Details — Print Culture and the Modern World

1. First Printed Books (East Asia)

Hand printing developed in China, Japan, Korea. From AD 594, China printed by rubbing paper on inked woodblocks; accordion books. Imperial state printed exam textbooks; from 16th c. exam boom increased print. By 17th c.: merchants, leisure reading, women writers. Late 19th c.: Western mechanical presses; Shanghai hub.

Japan: Buddhist missionaries bring hand-printing ~AD 768–770. Oldest Chinese printed book: Diamond Sutra (AD 868). Ukiyo prints (e.g., Utamaro) depict urban life; influence European artists.

2. Print Comes to Europe

Chinese paper via silk route (11th c.). Marco Polo (1295) brings woodblock knowledge to Italy. Manuscripts on vellum for elites; cheaper woodblock copies for merchants/students. Demand outran hand copying. Early 15th c.: woodblocks for textiles, cards, religious pictures.

Gutenberg (Strasbourg, 1430s)

Adapted olive press + metal moulds; perfected by 1448; first book Bible (~180 copies, 3 years). Movable type; ~250 sheets/hour. Presses across Europe 1450–1550. Printed books: 20 million (2nd half 15th c.) → ~200 million (16th c.).

3. Print Revolution and Impact

Not only new production — transformed relation to knowledge and authority.

New reading public

Cheaper books; from hearing public to reading public. Literacy low → illustrated ballads/folk tales read aloud; oral and print intermingled.

Religious debates and fear

Print enabled dissent. Authorities feared rebellious/irreligious ideas. Martin Luther (1517): Ninety Five Theses; vast reprints; Protestant Reformation; called printing ‘ultimate gift of God’.

Print and dissent

Menocchio (Italian miller) reinterpreted Bible → executed; Church’s Index of Prohibited Books from 1558. Erasmus feared glut of seditious/stupid books.

4. Reading Mania (17th–18th c.)

Literacy rises (some regions 60–80% by late 18th c.). Almanacs, chapbooks (penny), Bibliothèque Bleue, romances, histories; periodical press; ideas of Newton, Paine, Voltaire, Rousseau reach common readers.

Enlightenment hope: Mercier — press as engine of progress; ‘Tremble, therefore, tyrants…’

Print and French Revolution (historians’ arguments)

Popularised Enlightenment critique of tradition/Church/despotism.
Culture of dialogue and debate.
1780s literature/cartoons mocked royalty.
Caveat: people also read Church/monarchical propaganda; print opened possibility of thinking differently, did not dictate minds.

5. Nineteenth Century

Compulsory primary education → children as readers; children’s press (France 1857); Grimm tales edited 1812. Women as readers/writers (Austen, Brontës, Eliot). Lending libraries; workers’ autobiographies/tracts. Tech: metal press; Hoe cylindrical press (~8,000 sheets/hour); offset; electric presses; shilling series; paperbacks in 1930s Depression.

6. India and Print

Manuscripts

Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, vernaculars on palm leaf/handmade paper; expensive/fragile; limited everyday use; many learned to write by dictation without reading books.

Print arrives

Portuguese missionaries, mid-16th c. Goa; Konkani/Kanara books; first Tamil book Cochin 1579; Malayalam 1713; Dutch Tamil texts by 1710. English press late: James Augustus Hickey, Bengal Gazette from 1780; Warren Hastings persecutes; official papers encouraged. Indian weeklies: Gangadhar Bhattacharya’s Bengal Gazette (close to Rammohun Roy).

7. Religious Reform and Public Debates

Print shaped 19th-c. debates (sati, monotheism, idolatry, etc.). Rammohun Roy Sambad Kaumudi (1821); orthodoxy’s Samachar Chandrika; Persian papers 1822; Bombay Samachar 1822. Ulama: lithography, scriptures, Deoband (1867) fatwas. Ramcharitmanas printed Calcutta 1810; Naval Kishore Press (Lucknow), Shri Venkateshwar Press (Bombay). Newspapers create pan-Indian identities.

8. New Forms of Publication

Indian novels, lyrics, short stories, essays. Visual culture: Raja Ravi Varma mass images; bazaar prints/calendars; cartoons from 1870s.

Women and print

Home/school education; journals; Rashsundari Debi Amar Jiban (1876); Kailashbashini Debi; Tarabai Shinde; Pandita Ramabai; Battala popular books in Calcutta; Hindi print from 1870s.

Poor people

Cheap Madras crossroads books; libraries; Phule Gulamgiri (1871); Ambedkar; Periyar; Kashibaba (1938); millworker libraries (Bombay/Bangalore).

9. Print and Censorship

Early Company mainly feared English critics. 1820s regulations; 1835 Bentinck/Macaulay restore freedoms. After 1857, clampdown on ‘native’ press. Vernacular Press Act 1878 (Irish model): censor vernacular reports; seize presses. Despite repression, nationalist papers grow. Tilak’s Kesari sympathy for 1907 deportees → imprisoned 1908. WWI/WWII defence rules suppress many papers. Gandhi (1922): fight for swaraj includes liberty of speech, press, association.