Print Culture and the Modern World PDF

Summary

This document provides a historical overview of print culture, starting with early forms in China and Japan, and tracing its development through to Europe where the printing press was invented. It explores the social, cultural, and economic influences in each era.

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Print Culture and the Modern World - The First Printed Books: - 1. The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Korea and Japan. 2. This was a system of hand printing. a. From 594 AD onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper, also invented there, against...

Print Culture and the Modern World - The First Printed Books: - 1. The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Korea and Japan. 2. This was a system of hand printing. a. From 594 AD onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper, also invented there, against the inked surface of woodblocks. b. As both sides of the thin paper couldn't be printed, the traditional Chinese 'Accordion Book' was folded and stitched at the side. c. Extremely skilled craftsmen could duplicate the art and beauty of calligraphy with remarkable accuracy. 3. The imperial state of China was the major producer of printed material for a long time. 4. It possessed a huge bureaucratic system whose recruitment took place by giving an exam. 5. From the 16^th^ century, the number of examination takers went up. 6. By the 17^th^ century, urban culture bloomed in China and the uses of print diversified. a. Merchants collected trade information through print. b. Reading became a leisure activity. Readers were interested in fictional narratives. Poetry and romantic plays. c. Rich women began reading and publishing their poetry and plays. d. This reading culture was accompanied with western printing techniques and mechanical presses in the 19^th^ century. There was a gradual shift from hand printing to mechanical printing. e. Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture. 7. **Print In Japan-** a. Around 760-770 AD, hand-printing was introduced in Japan by Buddhist, Chinese missionaries. b. The oldest Japanese book- The Buddhist Diamond was printed in 868 AD. It contained six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations. Pictures were painted on textiles, playing cards and paper money. c. In medieval Japan, writers were regularly published and books were cheap and abundant. d. In the 18^th^ century, the flourishing urban circles of Edo (now Tokyo), illustrated an elegant urban culture, involving artists, courtesans in paintings. e. Libraries and bookstores were packed with hand-printed material of various types- books on women, calculations, cooking, proper etiquette etc. - Print Comes to Europe: - 1. Chinese paper reached Europe via the silk route. Paper made possible the production of manuscripts. 2. In 1295, Macro Polo, a great explorer returned to Italy after many years of exploration in China. 3. China already had the knowledge of woodblock printing, which was brought by Polo to Italy, leading to the beginning of Italians producing books with woodblocks. This knowledge then spread to other parts of Europe. 4. Luxury editions were still printed on very expensive vellum (a parchment made from animal skin), meant for aristocracy and monarchy. 5. As the demands for books increased, booksellers in Europe began exporting books to other countries. a. Production of handwritten manuscripts was also organized in such a way to meet the new demands. b. Skilled hand writers were now employed by booksellers as well. c. But the production of handwritten manuscripts wasn't enough to satisfy the demands for books. d. Copying was an expensive, laborious and time-consuming business. Manuscripts were fragile, awkward to handle, and could not be carried around or read easily. Their circulation therefore remained limited. e. With the growing demand for books, woodblock printing gradually became more and more popular. By the early fifteenth century, woodblocks were being widely used in Europe to print textiles, playing cards, and religious pictures with simple, brief texts. 6. There was a need of an invention of a new print technology. This breakthrough occurred at Strasbourg, Germany, where Johann Gutenberg developed the first-known printing press in the 1430s. 7. **Gutenberg and the Printing Press: -** a. 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. b. Subsequently, he learnt the art of polishing stones, became a master goldsmith, and also acquired the expertise to create lead c. moulds used for making trinkets. d. Drawing on this knowledge, Gutenberg adapted existing technology to design his innovation. e. 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. f. 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. g. The new technology did not entirely displace the existing art of producing books by hand. h. Printed books at first closely resembled the written manuscripts in appearance and layout. The metal letters imitated the ornamental handwritten styles. Borders were illuminated by hand with foliage and other patterns, and illustrations were painted. i. 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. j. In the hundred years between 1450 and 1550, printing presses were set up in most countries of Europe. Printers from Germany travelled k. to other countries, seeking work and helping start new presses, causing book production to boom. l. The second half of the 15^th^ century saw 20 million copies of printed books flooding the markets in Europe. The number went m. up in the 16^th^ century to about 200 million copies. n. This shift from hand printing to mechanical printing led to the print revolution. - The Print Revolution and its Impact: - 1. **A New Reading Public: -** a. With the printing press, a new reading public emerged. Printing reduced the cost of books. The time and labour 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. b. 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. Now books could reach out to wider sections of people. If earlier there was a hearing public, now a reading public came into being. c. 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. So, printers began publishing popular ballads and folk tales, and such books would be profusely illustrated with pictures. These were then sung and recited at gatherings in villages and in taverns in towns. d. The line that separated the oral and reading cultures became blurred. And the hearing public and reading public became intermingled. 2. **Religious Debates and the Fear of Print: -** a. 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, and move them to action. b. Many were aware of the effects that the easier access to print would have on people's minds. It was feared that if there was no control over what was printed then, rebellious and irreligious thoughts would spread, destroying the authority of 'valuable' literature. - Let us take the example of Europe. Martin Luther, a religious reformer, wrote Ninety-Five Theses criticising and challenging many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. - A printed copy of this was posted on a church door in Wittenberg. His writings were vastly reproduced and read, leading to a division within the Church and the beginning of the Protestant Reformation (a 16^th^ century movement to reform the Catholic Church.) - Luther's translation of the New Testament sold 5,000 copies within a few weeks and a second edition appeared within three months. Deeply grateful to print, Luther said, 'Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.' Several scholars, in fact, think that print brought about a new intellectual atmosphere and helped spread the new ideas that led to the Reformation. 3. **Print and Dissent: -** a. Print and popular religious literature led to different understandings of faith by all, even the less literate ones. b. Menocchio, a miller in 16^th^ century Italy reinterpreted the message of the Bible and created a view of God and Creation that made the Roman Catholic Church furious. c. When the Church began its inquisition (court for identifying and punishing heretics) to repress heretical ideas (which didn't follow the accepted teachings of the catholic Church), Menocchio was hauled up twice and executed. d. The Roman Catholic Church, troubled by the effects of print, imposed severe controls on publishers and maintained an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558. e. - The Reading Mania: - 1. Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries literacy rates went up in most parts of Europe. Churches of different hierarchies 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 per cent. 2. New forms of popular literature appeared in print, targeting new audiences. a. Booksellers employed pedlars who roamed around villages, carrying little books for sale. There were almanacs or ritual calendars, along with ballads and folktales. b. In England, penny chapbooks were carried by petty pedlars known as chapmen, and sold for a penny, so that even the poor could buy them. c. In France, were the "Bibliothèque Bleue", which were low-priced small books printed on poor quality paper, and bound in cheap blue covers. d. Then there were the romances, printed on four to six pages, and the more substantial 'histories' which were stories about the past. 3. The periodical press developed from the early eighteenth century, combining information about current affairs with entertainment. 4. Similarly, the ideas of scientists and philosophers now became more accessible to the common people. a. When scientists like Isaac Newton began to publish their discoveries, they could influence a much wider circle of scientifically minded readers. b. The writings of thinkers such as Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau were also widely printed and read. Thus, their ideas about science, reason and rationality found their way into popular literature. 5. **'Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world!': -** a. By the mid-eighteenth century, there was a common belief that books were a means of spreading progress and enlightenment. Many believed that books could change the world, liberate society from despotism and tyranny. b. 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.' c. 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!' 6. **Print Culture and the Frech Revolution: -** a. Many historians have argued that print culture created the conditions within which French Revolution occurred. b. Three types of arguments have been usually put forward. - First: print popularised the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers. Collectively, their writings provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism. - They demanded that everything be judged through the application of reason and rationality. - They attacked the sacred authority of the Church and the despotic power of the state, and questioned the legitimacy of a social order based on tradition. - The writings of Voltaire and Rousseau were read widely; and those who read these books saw the world through new eyes, eyes that were questioning, critical and rational. - Second: 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 recognised the need to question existing ideas and beliefs. - Within this public culture, new ideas of social revolution came into being. - Third: by the 1780s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and criticised their morality. - Cartoons and caricatures typically suggested that the monarchy remained absorbed only sensual pleasures while the common people suffered immense hardships. - This literature circulated underground and led to the growth of hostile sentiments against the monarchy. c. There can be no doubt that print helps the spread of ideas. But we must remember that people did not read just one kind of literature. d. If they read the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau, they were also exposed to monarchical and Church propaganda. e. They were not influenced directly by everything they read or saw. They accepted some ideas and rejected others. They interpreted things their own way. Print did not directly shape their minds, but it did open up the possibility of thinking differently. - The Nineteenth Century: - 1. **Children, Women and Workers: -** a. The nineteenth century saw vast leaps in mass literacy in Europe, bringing in large numbers of new readers among children, women and workers. b. As primary education became compulsory from the late nineteenth century, children became an important category of readers. - Production of school textbooks became critical for the publishing industry. A children's press, devoted to literature for children alone, was set up in France in 1857. - This press published new works as well as old fairy tales and folk tales. Anything that was considered unsuitable for children or would appear vulgar to the elites, was not included in the published version. c. Women became important as readers as well as writers. Manuals teaching proper behaviour and housekeeping were especially meant for them. - Some of the best-known novelists were women: Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, George Eliot. Their writings became important in defining a new type of woman: a person with will, strength of personality, determination and the power to think. d. Lending libraries had been in existence from the seventeenth century onwards. - In the nineteenth century, lending libraries in England became instruments for educating white-collar workers, artisans and lower-middle-class people. - Sometimes, self-educated working-class people wrote for themselves. After the working day was gradually shortened from the mid-nineteenth century, workers had some time for self-improvement and self-expression. They wrote political tracts and autobiographies in large numbers. 2. **Further Innovations: -** a. By the late eighteenth century, the press came to be made out of metal. b. By the mid-nineteenth century, Richard M. Hoe of New York had perfected the power-driven cylindrical press. This was capable of printing 8,000 sheets per hour. This press was particularly useful for printing newspapers. c. In the late nineteenth century, the offset press was developed which could print up to six colours at a time. d. From the turn of the twentieth century, electrically operated presses accelerated printing operations. e. Methods of feeding paper improved, the quality of plates became better, automatic paper reels and photoelectric controls of the colour register were introduced. The accumulation of several individual mechanical improvements transformed the appearance of printed texts. f. Printers and publishers continuously developed new strategies to sell their product. g. In the 1920s in England, popular works were sold in cheap series, called the Shilling Series. h. The dust cover or the book jacket is also a twentieth-century innovation. i. 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: - 1. **Manuscripts Before the Age of Print: -** a. India had a very rich and old tradition of handwritten manuscripts -- in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, as well as in various vernacular languages. b. They were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper, which were sometimes beautifully illustrated. They would be either pressed between wooden covers or sewn together to ensure preservation. c. They continued to be produced till well after the introduction of print, down to the late nineteenth century. d. Manuscripts, however, were highly expensive and fragile. They had to be handled carefully, and they could not be read easily as the script was written in different styles. e. 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. 2. **Print Comes to India: -** a. 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. By 1710, Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 Tamil texts, many of them translations of older works. b. 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'. - So, it was private English enterprise, proud of its independence from colonial influence, that began English printing in India. - Hickey published a lot of advertisements, including those that related to the import and sale of slaves. But he also published a lot of gossip about the Company's senior officials in India. Enraged by this, Governor-General Warren Hastings persecuted Hickey. c. By the close of the eighteenth century, a number of newspapers and journals appeared in print. There were Indians, too, who began to publish Indian newspapers. d. The first to appear was the weekly Bengal Gazette, brought out by Gangadhar Bhattacharya, who was close to Rammohun Roy. - Religious Reform and Public Debates: - 1. From the early nineteenth century, there were intense debates on religious topics. These debates were carried out in public and in print. Printed tracts and newspapers not only spread the new ideas, but they shaped the nature of the debate. 2. This was a time of intense controversies between social and religious reformers and the Hindu orthodoxy over matters like widow burning, monotheism, Brahmanical priesthood and idolatry. 3. To reach a wider audience in Bengal, the ideas were printed in the everyday, spoken language of ordinary people. 4. Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from 1821 and the Hindu orthodoxy commissioned the Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinions. 5. From 1822, two Persian newspapers were published, Jam-i-Jahan Nama and Shamsul Akhbar. In the same year, a Gujarati newspaper, the Bombay Samachar, made its appearance. 6. In north India, the ulama (legal scholars of Islam and Islamic Law) were deeply anxious about the collapse of Muslim dynasties. They feared that colonial rulers would encourage conversion, change the Muslim personal laws. a. To counter this, they published Urdu translations of religious scriptures and printed religious newspapers. b. The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, published thousands upon thousands of fatwas (clarification on uncertain laws) telling Muslim readers how to conduct themselves in their everyday lives, and explaining the meanings of Islamic doctrines. c. All through the nineteenth century, a number of Muslim sects and seminaries appeared, each with a different interpretation of faith, each keen on enlarging its following and countering the influence of its opponents. 7. Among Hindus, too, print encouraged the reading of religious texts, especially in the vernacular languages. a. The first printed edition of Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, came out in Calcutta in 1810. b. By the mid-nineteenth century, cheap lithographic editions flooded north Indian markets. c. From the 1880s, the Naval Kishore Press at Lucknow and the Shri Venkateshwar Press in Bombay published numerous religious texts in vernaculars. d. In their printed and portable form, these could be read easily by the faithful at any place and time. They could also be read out to large groups of illiterate men and women. 8. Print did not only stimulate the publication of conflicting opinions amongst communities, but it also connected communities and people in different parts of India. Newspapers conveyed news from one place to another, creating pan-Indian identities. - New Forms of Publication: - 1. Printing created an appetite for new kinds of writing. As more and more people could now read, they wanted to see their own lives reflected in what they read. 2. The novel, a literary firm which had developed in Europe, ideally catered to this need. It soon acquired distinctively Indian forms and styles. For readers, it opened up new worlds of experience, and gave a vivid sense of the diversity of human lives. 3. Other new literary forms also entered the world of reading -- lyrics, short stories, essays about social and political matters. They reinforced intimate feelings about the political and social rules that shaped such types of things. 4. By the end of the nineteenth century, with the setting up of an increasing number of printing presses, visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies. a. Painters like Raja Ravi Varma produced images for mass circulation. Poor wood engravers who made woodblocks set up shop near the letterpresses, and were employed by print shops. b. Cheap prints and calendars, easily available in the bazaar, could be bought even by the poor to decorate the walls of their homes or places of work. c. These prints began shaping popular ideas about modernity and tradition, religion and politics, and society and culture. d. By the 1870s, caricatures and cartoons were being published in journals and newspapers, some ridiculing the educated Indians' fascination with Western tastes and clothes, while others expressed the fear of social change. e. There were imperial caricatures lampooning nationalists, as well as nationalist cartoons criticising imperial rule. 5. **Women and Print: -** 1. 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 when women's schools were set up in the cities and towns after the mid-nineteenth century. - Many journals began carrying writings by women, and explained why women should be educated. 2. Conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed and Muslims feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances. 3. Sometimes, rebel women defied such prohibition. - Begum Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain- A girl in a conservative Muslim family of north India who secretly learnt to read and write in Urdu. Her family wanted her to read only the Arabic Quran which she did not understand. So, she insisted on learning to read a language that was her own. - Rashsundari Debi- A young girl in East Bengal married in a very orthodox Hindu household learnt to read in the secrecy of her kitchen. Later, she wrote her autobiography Amar Jiban which was published in 1876. It was the first full-length autobiography published in the Bengali language. - From the 1860s, a few Bengali women like Kailashbashini Debi wrote books highlighting the experiences of women -- about how women were imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance, forced to do hard domestic labour and treated unjustly by the very people they served. - In the 1880s, in present-day Maharashtra, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote with passionate anger about the miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu women, especially widows. - A woman in a Tamil novel expressed what reading meant to women who were so greatly confined by social regulations: 'For various reasons, my world is small... More than half my life's happiness has come from books...' 4. 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. 5. In the early twentieth century, journals, written for and sometimes edited by women, became extremely popular. 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. 6. In early twentieth century Punjab, Ram Chaddha published the fast-selling Istri Dharm Vichar to teach women how to be obedient wives. 7. 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. 8. In Bengal, an entire area in central Calcutta -- the Battala -- was devoted to the printing of popular books. Here you could buy cheap editions of religious tracts and scriptures, as well as literature that was considered obscene and scandalous. By the late nineteenth century, a lot of these books were being profusely illustrated with woodcuts and coloured lithographs. 6. **Print and the Poor People: -** a. Very cheap small books were brought to markets in nineteenth-century Madras towns and sold at crossroads, allowing poor people travelling to markets to buy them. b. Public libraries were set up from the early twentieth century, expanding the access to books. These libraries were located mostly in cities and towns, and at times in prosperous villages. For rich local patrons, setting up a library was a way of acquiring prestige. c. From the late nineteenth century, issues of caste discrimination began to be written about in many printed tracts and essays. - Jyotiba Phule, the Maratha pioneer of 'low caste' protest movements, wrote about the injustices of the caste system in his Gulamgiri (1871). - In the twentieth 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. - Local protest movements and sects also created a lot of popular journals and tracts criticising ancient scriptures and envisioning a new and just future. d. e. Workers in factories were too overworked and lacked the education to write much about their experiences. But Kashibaba, a Kanpur millworker, wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in 1938 to show the links between caste and class exploitation. - The poems of another Kanpur millworker, who wrote under the name of Sudarshan Chakr between 1935 and 1955, were brought together and published in a collection called Sacchi Kavitayan. - By the 1930s, Bangalore cotton millworkers set up libraries to educate themselves, following the example of Bombay workers. - These were sponsored by social reformers who tried to restrict excessive drinking among them, to bring literacy and sometimes, to propagate the message of nationalism. - Print and Censorship: - 1. Before 1798, the colonial state under the East India Company was not too concerned with censorship. Its early measures to control printed matter were directed against Englishmen in India who were critical of Company misrule and hated the actions of particular Company officers. The Company was worried that such criticisms might be used by its critics in England to attack its trade monopoly in India. 2. By the 1820s, the Calcutta Supreme Court passed certain regulations to control press freedom and the Company began encouraging publication of newspapers that would celebrate British rule. 3. In 1835, faced with urgent petitions by editors of English and vernacular newspapers, Governor-General Bentinck agreed to revise press laws. Thomas Macaulay, a liberal colonial official, formulated new rules that restored the earlier freedoms. 4. After the revolt of 1857, enraged Englishmen demanded a clamp down on the 'native' press. As vernacular newspapers became assertively nationalist, the colonial government began debating measures of stringent control. 5. In 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. From now on the government kept regular track of the vernacular newspapers published in different provinces. When a report was judged as seditious, the newspaper was warned, and if the warning was ignored, the press was liable to be seized and the printing machinery confiscated. 6. Despite repressive measures, nationalist newspapers grew in number in all parts of India. They reported on colonial misrule and encouraged nationalist activities. Attempts to throttle nationalist criticism provoked militant protest. This in turn led to a renewed cycle of persecution and protests. When Punjab revolutionaries were deported in 1907, Balgangadhar Tilak wrote with great sympathy about them in his Kesari. This led to his imprisonment in 1908, provoking in turn widespread protests all over India.

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