Class :X

Chapter : History

PRINT CULTURE AND THE MODERN WORLD(SUMMARY)

The First Printed Books

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China, Japan and Korea developed the earliest kind of print technology, which was a

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system of hand printing.
Books in China were printed by rubbing paper from AD 594 and both the sides of the
book were folded and stitched.
China for a long time was the major producer of printed material. China started

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conducting civil service examinations for its bureaucrats and its textbooks were printed
in vast numbers.
Print was no longer confined to scholar-officials. Merchants used print while collecting
their trade information. Reading became a part of leisure activity and rich women started
publishing their own poetry and plays.
This new reading culture attracted new technology. In the late 19th century, Western
printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported.
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Print In Japan
Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand printing technology into Japan.
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The oldest Japanese book printed is the Buddhist ‘ diamond Sutra’ Printed in 868 AD.
Demand for Books increased because
1. Book fairs were held at different places.
2. Production of handwritten manuscripts was also organized in New ways to meet the
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expanded demand.
3. Scribes or Skilled hand writers were no longer solely employed by wealthy or
influential patrons but increasingly by booksellers.
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PRINT COMES TO EUROPE:

Marco Polo returned to Europe after exploring China and along with him, he brought the
knowledge of woodblock printing and soon the technology spread to other parts of
Europe.
Gradually, the demands of books started increasing so booksellers began exporting
books to many different countries. But the production of handwritten manuscripts could
not satisfy the ever-increasing demand for books.
Europe widely started using woodblocks to print textiles, playing cards, and religious
pictures with simple, brief texts.
Johann Gutenberg developed the first-known printing press in the 1430s.

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 Gutenberg and the Printing Press
Gutenberg was an expert in the art of polishing stones and with this knowledge, he
adapted existing technology to design his innovation.
The first printed book with the new system was the Bible. With the adoption of new
technology the existing art of producing books by hand was not entirely displaced.
Books printed for the rich left blank space for decoration on the printed page.
In the hundred years between 1450 and 1550, printing presses were set up in most

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countries of Europe.
The shift from hand printing to mechanical printing led to the print revolution.

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The Print Revolution and its Impact.
Print revolution is not only a new way of producing books, it transformed the lives of
people, changing their relationship to information and knowledge, and with institutions

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and authorities.

A New Reading Public

The cost of books was reduced due to the print revolution.
Markets were flooded with books reaching out to an ever-growing readership.
It created a new culture of reading. Earlier, elites were only permitted to read books and
common people used to hear sacred texts readout
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. Before the print revolution, books were expensive. But, the transition was not as simple
as books could only be read by the literate.
Printers started publishing popular ballads and folk tales illustrated with pictures for
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those who did not read.
Oral culture entered print and printed material was orally transmitted.

The Reading Mania

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In most parts of Europe, literacy rates went up, through the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries.
Schools and literacy spread in European countries due to which people wanted
production of more books.
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Other forms of reading mainly based on entertainment began to reach ordinary readers.
Books were of various sizes, serving many different purposes and interests.
In England penny chapbooks were carried by petty peddlers known as chapman and
sold for a penny.
In France these low priced books were called Bibliotheque Bleue as they were bound in
cheap blue covers.
From the early 18th century, a periodical press developed which combined information
related to current affairs with entertainment.
Journals and newspapers carried information related to wars, trade and developments
in other places.

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 Issac Newton discoveries were published which influenced scientifically-minded
readers.

Religious Debates and the Fear of Print.

1. Print created the possibility of the wide circulation of ideas.
2. Through the printed message, they could persuade people to think differently and
introduced a new world of debate and discussion.This has significance in the different

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spheres of life.
3. Many were apprehensive of the effects that the easier access to the printed world and

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the wider circulation of books could have on people’s minds.
4. If that happened the authority of ‘valuable’ literature would be destroyed, expressed
by religious authorities and monarchs, as well as many writers and artists, and the
achievement of religious areas of Martin Luther.

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5. A new intellectual atmosphere and helped spread the new ideas that led to the
reformation.

Print culture and the French Revolution:

1. Print the popularized ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers. Collectively, their writings
provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism.
2. Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate. All values, forms and institutions
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were re-evaluated and discussed by a public that had become aware of the power of
reason.
3. 1780’s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and criticized their
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morality. In the process, it raised questions about the existing social order.
4. The print helps the spread of ideas. People did not read only one kind of literature. If
they read the ideas of Voltaire and Rousseau, They were also exposed to monarchic and
church propaganda.
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5. Print did not directly shape their minds, but it did open up the possibility of thinking
differently.

The Nineteenth Century

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Large numbers of new readers among children, women and workers were added to the
mass literacy in Europe during the 19th century.

Children, Women and Workers

From the late 19th century, primary education became compulsory.
In 1857, a children’s press was set up in France devoted to literature for children.
Traditional folk tales were gathered by the Grimm Brothers in Germany.
Rural folk tales acquired a new form.
Women became important as readers as well as writers. Magazines were published
especially dedicated for women, as were manuals teaching proper behavior and
housekeeping.
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 In the nineteenth century, lending libraries in England became instruments for educating
white-collar workers, artisans and lower-middle-class people.

Further Innovations
Press came to be made out of metal by the late eighteenth century.
Printing technology saw a series of further innovations by the 19th century. During that
century, a power-driven cylindrical press was perfected by Richard M, which was

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particularly used for printing newspapers.
The offset was developed which was capable of printing six colors at a time. By the 20th

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century, electrically operated presses accelerated printing operations followed by other
series of developments.
1. Methods of feeding paper improved
2. The quality of plates became better

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3. Automatic paper reels and photoelectric controls of the color register were
introduced.

India and the world of print

Manuscripts Before the Age of Print
India is a country rich in the old tradition of handwritten manuscripts – in Sanskrit,
Arabic, Persian, as well as in various vernacular languages.
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These handwritten manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper. The
production of the manuscript continued well after the introduction of print.
It is considered highly expensive and fragile. In Bengal, students were only taught to
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write due to which many became literate without ever actually reading any kinds of texts.

Print Comes to India:

In the mid-sixteenth century, the first printing press came to Goa with Portuguese
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missionaries.
Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 at Cochin, and in 1713 the first
Malayalam book was printed by them.
The English press grew quite late in India even though the English East India Company
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began to import presses from the late seventeenth century.

A weekly magazine named the Bengal Gazette was edited by James Augustus Hickey.
Advertisements were published by Hickey and he also published a lot of gossip about
the Company’s senior officials in India.
By the close of the eighteenth century, a number of newspapers and journals appeared
in print.

Religious Reform and Public Debates

Religious issues became intense from the early nineteenth century.
People started criticizing existing practices and campaigned for reform, while others
countered the arguments of reformers.
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 Printed tracts and newspapers spread new ideas and shaped the nature of the debate.
New ideas emerged and intense controversies erupted between social and religious
reformers and the Hindu orthodoxy over matters like widow immolation, monotheism,
Brahmanical priesthood and idolatry.
In 1821, Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi.
In 1822, two Persian newspapers published Jam-i-Jahan Nama and Shamsul Akhbar.
In the same year, a Gujarati newspaper, the Bombay Samachar, was established. The

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Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, published thousands upon thousands of fatwas
telling Muslim readers how to conduct themselves in their everyday lives and explaining

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the meanings of Islamic doctrines.
Print encouraged the reading of religious texts, among Hindus, especially in the
vernacular languages.
Religious texts reached a very wide circle of people, encouraging discussions, debates

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and controversies within and among different religions.
Newspapers conveyed news from one place to another, creating pan-Indian identities.

New forms of publication

New kinds of writing were introduced as more and more people got interested in reading.
In Europe, the novel, a literary firm, was developed to cater to the needs of people who
acquired Indian forms and styles.
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New literary forms entered the world of reading such as lyrics, short stories, essays
about social and political matters.
New visual culture took shape by the end of the nineteenth century. Cheap calendars
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were available in the bazaar which can be bought even by the poor to decorate the walls
of their homes or places of work.
These prints began shaping popular ideas about modernity and tradition, religion and
politics, and society and culture.
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Caricatures and cartoons were being published in journals and newspapers, commenting
on social and political issues by the 1870s.

Women and Print

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Women’s reading increased enormously in middle-class homes. Schools were set up in

cities for women.
Journals also started carrying writings by women and explained why women should be
educated.
But, Conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed and Muslims
feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances.
Social reforms and novels created a great interest in women’s lives and emotions.
In the early twentieth century, journals, written and edited by women, became extremely
popular.
In Bengal, an entire area in central Calcutta – the Battala – was devoted to the printing of
popular books.
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 By the late nineteenth century, a lot of these books were profusely illustrated with
woodcuts and coloured lithographs.
Pedlars took the Battala publications to homes, enabling women to read them in their
leisure time.

Print and the Poor People

Cheap books were bought at markets.

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Public libraries were set up mostly located in cities and towns.
In the late 19th century, caste discrimination started coming up in many printed tracts

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and essays.
Factory workers lacked education to write much about their experience.
In 1938, Kashibaba wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in 1938 to show the
links between caste and class exploitation.

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In the 1930s, Bangalore cotton millworkers set up libraries to educate themselves.

The Vernacular Press Act:

● In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed by the British Government to
impose restrictions on vernacular press, which was responsible for
spreading nationalist ideas.
● The government started to keep a regular track of the vernacular
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newspapers and had extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the
vernacular press.
● When a report was judged as seditious, the newspaper was warned, and if
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the warning was ignored, the press was liable to be seized and the printing
machinery confiscated.

Print and Censorship

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● Censorship was not a concern under the East India Company. The Calcutta
Supreme Court passed certain regulations to control press freedom and in 1835,
Governor-General Bentinck agreed to revise press laws.
● Thomas Macaulay formulated new rules that restored the earlier freedom. The
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freedom of press changed after the revolt of 1857.

● In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed, modeled on the Irish Press Laws,
which provided the government with extensive rights to censor reports and
editorials in the vernacular press.
● Government started keeping track of the vernacular newspapers. Nationalists
newspapers grew in numbers all over India.
● In 1907, Punjab revolutionaries were deported, Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote with
great sympathy about them in his Kesari which led to his imprisonment in 1908.