Print technology in East Asia--Japan and China
The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Korea and Japan.
--This system was of hand printing.
--From AD594 books in china were printed by rubbing paper against the inked surface of woodblocks.
--there used to be 'accordion book' which used to be folded and stitched at the sides.
--skilled craftsmen would duplicate with remarkable calligraphy.
China
Imperial state and printed books:
1.China for a long time was the major producer of the printed material.
--china had a bureaucratic system which recruited its personnel through civil service examinations and for this examination textbooks were printed, under the sponsorship of the imperial state and this increased the volume of print.
2.Urban and reading culture
--by 17thC urban culture bloomed in China and uses of print increased. Now it was used by scholars-officials, merchants used for trade information,.
--reading became a leisure activity and fictional narratives, poetry, autobiographies, anthologies of masterpieces and romantic plays were published.
--Wives of scholars-officials published their works and courtesans about their lives.
3. New technology
Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported in the late19thC as Western powers established their outposts in China.
--Shanghai became the hub of print culture, catering to the Western-style schools.
--Now there was a gradual shift from hand printing to mechanical printing.
Print in Japan:
Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand printing in Japan around 768-770.
--the oldest book printed in AD 868, is The Buddhist Diamond Sutra , containing six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations.
--pictures were printed on textiles, playing cards and paper money.
--Poets and prose writers regularly published their works and books were cheap and abundant.
--Prints of visual material led to interesting practices in the 18th C in the urban circles as at EDO (modern Tokyo) had collections of paintings depicting elegant urban culture, artists, courtesans and tea house gatherings.
--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.
Print comes to Europe:--In the 11th C Chinese paper reached Europe via silk-route.
--paper made it possible the production of manuscripts, written by scribes.
--in 1295, Marcopolo, returned to Italy with the knowledge of wooden block printing and this technology started spreading from Italy to other parts of Europe.
--luxury editions were still hand written on Vellum( a parchment made from the skin of animals), meant for the aristocratic circles and rich monasteries, who considered these a 'cheap vulgarities.'
--merchants and students in the university towns bought the cheaper printed copies.
Books becoming popular:
As the demand for books increased, booksellers all over Europe began exporting to many different countries.
--Books fairs were held at different places.
--Production of handwritten manuscripts was also organised in new ways as scribes or skilled handwriters were no longer solely employed by the wealthy people but now by booksellers too.
Woodblock printing-it was gradually becoming more popular, woodblocks were widelyused in Europe to print textiles, playing cards and religious pictures with simple brief texts.
New print technology:
A breakthrough occurred at Strasbourg, Germany, where Johann Gutenburg developed the first known printing press in 1430's.
Drawbacks/limitations of the manuscripts:--copying was expensive, laborious and time –consuming.
--they were fragile, awkward to handle.
--could not be carried around easily , there circulation was therefore limited.
Gutenburg and the printing press
He was a son of a merchant who became goldsmith and also acquired the expertise to create lead moulds. Drawing this knowledge, he adapted existing technology to design his innovation. The olive press provided the model for the printing press and moulds for casting the metal types for the letters of the alphabet. By 1448, he perfected the system.
--the first book he printed was the Bible and about 180 copies were printed.
Expansion of print--Printed books first closely resembled the written manuscript in appearance and layout.
--metal letters imitated the ornamental handwritten styles .
Borders were illuminated by hand with foliage and other patterns, and illustrations were painted.
--books for rich had black s pace for decoration on the printed space.
--Each purchaser could choose the design and decide for the painting school for illustrations.
2. Between 1450-1550 printing presses were set up in most of the countries of Europe.
--printers from Germany travel to other countries, seeking work and helping start new presses., with this the book production boomed.
--in the second half of the 15th C 20 million copies of printed books were there in markets and the number kept on increasing.
Shift from hand printing to mechanical printing led to the Print revolution.
The Print revolution and its impact—in Europe:
It transformed lives of people, changed their relationships, influenced peoples perceptions and opened new ways of thinking.
--1.Reading public: new reading public emerged.
--printing reduced cost of books.
--multiple copies could be produced with greater ease and now books flooded markets and readership kept on growing.
2.Culture of reading:--earlier books were restricted to elites only and common people lived in the world of’ oral ‘ culture. Knowledge was transferred orally, texts were read out, ballads were recited, folktales narrated.
--now books could reach out to wider sections.
--now there was a transfer from hearing public to reading public.
3. Reaching to the illiterates:
Rates of literacy was very low in Europe till 20thCand very few people would read books.
--Publishers tried various things to persuade the common people to read books, so they began publishing popular ballads, folktales with illustrations, which were sung in the villages and in the Traverns (places where people would gather to drink, eat food with friends) in towns.
4. Oral culture entered print: line that separated oral and reading cultures became blurred. And the hearing public and reading public became intermingled.
Religious debates and fear of print:
Positive effects
--print created the possibility of wide circulation of ideas.-
-introduced a new world of debates and discussions
--Even those who disagreed could now print and could circulate the ideas,
-- Through the printed message, they could persuade people to think differently, and move them to action.
Negative effects:--Not everyone welcomed the printed book and many were apprehensive of the effects that the easier access to the printed word and the wider circulation of books, could have on people’s minds.
--It was feared that if there was no control over what was printed and read then rebellious and irreligious thoughts might spread.
--the authority of ‘valuable’ literature would be destroyed was the Expression of the religious authorities and monarchs.
Effect on Religion-- Martin Luther wrote Ninety Five Theses criticizing many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church.
-- It challenged the Church to debate his ideas.
-- Luther’s writings were immediately reproduced in vast numbers and read widely.
--This lead to division within the Church and to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
Print and Dissent
Print and popular religious literature stimulated many distinctive individual interpretation of faith even among little educated working people.
-- In the sixteenth century Manocchio, a miller in Italy,. He reinterpreted the message of the Bible and formulated a view of God and Creation that enraged the Roman Catholic Church. When the Roman Church began its Inquisition to repress heretical ideas, Manocchio was 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.
READING MANIA
Through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries literacy rates went up in most part of Europe.
-- Churches of different denomination set up schools in villages, carrying literacy to peasants and artisans.
-- As literacy and schools spread in European countries, there was a virtual reading mania i.e people wanted books to read and printers produced books in ever-increasing numbers.
--New forms of popular literature appeared in print, targeting new audiences, Book sellers employed peddlers who roamed around villages, carrying little books for sale.
--There were almanacs or ritual calendars, along with ballads and folktales.
-- In France, were the ‘Biliotheque Bleue.’ Which were low priced small books printed on poor quality paper, and bound in cheap blue covers. Then there were the romances, printed on four to six pages,
--and the more substantial ‘histories’ which were stories about the past Books were of various sizes, serving many different purposes and interest.
The periodical press developed from the early eighteenth century, combining information about current affairs with entertainment. Newspapers and journals carried information about wars and trade, as well as news of developments in other places.
--the ideas of scientists and philosophers now became more accessible to the common people. Ancient and medieval scientists and philosophers now became more accessible to the common people. Ancient and medieval scientific texts were compiled and published, and maps and scientific diagrams were widely printed.( When scientists like Issac Newton began to publish their discoveries, they could influence a much wider circle of scientifically minded readers.)
-- 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.
TREMBLE, THEREFORE, TYRANTS OF THE WORLD!--Books were a means of spreading progress and enlightenment.
-- Many believed that books could change the world,liberate society from despotism and tyranny, and
--books will bring a time when reason and intellect could rule.
-- Louise Sebastien Mercier, a novelist in eighteenth century. ‘The printing press is the most powerful engine of progress and public opinion is the force that will sweep despotism away.’ In many of Mercier’s novels, the heroes are transformed by acts of reading.He proclaimed: “Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world! Tremble before the virtual writer!’
It meant that rulers, tyrants and despots should fear print as now people could make use of print to express their views, both good & bad against them.
Print culture created the conditions within which French Revolution occurred. Comment
1.Print popularized the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers collectively, their writings provided a critical commentary on traditions, superstition and despotism.
--they argued for the rule of reason & rationality rather than the custom.
--they attacked the sacred authority of the church and despotic power of the state.
--writings of Voltaire and Rousseau were read widely and people who read these books saw world through new eyes--of question, rationality ans criticism.
2.Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate.
All values and norms and institutions were re-evaluate and discussed by a public
--public recognised the need to question existing ideas and beliefs and with in this print culture, new ideas of social revolution came into being.
3. by the 1780's there was an out pouring of literature that marked the royalty and crticised their morality.
--it questions existing social order.
--cartoons and caricatures typically suggested that the monarchy remained absorbed only in sensual pleasures while common people suffered hardships.
--literature led to the growth of hostile sentiments against the monarchy.
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY:
was a mass literacy in Europe and large number of new readers were now children, women and workers.
CHILDREN
--Primary education became compulsory and children became an important category of readers.
--production of ext books became critical for the publishing industry.
--children press, devoted to the literature for children alone was set up in 1857 that published old fairy tales folk tales.
--Grimm Brothers in Germany compiled folk tales gathered from peasants and these were edited & anything that was considered unsuitable for children was not included in the published version.
--rural folk tales acquired new forms.
WOMEN:--they became an important as readers as well as writers.
--penny magazines were especially meant for them, manuals teaching proper behaviour and house keeping.
--novels in the 19th C saw women as important readers. Women novelists as Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, Gorge Eliot--their writings became important in redefining a new type of woman: a person with will, strength of personality, determination and the power to think.
LENDING LIBRARIES:
--Had been existing since 17th C, and in 19th C became instruments in educating white -collar workers, artisans and lower middle class people.
--after the working day was shortened in mid-18thC, workers had some time for self-expression. They wrote political tracts and autobiographies in large numbers.
Further Innovations--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. 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.
-- In the late nineteenth century, the offset press was developed with could print up to six colours at a time.
--From the turn of the twentieth century, electrically operated presses accelerated printing operations. A series of other developments followed. 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.
Printers and publishers continuously developed new strategies to sell their product.
a) Nineteenth-century periodicals serialised 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. The dust cover or the book jacket is also a twentieth-century innovation.
c) 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
Manuscripts Before the Age of Print--India had a very rich and old tradition of hand written manuscripts a Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, as well as in various vernacular languages.
--Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper. Pages were sometimes beautifully illustrated.
--They would be either pressed between wooden covers or sewn together to ensure preservation. Manuscripts continued to be produced till well after the introduction of print down to the late nineteenth century.
Manuscripts: negative points
Manuscripts however were highly expensive and fragile.
A) They had to be handled carefully and b)they could not be read easily as the script was written in different styles, so manuscripts were not widely used in everyday life. 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. Many thus became literate without ever actually reading any kinds of texts.
Print Comes to India
PRINT COMES TO INDIA
--The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries n 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 translation of older works.
--The English language press did not grow in India till quite late even though the English East India Company began to import presses from the late seventeenth century.
--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.
-- 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 official in India. Enraged by this Governor-General Warren Hastings persecuted Hickey and encouraged the publication of officially sanctioned newspapers that could counter the flow of information that damaged the image of the colonial government.
--By the close of the eighteenth century, a number of newspapers and journals appeared in print.
--Indians, too, began to publish Indian newspapers. 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
Different groups confronted the changes happening within colonial society in different ways and offered a variety of new interpretations of the beliefs of different religions.
--Some criticized existing practices and campaigned for reform while other countered the arguments of reformers.
-- 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.
-- A wider public could now participate in these public discussions and express their view, new ideas emerged through these clashes of opinions.
Print against Hindu Orthodoxy
1. Hindu orthodoxy over matters like widow immolation, monotheism, Brahmanical priesthood and idolatry,.
2.In Bengal as the debate developed tracts and newspapers proliferated, circulating a variety of arguments.
3. To reach a wider audience, the ideas were printed in the everyday, spoken language of ordinary people, Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from 1821 and the Hindu orthodoxy commissioned the Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinions.
4. From 1822 two Persian newspapers were published, Ja-i-Jahan Nama and Shamsul Akhbar. In the same year Gujarati newspaper the Bombay Samachar made its appearance.
5. print encouraged the reading of religious texts, especially in the vernacular languages.
EXAMPLES:
a) The first printed edition of the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, a sixteenth century text came out from Calcutta in 1810.
b) From the 1880s the Naval Kishore Press at Luck now and the Shri Venkateshwar Press in Bombay published numerous religious texts in vernaculars.
SIGNIFICANCE OF PRINT:
--In their printed and portable form these could be read easily at any place and time.
--They could also be read out to large groups of illiterate men and women.
--Religious texts therefore reached a very wide circle of people encouraging discussions, debates and controversies within and among different religions.
Print did not only publicised conflicting opinions amongst communities and people in different part of India but also Newspapers conveyed new from one place to another creating pan-Indian identities.
Print and Muslims
1.In north India, the Ulama were deeply anxious about the collapse of Muslim dynasties. They feared that colonial rulers would encourage conversion, change the Muslim personal laws. TO counter this, they used cheap lithographic presses, published Persian and Urdu translations of holy scriptures, and printed religious newspapers and tracts.
2.The Deoband Seminary, founded in1867, published thousands of fatwas telling Muslim leaders how to conduct themselves in their everyday lives, and explaining the meanings of Islamic doctrines.
3.All through the nineteenth century , a number of Muslim sects and seminaries appeared each with a different interpretation . Urdu print helped them conduct these battles in public.
New Forms of Publications--Printing created an appetite for new kinds of writing.-- As more and more people could now read, they wanted to see their own lives, experiences, emotions and relationships reflected in what they read.
-- For readers, it opened up new worlds of experience, and save a vivid sense of the diversity of human lives.
-- New literary forms also entered the world of reading short stores, essays about social and political matters. A new visual culture was taking shape.
-- visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copes. 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. Cheap prints and calanders easily available in the bazaar, could be bought even by the poor to decorate the walls of their homes or places or work. These prints began shaping popular ideas about modernity and tradition, religion and politics, and society and culture.
The 1870s caricatures and cartoons were being published in
--journals and newspapers commenting on social and political issues. Some caricatures ridiculed the educated Indian’s fascination with Western tastes and clothes, While others expressed he fear of social change. as well as nationalist cartoons criticizing imperial rule.
Women and Print in India
1.Women’s reading increased enormously in middle class homes.
2. Liberal husbands and father began educating their women folk at home and sent them to schools when women’s schools were set up in the cities and towns after the mid-nineteenth century.
3. Many journals began carrying writings by women, and explained why women should be educated. They also carried a syllabus and attached suitable reading matter which could be used for home based schooling.
(NEGATIVE IMPACT/ BELIEFS)
4.Conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed and Muslims feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances.
EXAMPLES:
1.Rashsundari Debi a young married girl in a very orthodox household, learnt to read in the secrecy of her kitchen. Later she wrote her autobiography Amar Jibran which was published in 1876. It was the first full-length autobiography published in the Bengali language.
In what women would have to say about their own lives.
2. From the 1860s a few Bengali women like Kailashbashini Deb wrote books highlighting the experiences of women-about how women were imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance, forced to do hard domestic labor and treated unjustly by the very people they served.
3.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.
4.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. 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 movements. Some of them offered household and fashion lessons to women and brought entertainment through short stories and serialized novels.
Punjab too, a similar folk literature was widely printed from the early twentieth century.
5. Ram Chaddha published the fast selling Istri Dharm Vichar to teach women how to be obedient wives.
6. 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.
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 products and coloured lithographs. Pedlars took the Battala publications to homes, enabling women to read them in their leisure time.
Print and Poor People.
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.
--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, settings up a library was a way of acquiring prestige.
--From the late nineteenth century issues of caste discrimination began to be written about in many printed tracts and essays.
-- Jyotibha 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 criticizing ancient scriptures and envisioning a new and just future.
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. There 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.
-- By the 1820s the Calcutta Supreme Court passed certain regulation to control press freedom and the Company began encouraging publication of newspapers that would celebrate British rule.
--In 1835 faced with urgent petitions by editors of English and vernacular newspapers, Governor-General Bentinck revise press laws.
--After the revolt of 1857, the attitude to freedom of the press changed. Enraged Englishmen a demanded a clamp down on the native press. As vernacular newspapers became assertively nationalist the colonial government began debating measures of stringent control.
-- In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed modeled 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 providences. 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.
--Despite repressive measure, nationalist newspapers grew in numbers 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, Bal Gangadhar 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.
