Print Culture and the Modern World

Q. Where was the earliest print technology developed?

1) The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan and Korea. This was
a
system of hand printing.
2) From AD 594 onwards, books in China were printed by rubbing paper - also invented
there
against the inked surface of woodblocks.
3) As both sides of the thin, porous sheet could not be printed, the traditional Chinese
'accordion book' was folded and stitched at the side.

Q. Who produced the printed material in China? What was it used for?

IMPERIAL STATE
The imperial state in China was, for a very long time the major producer of printed material
as China possessed a huge bureaucratic system which recruited its personnel through civil
service examinations. Textbooks for this examination were printed in vast numbers under the
sponsorship of the imperial state. From the sixteenth century, the number of examination
candidates went up and that increased
the volume of print.

URBAN CULTURE
By the seventeenth century, as urban culture bloomed in China, the uses of print diversified.
Print was no longer used just by scholar-officials. Merchants used print in their everyday life,
as they collected trade information. Reading increasingly became a leisure activity.
The new readership preferred fictional narratives, poetry, autobiographies, anthologies of
literary masterpieces, and romantic plays.
Rich women began to read, and many women began publishing their poetry and plays.
Wives of scholar officials published their works and courtesans wrote about their lives.

Q. How did new technologies in print arrive in China?

a) Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported in the late nineteenth
century as Western powers established their outposts in China.
b) Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture, catering to the Western-style schools.
c) From hand printing there was now a gradual shift to mechanical printing.

Q. Discuss how print arrived in Japan.

a) Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing technology into Japan around
AD 768 to 770.
b) The oldest Japanese book, printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing
six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations.
c) Pictures were printed on textiles, playing cards and paper money.
d) Poets and prose writers were regularly published, and books were cheap and abundant.
e) In the late eighteenth century, in the flourishing urban circles at Edo (later to be known as
Tokyo), illustrated collections of paintings depicted an elegant urban culture, involving artists,
courtesans, and teahouse gatherings.
t) 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.

Q. Discuss the coming of print to Europe.

a) For centuries, silk and spices from China flowed into Europe through the silk route. In the
eleventh century, Chinese paper reached Europe via the same route. Paper made possible
the production of manuscripts, carefully written by scribes.
b) In 1295, Marco Polo, a great explorer, returned to Italy after many years of exploration in
China. China already had the technology of woodblock printing. Marco Polo brought this
knowledge back with him.
(Now Italians began producing books with woodblocks, and soon the technology spread to
other parts
of Europe.)
c) Luxury editions were still handwritten on very expensive vellum, meant for aristocratic
circles and rich
monastic libraries which scoffed at printed books as cheap vulgarities.
d) Merchants and students in the university towns bought the cheaper printed copies.
e) With the growing demand for books, woodblock printing gradually became more and more
popular. (By the early 15th century, woodblocks were being widely used in Europe to print
textiles, playing cards etc)

Q. What were the disadvantages of handwritten manuscripts?

The production of handwritten manuscripts could not satisfy the ever-increasing demand for
books.
a) Copying was an expensive, laborious and time-consuming business.
b) Manuscripts were fragile, awkward to handle, and could not be carried around or read
easily. (Their circulation therefore remained limited.)

Q. Where and by whom was the first known printing press developed?

The breakthrough occurred at Strasbourg, Germany, where Johann Gutenberg developed

the first
known printing press in the 1430s.

Q. Describe the stages of GUTENBERG's development of the printing press.

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.
a) He learnt the art of polishing stones, became a master goldsmith, and also acquired the
expertise to create lead moulds used for making trinkets.
b) Drawing on this knowledge, Gutenberg adapted existing technology to design his
innovation.
c) 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.
d) 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.

Q. What was the print revolution?

a) The shift from hand printing to mechanical printing led to the print revolution.
b) Print Culture was not just a development, but a new way of producing books; it
transformed the lives
of people, changing their relationship to information and knowledge, and with institutions and
authorities.
c) It influenced popular perceptions and opened up new ways of looking at things.

Q. What was the impact or advantage of print revolution?

a) With the printing press, a new reading public emerged because printing reduced the cost
of books.
b) The time and labour required to produce each book came down and multiple copies could
be produced with greater ease.
c) Books flooded the market, reaching out to an ever-growing readership and to wider
sections of people.
e) Now books could reach out to wider sections of people. If earlier there was a hearing
public, now a reading public came into being.
f) Oral culture entered print and printed material was orally transmitted.
g) Print created the possibility of wide circulation of ideas, and introduced a new world of
debate and discussion. This had significance in different spheres of life.
h) Also, print and popular religious literature stimulated distinctive individual interpretations of
faith, even among little-educated working people.

Q. What was the handicap faced by the publishers?

1. Books could be read only by the literate, and the rates of literacy in most European
countries were very low till the 20th century.
Il. So printers began publishing popular ballads and folk tales, and such books would be
profusely illustrated with pictures.
IlI. These were sung and recited at gatherings in villages and in taverns in towns.
IV. Oral culture thus entered print and printed material was orally transmitted. (The line that
separated the oral and reading cultures became blurred.)

Compositor: Person who composes the text for printing

Galley: Metal frame in which types are laid and the text composed.
Denomination: Sub - group within a region.

Q. Who did not welcome printed book and why?

Religious authorities and monarchs as well as many writers and artists, criticized the new
printed literature. Not everyone welcomed the printed book, and those who did also had
fears about it.
a) Many were apprehensive because they felt that the effects of easier access to the printed
word and the wider circulation of books could have a negative impact on people's minds.
b) It was feared that if there was no control over what was printed and read then rebellious
and irreligious thoughts might spread.
c) If that happened the authority of 'valuable' literature would be destroyed.

Q. Discuss the children's press that came up in Europe.

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.

Tavern - Places where people gathered to drink alcohol, served food, to meet
friends and exchange news.

Ballad - Historical account or folk tale in verse.

Q. Discuss FURTHER INNOVATIONS that came up in the world of press.

By the late eighteenth century, the press came to be made out of metal. Through the
nineteenth century, there were a series of further innovations in printing technology.
a) 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.)
b) In the late nineteenth century, the offset press was developed which could print up to six
colours at a time.
c) From the turn of the twentieth century, electrically operated presses accelerated printing
operations.
d) A series of other developments followed. Methods of feeding paper improved, the quality
of plates
became better, automatic paper reels and photo electric controls of the colour register were
introduced.
The accumulation of several individual mechanical improvements transformed the
appearance of printed texts.

Q. Discuss the new strategies devised by printers and publishers to sell their
products.

Printers and publishers continuously developed new strategies to sell their product.
a) Nineteenth-century periodicals serialized important novels, which gave birth to a particular
way of writing novels.
b) In the 1920s in England, popular works were sold in cheap series, called the Shilling
Series.
c) The dust cover or the book jacket is also a twentieth-century innovation.
d) 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.

Q. Why was Manocchio executed?

a)Print and popular religious literature stimulated many distinctive individual interpretations
of faith even among little-educated working people.
b) In the sixteenth century, Manocchio, a miller in Italy, began to read books that were
available in his locality.
c) He reinterpreted the message of the Bible and formulated a view of God and Creation that
enraged the Roman Catholic Church.
d) When the Roman Church began its inquisition to repress heretical ideas, Manocchio was
hauled up twice and ultimately executed.

The Roman Church, troubled by such effects of popular readings and questionings of faith,
imposed
severe controls over publishers and booksellers and began to maintain an Index of
Prohibited Books from 1558.

Q. Who contributed to rising of literacy rates in the 17*h and 18th century in Europe?
What was its result?

Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries literacy rates went up in most parts of
Europe.
a) Churches of different denominations 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.)
b) As literacy and schools spread in European countries, there was a virtual reading mania.
(People wanted books to read and printers produced books in ever-increasing numbers.)

Q. What kind of literature was in circulation in Europe? How was it made popular?

New forms of popular literature appeared in print, targeting new audiences.

a) Booksellers employed pedlars who roamed around villages, carrying little books for sale.
b) There were almanacs or ritual calendars, along with ballads and folktales.
c) Other forms of reading matter, largely for entertainment, began to reach ordinary readers.
d) 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.

Q.Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world!' Justify the statement in view of popular
conviction about books. How did Mercier perceive the effects of books?
Mercier proclaimed: 'Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world! Tremble before the virtual
writer!'
a/By the mid-eighteenth century, there was a common conviction that books were a means
of
spreading progress and enlightenment.
b). Many believed that books could change the world, liberate society from despotism and
tyranny, and
herald a time when reason and intellect would rule.

Louise-Sebastien Mercier, a novelist in eighteenth-century France, declared:

a) 'The printing press is the most powerful engine of progress and public opinion is the force
that will sweep despotism away.
b) In many of Mercier's novels, the heroes are transformed by acts of reading.
c) They devour books, are lost in the world books create, and become enlightened in the
process.
d) 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!'

Q. Write 3 arguments which establish a relation between Print culture and French
revolution

1. First print popularized the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers. Collectively, their writings
provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism.
a) They argued for the rule of reason rather than custom, and demanded that everything be
judged through the application of reason and rationality.
b) They attacked the sacred authority of the Church and the despotic power of the state,
thus eroding the legitimacy of a social order based on tradition.
c) The writings of Voltaire and Rousseau were read widely.

2. Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate.

a) 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.
b) Within this public culture, new ideas of social revolution came into being.

3. By the 1780s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and criticised
their morality.
a) Cartoons and caricatures typically suggested that the monarchy remained absorbed only
in sensual pleasures while the common people suffered immense hardships.
b) This literature circulated underground and led to the growth of hostile sentiments against
the monarchy.

Q. Did print shape the minds of the people against the church and monarchy?
a)People did not read just one kind of literature. If they read the ideas of Voltaire and
Rousseau, they were also exposed to monarchical and Church propaganda. They were not
influenced directly by everything they read or saw.

Q. How and why did Muslim ulama and other religious sects use paintings?

A) The ulama were deeply anxious about the collapse of Muslim dynasties and feared that
colonial rulers would encourage conversion, change the Muslim personal laws.
b) To counter this, they used cheap lithographic presses, published Persian and Urdu
translations of Holy Scriptures, and printed religious newspapers and tracts.
c) 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.
d) 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. Urdu print helped them conduct these battles in
public.

Q. When did Hindi printing begin?

Hindi printing began only from the 1870's and a large segment of it was devoted to the
education of women.

Q. Who wrote the first autobiography in the Bengali language?

In east Bengal, in the early 19th century, Rashsundari Debi, a young married girl in a very
orthodox household, learnt to read in the secrecy of her kitchen and later, she wrote her
autobiography Amar
Jiban which was published in 1876.

Q. How did print affect the lives and feelings of women?

Lives and feelings of women began to be written in particularly vivid and intense ways.
a) Women's reading increased enormously in middle-class homes.
b) 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.
c) Many journals began carrying writings by women, and explained why women should be
educated.
d) They also carried a syllabus and attached suitable reading matter which could be used for
home
based schooling.

Q. Who was Ram Chaddha?

In Punjab, too, a similar folk literature was widely printed from the early twentieth century.
Ram Chaddha published the fast-selling Istri Dharm Vichar to teach women how to be
obedient wives.
Q. Name the writers who wrote about caste.

From the late nineteenth century, issues of caste discrimination began to be written about in
many
a) Jyotiba Phule, the Maratha pioneer of low caste' protest movements, wrote about the
injustices of the caste system in his Gulamgiri (1871).
b) 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.
c) Local protest- movements and sects also created a lot of popular journals & tracks for a
new and just future

Q. What were the censorshils imposed by the British?

Before 1798, the colonial state under the East India Company was not too concerned with
censorship.
a) East India Company's 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.
b) 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.
d) In 1835, Governor-General Bentinck agreed to revise press laws. Thomas Macaulay, a
liberal colonial official, formulated new rules that restored the earlier freedoms.
e) After the revolt of 1857, the attitude to freedom of the press changed and enraged
Englishmen demanded a clamp down on the 'native' press.

Q. Why did people not want women to read literature in India?

n8. 1• Hindus believed a literate girl would be widowed.
2- Muslims believed educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu Romances.