened Workdays: From the mid-1800s,
reduced hours allowed workers more time for
self-improvement.
• Self-Expression: Workers increasingly wrote
political tracts and autobiographies.

Further Innovations:
• Mid-19th Century: Richard M. Hoe perfected the
power-driven cylindrical press, printing 8,000
sheets per hour.

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 • Late 19th Century: Offset printing emerged, capable
of printing six colours simultaneously.
• Early 20th Century: Electrical Printing Presses
became electrically operated.

o Improved paper feeding methods and plate

quality.
o Introduction of automatic paper reels and
photoelectric colour register controls.

Methods of Selling the Products:

• 1920s: In England, popular works were sold in cheap
series, called the Shilling Series.
• Book jackets were also introduced.
• With the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s,
publishers feared a decline in book purchases. To
sustain buying, they brought out cheap paperback
editions.

India and the World of Print

• India had a very rich and old tradition of
handwritten manuscripts in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian
and other vernacular languages.

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 • Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on
handmade paper.
• They would be preserved
between wooden covers or sewn
together.
• They were highly expensive,
fragile and illegible.
• Even though pre-colonial
Bengal had developed an extensive network of
village primary schools, students very often did not
read texts. They only learnt to write.
• Teachers dictated portions of texts from memory and
students wrote them down.
• Many thus became literate without ever actually
reading any kinds of texts.

Print Comes to India:

• Mid-16th century: The first printing press came to
Goa with Portuguese missionaries. By 1674, about 50
books had been printed in Konkani and in Kannada
languages.
• Cochin, 1579: Catholic priests printed the first Tamil
book and also printed Malayalam books to propagate
their religion.
• By 1710, Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed
32 Tamil texts
English Edition:
From 1780: James Augustus Hickey
began editing the Bengal Gazette,
a weekly magazine.
• Hickey published a lot of
advertisements, including those
that related to the import and
sale of slaves.
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 • But he also published a lot of gossip about the
Company’s senior officials in India.
• Governor-General Warren Hastings persecuted
Hickey, and encouraged the publication of officially
sanctioned newspapers.
Note : The first newspaper printed was also the Bengal
Gazette brought out by Gangadhar Bhattacharya, who was
close to Rammohun Roy.

Religious Reform and Public Debates:

• From the early 19th century, there were intense
debates around religious issues.
• Some criticized existing practices and campaigned
for reform, while others countered the arguments of
reformers.
• Public tracts and newspapers spread the new ideas
and generated discussions and expressions from the
public.

Ideas of Reformers and Orthodoxy:

• 1821:Raja RamMohan Roy published the ‘Sambad
Kaumudi’ and the Hindu orthodoxy commissioned the
Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinions
• From 1822: Two Persian newspapers were published,
Jam-i-Jahan Nama and Shamsul Akhbar.
• A Gujarati newspaper, the Bombay Samachar, was also
published.

Muslims:
• In North India, the Ulema were deeply anxious about
the collapse of Muslim dynasties.
• They used cheap lithographic presses, published
Persian and Urdu translations of Holy Scriptures and
printed religious tracts and newspapers.
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 • The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, published
thousands upon thousands of fatwas telling Muslim
readers how to conduct themselves in their everyday
lives, and explaining the meanings of Islamic
doctrines
• Calcutta, 1810: The first printed edition of the
Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, a 16th century text,
appeared.
• From the 1880s, the Naval Kishore Press at Lucknow
and the Shri Venkateshwar Press in Bombay published
numerous religious texts in vernaculars

New Forms of Publication

• New Literary Forms: Novels, lyrics, short stories,
and essays explored human lives, emotions, and
societal rules.
• Mass Reproduction: By the late 19th century, visual
images could be widely reproduced.
• Popular Art: Raja Ravi Verma's prints
and bazaar calendars influenced
ideas on modernity, tradition,
religion, and politics.
• Political Cartoons: By the 1870s,
imperial caricatures mocked
nationalists, while nationalist
cartoons criticized imperial rule.

Women and Print

• Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their
womenfolk at home and sent them to schools .
• Many journals began carrying writings by women and
explained why women should be educated.
• Conservative Hindus on the other hand believed that
a literate girl would be widowed and Muslims feared

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 that educated women would be corrupted by reading
Urdu romances.
• 1876: Rashsundari Debi’s autobiography, Amar
Jiban,was published.
• It was the first full-length autobiography
published in the Bengali language.
• From 1860s: Few Bengali women such as
Kailashbashini Debi wrote books highlighting
the experiences of women.
• In 1880s (Maharashtra): Tarabai Shinde and Pandita
Ramabai wrote with passionate anger about the
miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu women,
especially widows.
• While Urdu, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi print culture
had developed early, Hindi printing began seriously
only from the 1870s.
• Soon, a large segment of it was devoted to the
education of women
• They discussed issues like women’s education,
widowhood, widow remarriage and the national
movement.
• Some of them offered household and fashion lessons
to women and brought entertainment through short
stories and serialised novels.

Conservative Print:
• In Punjab, Ram Chaddha published Istri Dharm Vichar
to teach women how to be obedient wives.
• The Khalsa Tract Society published cheap booklets
with a similar message. Many of these were in the
form of dialogues about the qualities of a good
woman.
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Print and the Poor People:
• Very cheap and small books were brought to markets
in the 19th century.
• Madras towns sold at crossroads, allowing poor
people traveling to markets to buy them.
• Public libraries were set up from the early . These
libraries were mostly located in cities and towns
and at times in prosperous villages.

1871: Jyotiba Phule, the Maratha pioneer of ‘low caste’

protest movements, wrote about the injustices of the
caste system in his Gulamgiri.
• In the 20th century, B.R. Ambedkar in Maharashtra
and E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker in Madras,
better known as Periyar, wrote
powerfully on caste and their writings
were read by people all over India.
• 1938: Kashibaba, a Kanpur
millworker, wrote and published
Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal. The poems of
Kashibaba and Sudarsan Chakra
(another Kanpur millworker) were
compiled in Sacchi Kavitayen
• By the 1930s, Bangalore cotton millworkers set up
libraries for educating themselves.

Print and Censorship

• Before 1798, the colonial state under the East India
Company was too concerned with censorship.
• By the 1820s, The Calcutta Supreme Court passed
certain regulations to control press freedom and the

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 Company began encouraging publication of
newspapers that would celebrate the British rule.
• In 1835, faced with urgent petitions by editors of the
English and vernacular newspapers, Governor-
General William Bentinck agreed to revise press
laws. Thomas Macaulay formulated new rules that
restored their earlier freedoms.
• After the revolt of 1857, press freedoms were
clamped down.

Vernacular Press Act:

• 1878: The Vernacular Press Act was passed, modelled
on the Irish Press Laws.
• It provided the government with extensive rights to
censor reports and editorials in the vernacular
press.
• 1907: When the Punjab revolutionaries were deported,
Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote with great sympathy
about them in his Kesari.
• This led to his imprisonment in 1908.
• During the First World War, under the Défense of
India Rules, 22 newspapers had to furnish securities.

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