Chapter – 5

Print Culture and the Modern World

In this post we have given the detailed notes of class 10 Social Science (History) Chapter 5 Print Culture and the Modern World in English. These notes are useful for the students who are going to appear in class 10 board exams.

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Chapter 5: Print Culture and the Modern World

Introduction

The history of print is closely connected to the growth of nationalism, the spread of literacy, and the emergence of new ideas across the world. Print did not just make it easier to read — it created a new reading public, new forms of debate and discussion, and new ways of thinking about religion, politics and society. This chapter traces the journey of print from hand-printed books in China and Japan, to Gutenberg’s printing press in Europe, and finally to the growth of print culture in India.

Print Culture: The set of ideas, beliefs, practices and knowledge related to printing of books, journals and other reading material, and their impact on society.

The First Printed Books

Print in China

• China had the earliest kind of print technology in the world. From AD 594, books in China were printed by rubbing paper — which the Chinese had already invented — against the inked surface of woodblocks.
• Since both sides of a thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional Chinese “accordion” or “concertina” book was folded and stitched at the side.
• For centuries, the imperial state in China was the major producer of printed material, as it needed a huge number of texts for the civil service examinations.
• From the 16th century, the number of examination candidates went up, increasing the demand for print. By the 17th century, as urban culture bloomed, print was used for a wider variety of purposes — merchants collected trade information, readers read for entertainment (fictional narratives, poetry, biographies, romantic plays).
• Rich women began to read, and many published their poetry and plays; wives of scholar-officials as well as courtesans wrote about their own lives.
• By the 19th century, Western missionaries and traders brought new printing technologies to China. Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture, catering to the Western-style schools.

Print in Japan

• Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing technology into Japan around AD 768-770.
• The oldest Japanese book, the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, was printed in AD 868, and it contains six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations.
• Printing of visual material led to interesting publishing practices. In the 17th century, in the flourishing urban circles of Edo (Tokyo), Kyoto and Osaka, hand-printed material — books, calendars, paintings — was widely available in bookshops and libraries.
• Illustrated collections of paintings depicted an elegant urban culture, with artists, courtesans and teahouse gatherings, along with romance and love stories.

Print Comes to Europe

• In 1295, the explorer Marco Polo, after years of exploration in China, brought the knowledge of woodblock printing back with him to Italy. As Marco Polo returned home, this technology spread from Italy to other parts of Europe.
• Silk Route traders had also brought the knowledge of Chinese paper-making to Europe by the 11th century. Paper made it possible for manuscripts to be produced more easily than the earlier writing surfaces of parchment.
• Paper was expensive and scarce and could not meet the ever-increasing demand for books. Manuscripts had to be copied by hand — a process that was highly expensive, laborious and time-consuming.
• As the demand for books increased, booksellers began exporting them from one place to another, and scribes were employed to copy manuscripts to order. But hand-copying could not satisfy the rapidly expanding market.

Gutenberg and the Printing Press

• Johann Gutenberg, son of a merchant, grew up on a large agricultural estate. He had learnt the art of polishing stones, became a skilled goldsmith, and had knowledge of making lead moulds for trinkets. He adapted this existing knowledge to design his printing machine.
• Gutenberg developed the system of movable metal type for each letter of the alphabet, which could be arranged and rearranged to print different texts. The printing press was modelled on the design of the olive press already in use for pressing grapes and oil.
• Gutenberg’s press came up in the 1430s-40s. By 1448, he had perfected the system, and the first book he printed was the Bible. About 180 copies were printed, and it took three years to produce them — quite fast by the standards of the time.
• Over the next 50 years (1450-1550), printing presses were set up in most countries of Europe. Print production boomed — from about 20 million copies in the second half of the 15th century, to about 200 million copies in the 16th century.

The Print Revolution and Its Impact

A New Reading Public

• Before print, books were expensive and reading was restricted to elites; common people lived in a world of oral culture — hearing sacred texts, ballads and folk tales read aloud.
• The printing press lowered the cost of books, reduced the time and labour of producing each book, and multiplied the number of copies. Books flooded the market, reaching an ever-growing readership.
• Since access to books created a new culture of reading, and since not everyone was literate, illustrated, low-priced books and pamphlets were published, and popular ballads and folk tales were profusely illustrated and printed, so they could be sung and recited at gatherings in villages and taverns in towns.

Religious Debates and the Fear of Print

• Not everyone welcomed the printed book — many were fearful of its power to spread rebellious and irreligious thoughts. If some believed print had a liberating effect (freeing thought from the control of a small elite), others were fearful of losing control over ideas.
• The Roman Catholic Church, alarmed by the printing of heretical texts, imposed strict controls over publishers and booksellers and began maintaining an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558.

Print and the Reformation

• In 1517, the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote Ninety Five Theses criticising many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. A printed copy of this was posted on a church door and it triggered a major controversy that led to a division within the Church and to the birth of Protestant Reformation.
• Luther’s translation of the New Testament sold 5,000 copies within a few weeks; a second edition appeared within three months. Luther himself said: “Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.”
• Print thus not only stimulated the spread of Reformation ideas, but also shaped the very nature of the movement, which without print could never have had the same influence.

Print and Dissent

• Print and popular religious literature stimulated many distinctive individual interpretations of faith, even among people with no formal education.
• Menocchio, a miller in Italy, reinterpreted the message of the Bible and formulated a view of God and Creation that enraged the Roman Catholic Church. When the Roman Catholic Church discovered his interpretations, he was hauled up twice, and ultimately executed by the Inquisition.
• The Roman Catholic Church, troubled by such effects of popular readings and questionings of faith, imposed strict controls over publishers and booksellers and began to maintain an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558.

The Reading Mania

• As literacy and schools spread in European countries, there was a virtually insatiable demand for reading matter. Booksellers employed pedlars who roamed around villages, carrying little books for sale.
• There were almanacs or ritual calendars, along with ballads and folktales. 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.
• In France, the Bibliotheque Bleue were low-priced small books printed on poor quality paper and bound in cheap blue covers.
• The periodical press developed from the early 18th century, combining information about current affairs with entertainment. Newspapers and journals carried information about wars and trade, and also encouraged discussions and debates.
• Scientific ideas of thinkers such as Isaac Newton, and the philosophies of Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Jean Jacques Rousseau, were now widely printed and read, and readers could also read each other’s ideas and respond to them.

Print Culture and the French Revolution

Many historians have argued that print culture created the conditions within which the French Revolution occurred. This argument can be traced through three types of claims:

1. Print popularised the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers. Collectively their writings provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism. Readers were exposed to a new world where reason and rational thinking reigned.
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 recognised the need to question existing ideas and beliefs. Within this public culture, new ideas of social revolution came into being.
3. By the 1780s, literature mocked the royalty and criticised their morality. This literature circulating in the underground press generated a wave of ridicule and satire that created the conditions for the French Revolution.

However, other historians point out that we cannot simply assume print had a direct effect on people’s minds. People did not read just one kind of literature — they read whatever was available and often gave their own interpretations. Print did not directly shape their minds, but it did open up the possibility of thinking differently.

The Nineteenth Century

Children, Women and Workers

• Primary education became compulsory in Europe, and children became an important category of readers. A children’s press, devoted to literature for children alone, was set up in France in 1857.
• The Grimm Brothers in Germany spent years compiling traditional folk tales gathered from peasants and published a collection in 1812. Anything found unsuitable for children or that appeared rustic was excluded from the published version.
• Women became important as readers as well as writers. Penny magazines were specially meant for women, along with manuals teaching proper behaviour and housekeeping. Novelists such as Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters and George Eliot defined a new type of woman — one with will, strength of personality, and the power to think.
• Lending libraries had existed from the 17th century, and became instrumental in educating white-collar workers, artisans and the lower middle classes. Reading was actively promoted among the working class, and the Public Libraries Act was passed in Britain in 1850, so that public libraries could be established in England.

Further Innovations in Print Technology

• By the early 20th century, Richard M. Hoe of New York had perfected the power-driven cylindrical press, capable of printing 8,000 sheets an hour, which was very useful for printing newspapers.
• In the late 19th century, the offset press was developed which could print up to six colours at a time.
• From the turn of the 20th century, electrically operated presses accelerated printing. A series of further innovations improved the methods of feeding paper, quality of plates, automatic paper reels, and photoelectric controls of the colour register.

India and Print Culture

Manuscripts before the Age of Print

• India had a very old and rich tradition of handwritten manuscripts, in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, and various vernacular languages. Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper, with pages often beautifully illustrated.
• Manuscripts were expensive and fragile, and had to be handled carefully; they could also not be read easily as the script was written in different styles. So manuscripts were not widely used in everyday life; even though print technology had come to India by the mid-16th century, the oral tradition remained alive well into the 19th century, as texts were read out to large audiences.
• Pre-colonial Bengal had an extensive network of village primary schools, or pathshalas, but there were no printed textbooks. Students copied from the dictation of their teachers, and wrote from memory.

Print Comes to India

• The printing press first came to India with Portuguese missionaries, who set it up in Goa by the mid-16th century (1556).
• Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book, Ganges Kanthirava, at Cochin in 1579, and in 1713 the first Malayalam book was printed by them.
• By 1710, Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 Tamil texts, many of which were translations of older works.
• By 1780, James Augustus Hickey began to edit the Bengal Gazette, a weekly magazine described as “a commercial paper open to all, but influenced by none.” Enraged by the gossip it published about the Company’s senior officials, Governor-General Warren Hastings persecuted Hickey and encouraged the publication of officially sanctioned newspapers to counter Hickey’s paper. By the close of the 18th century, several newspapers and journals had appeared in print from Bombay, Calcutta and Madras.

Religious Reform and Public Debate

• From the 1820s, Raja Ram Mohan Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from Calcutta, beginning in 1821. The vernacular press flourished, generating controversy over issues like widow immolation (Sati), monotheism, Brahmo idolatry, and the education of women.
• Persian newspapers such as the Jam-i-Jahan Nama and the Shamsul Akhbar, and the Gujarati newspaper Bombay Samachar, were also started around this time.
• In north India, the ulama were deeply anxious about the collapse of Muslim dynasties and the erosion of Muslim laws and traditions under British rule. To counter this, they used cheap lithographic presses to publish Persian and Urdu translations of religious texts, as well as newspapers and tracts.
• The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, published thousands of fatwas telling Muslim readers how to conduct themselves in their everyday lives, and explaining the meanings of Islamic doctrines.
• Print thus helped intensify debate within different religious communities, as well as between them, and connected communities of readers across regions who never met each other but shared a world of texts. Publishers such as the Naval Kishore Press at Lucknow and the Shri Venkateshwar Press in Bombay published Hindu religious texts in vernacular languages.

New Forms of Publication

• As more and more people began to read, new literary forms entered the world of print: novels, whose form was first developed in Europe, took root in India; other new forms included lyrics, short stories, and essays about social and political matters.
• Women’s issues, sufferings and emotions found place in these new forms of writing, and women’s autobiographies described the personal experiences of women.
• Caricatures and cartoons were published in journals and newspapers, commenting on social and political matters.

Women and Print

• Reading grew among women as liberal husbands and fathers began educating female members of their families at home; some journals also began to publish writings by women, taking up questions about women’s education, widowhood and widow remarriage.
• Rashsundari Debi, an early 19th century woman from Bengal, learnt to read in the secrecy of her kitchen and later wrote her autobiography, Amar Jiban, published in 1876 — the first full-length autobiography published in the Bengali language.
• Conservative Hindus, however, believed that a literate woman would be widowed, and preserving oral traditions of family and religious instruction was seen as safer than the physical object of the printed book, which could be carried away easily by strangers. Reading of novels and fiction by women was regarded with anxiety and suspicion by many.
• In Punjab too, folk literature was widely printed from the early 20th century, and tracts urged women to be obedient wives and to stay at home, though other tracts (like Istri Dharm Vichar) taught them about their duties as women.

Print and the Poor People

• From the late 19th century, cheap small books were brought to markets in towns and sold at crossroads by pedlars, so that even poor people could buy them for a few paisa.
• Public libraries were set up from the early 20th century, expanding the reach of books to a wider section of people.
• Jyotiba Phule, the “low caste” pioneer from Maharashtra, wrote about the injustices of the caste system in his 1871 book Gulamgiri. In the 20th century, B.R. Ambedkar in Maharashtra and E.V. Ramaswamy Naicker (Periyar) in Madras wrote powerfully on caste and their writings were printed and read widely.
• Kashibaba, a Kanpur mill worker, wrote Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in 1938 to show the connection between caste and class exploitation. Workers’ associations also published cheap booklets on workers and labour issues.

Print and Censorship in Colonial India

• Before 1798, the colonial state under the East India Company was not too concerned with press regulation. Most newspapers published were owned by Englishmen critical of Company misrule and urged that the Company be brought under greater public control.
• As the vernacular press grew powerful and assertive, the colonial government became increasingly worried. Under the Vernacular Press Act of 1878, modelled on the Irish Press Laws, the government acquired extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the vernacular press.
• Despite repressive measures, nationalist newspapers grew in numbers in all parts of India, reporting on colonial misrule and encouraging nationalist activities.

Print Culture and the Nationalist Movement

• By the early 20th century, the growing numbers of nationalist newspapers reported on colonial misrule and encouraged nationalist activities. The colonial government’s efforts to suppress this press failed, as newspapers reported in defiance of censorship laws and got prosecuted, and continued to publish.
• Bal Gangadhar Tilak’s imprisonment in 1908 provoked widespread protests all over India.
• Mahatma Gandhi declared that swaraj (self-rule) was intimately connected with the freedom of the press. He wrote extensively about the importance of non-violence, the need to abolish untouchability, and other social issues, in his journals Harijan and Young India.
• Jugantar, a revolutionary nationalist newspaper published from Bengal, spread ideas of revolutionary nationalism, despite intense repression by the colonial government.

Key Points to Remember

• China had the earliest print technology; hand printing existed from AD 594, and Japan’s oldest printed book, the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, dates to AD 868.
• Marco Polo brought woodblock printing technology from China to Italy in 1295, from where it spread across Europe; paper-making knowledge reached Europe via Silk Route traders by the 11th century.
• Johann Gutenberg developed the first printing press with movable metal type in the 1430s-40s; his first printed book was the Bible.
• Martin Luther’s Ninety Five Theses (1517) were spread through print and led to the Protestant Reformation. The Roman Catholic Church maintained an Index of Prohibited Books from 1558.
• Menocchio’s independent reading of the Bible led to his execution by the Inquisition, showing how print could encourage dissenting ideas.
• Print historians debate the role of print culture in creating the conditions for the French Revolution through the spread of Enlightenment ideas, a new culture of debate, and satirical literature mocking royalty.
• Children, women and workers became important new readers in the 19th century; the Public Libraries Act was passed in Britain in 1850.
• Richard M. Hoe’s power-driven cylindrical press and the offset press were major 19th and early 20th century innovations in print technology.
• The printing press reached India with Portuguese missionaries in Goa by 1556; the first Tamil book, Ganges Kanthirava, was printed at Cochin in 1579.
• Ram Mohun Roy’s Sambad Kaumudi and the Deoband Seminary’s fatwas show how print helped religious reform and debate in colonial India.
• Rashsundari Debi’s Amar Jiban (1876) was the first full-length autobiography published in Bengali.
• The Vernacular Press Act of 1878 gave the colonial government extensive powers to censor the Indian language press.
• Nationalist newspapers, and journals like Gandhi’s Harijan and Young India and the revolutionary Jugantar, played a key role in the freedom movement.

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