Class 10 History Chapter 5 Print Culture and

the Modern World Notes

10 Class History Chapter 5 Print Culture and the Modern

World Notes

Textbook NCERT

Class Class 10

Subject History

Chapter Chapter 5

Chapter Name Print Culture and the Modern World

Category Class 10 History Notes

Medium English

Class 10 History Chapter 5 Print Culture and the Modern World Notes. here we will be

learn about History Print Culture and the Modern World ,The history of print in

Europe.,The growth of press in nineteenth century India., Relationship between print

culture, public debate and politics Etc

Class 10 History Chapter 5 Print Culture and the Modern World Notes
📚 Chapter = 5 📚
💠 Print Culture and the Modern World💠
❇️ The First Printed Books :-
🔶 Print in China :-
 The earliest kind of print technology was developed in China, Japan and Korea.

From AD 594 onwards books in china were printed by rubbing paper against the inked
surface of woodblocks. Earliest Chinese books were made in ‘accordion’ style.

Textbooks for the recruitment in civil service examinations were the major producer of
this printed material.

By the seventeenth century, as urban culture bloomed in China, the uses of print
diversified.

Merchants used printed material in their everyday life.

Shanghai became the hub of the new print culture.

🔶 Print in Japan :-
Buddhist missionaries of China introduced hand -printing technology into Japan
around AD 768-770.

The oldest Japanese book printed in AD 868 is the Buddhist ‘Diamond Sutra’.

❇️ Calligraphy :-
🔹 the art of beautiful and stylised writing is called Calligraphy.
❇️ Print comes to Europe :-
In the eleventh century Chinese paper reached Europe through silk route.

In 1295 Marco polo brought the knowledge of woodblock printing technology to Italy.

To meet the increasing demand of books booksellers started giving employement to

scribs and skilled handwriters.

But the production of handwritten manuscripts could not satisfy the ever increasing
deman for books.

❇️ Reasons for the arrival of wood block printing in Europe after 1295 :-
🔹 Wood Block Printing came to Europe after 1295 because :-
 This technique was with China first.

Marco Polo returned to Italy and brought this knowledge with himself.

Now Italian began producing books with Wood Block.

Soon the technology spread in other parts of world.

❇️ Vellum :-
🔹 A parchment made from the skin of animals.
❇️ manuscript :-
🔹 Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper.
❇️ limitations of manuscript :-
Manuscripts were highly expensive and fragile.

They have to be handle carefully.

They could not be read easily.

❇️ Reasons Why couldn’t the production of handwritten manuscripts satisfy the

ever increasing demand for books :-

copying was an expensive,laborious and time consuming business.

Manuscripts were fragile and difficult to handle.

Not easily carried around or read easily.

❇️ factors that helped in the rise of print culture in Europe :-

Handwritten manuscripts could not satisfy the ever increasing demand for books.

copying was an expensive,laborious and time consuming business.

manuscripts were fragile that’s why circulation was limited.

Woodblock were used for printing by early 15″ century but this couldn’tcater to the
ever increasing demand for print materials.

Need for quicker and cheaper reproduction of books.

❇️ Gutenberg and the Printing Press :-

🔶 Gutenberg :-
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.

Subsequently he learnt the art of polishing stones became a master goldsmith and also
acquired the expertise to create lead moulds used for making trinkets.

Drawing on this knowledge he used to design his new innovation.

🔶 The Printing Press :-

The olive press provided the model for the printing press and the moulds were used for
casting the metal types for the letters of the alphabet.

By 1448 he perfected this system and the first book he printed was the Bible.

Printed books at first closely resembled the written manuscripts in appearance and
layout.

Between 1450- 1550 printing presses were setup in most countries of Europe.

❇️ Platen :-
🔹 It is a board which is pressed onto the back of paper to get the impression from
the type.

❇️ The Print Revolution and Its Impact :-

🔶 A New Reading Public :-
With the printing press a new reading public emerged.

The time and labour required to produce each book came down.

Cost of books also reduced. Books flooded the market reaching out to an ever growing
reader- ship.

Due to print technique a new reading public emerged in place of hear- ing public.

Now books could reach out to wider sections of people.

🔶 Religious Debates and the fear of Print :-

 Many feared that if there was no control over what was printed and reading then
rebellious and irreligious thoughts might spread.

Religious reformer Martin Luther King criticised many practices and rituals of the
Roman Catholic Church,

Luther’s translation of the New Testament lead to the division within the church and to
the beginning of the Protestant reformation.

Roman Church began Inquisition to repress heretical ideas.

In 1558 Roman Church began to maintain an index of Prohibited Books.

❇️ Effect of Print Revolution :-

Printing reduces the cost of books,the time and labour required to produce each book
came down.

Multiple copies could be produce easily.

circulation of ideas and open new world of debate and discussion.

Brought new intellectual atmosphere, helped spread the new ideas that led to
reformation.

Indivisual interpretation of faith even among little educated people.

The writing of enlightened thinkers helped in French revolution.

❇️ Ballad :-
🔹 A historical account or folk tale in verse, usually sung or recited.
❇️ Taverns :-
🔹 Places where people gathered to drink alcohol, to be served food, and to meet
friends and exchange news.

❇️ Protestant Reformation :-
🔹 A sixteenth-century movement to reform the Catholic Church dominated by
Rome. Martin Luther was one of the main Protestant reformers. Several traditions of

anti-Catholic Christianity developed out of the movement.

❇️ Reason of printed books became popular among less literate people :-

 Those who could not read at least can listen and enjoy.

Folk songs and folk lore were published.

Illustrated books were published.

These were read out at rural meetings pubs etc.

❇️ The Reading Mania :-

Churches of different denominations set up schools in villages carrying literacy to
peasants and artisans.

In some parts of Europe literacy rate were as high as 60-80%.

In England, penny chapbooks were carried by petty paddlers known as Chapman.

In France there was ‘Biliotheque bleue’ which were low priced small books printed on
poor quality paper and bound in cheap blue covers.

Newspapers and journals carried information about wars and trade, as well as news of
developments in other places.

❇️ Role of print culture in bringing about the French Revolution :-

Print popularized the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers .

Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate.

By the 1780 there was on outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and
criticized their morality.

❇️ Denominations :-
🔹 Sub groups within a religion.
❇️ Almanac :-
🔹 An annual publication giving astronomical data, information about the
movements of the sun and moon, timing of full tides and eclipses, and much else that

was of importance in the everyday life of people.

❇️ Chapbook :-
🔹 A term used to describe pocketsize books that are sold by travelling pedlars called
chapmen. These became popular from the time of the sixteenth-century print

revolution ublishe.

❇️ Despotism :-
🔹 A system of governance in which absolute power is exercised by an individual,
unregulated by legal and constitutional checks.

❇️ Children, Women and Workers :-

A children Press, devoted to literature for children alone, was setup in France in 1857.

The Grimm Brothers in Germany spent many years compiling traditional folktales
gathered from peasants.

Lending libraries had been in existence from the seventeenth century onwards.

In nineteenth century lending libraries in England became instrument for educating

white collar workers, artisans and lower middle class people.

❇️ 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.

In the 1920s in England, popular works were sold in cheap series called the Shilling
Series.

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 :-

 India had a very rich and old tradition of handwritten manuscripts- in Sanskrit, Arabic,
and Persian as well as in various vernacular languages.

Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper.

They would be either pressed between wooden covers or sewn together to ensure
preservation.

Even though pre colonial Bengal had developed an extensive network of village primary
schools, students very often did not read text.

They only learnt to write. Teachers dictated portions of texts from memory and
students wrote them down.

Many of them became literate without ever actually reading any kind of texts.

❇️ Print Comes to India :-

The printing press first came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries in the mid-sixteenth
century.

By 1674, about 50 books had been printed in the Konkani and in kanara language.

Catholic priests printed the first tamil book in 1579 at Cochin and in 1713 the first
Malayalam book was printed by them.

From 1780 James Augustus Hicky began to edit a weekly magazine-The Bengal
Gazette.

Gangadhar Bhattacharyabegan to publish Bengal Gazatte.

❇️ Ulama :-
🔹 Legal scholars of Islam and the sharia (a body of Islamic law)
❇️ Fatwa :-
🔹 A legal pronouncement on Islamic law usually given by a mufti (legal scholar) to
clarify issues on which the law is uncertain.

❇️ Religious Reform and Public Debates :-

🔹 From the early nineteenth century, there were intense debates around religious
issues.
🔹 Different groups offered a variety of new interpretations of the beliefs of different
religions.

🔹 Ram Mohan Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from 1821 and the orthodoxy
commissioned the Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinion.

🔹 From 1822, two Persian newspapers: Jam-i-Jahan Noma and Shamsul Akhbar
were published.

🔹 The Deoband Seminari, founded in 1867 published thousands upon thousands of

fatwas telling Muslim readers how to conduct themselves in everyday lives and

explaining the meaning of Islamic doctrines.

🔹 The first printed edition of the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, a sixteenth-century

text, came out from Calcutta in 1810.

❇️ Women and Print :-

The status of women improved in the Indian society. Women’s reading, increased 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 1876 Rashsundari Debi published her autobiography-Amar Jiban.

In the 1880s Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote with pas- sionate anger about
the miserable lives of upper caste Hindu women, especially widows.

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.

Ram Chaddha published the fast selling Istri Dharm Vichar to teach women how to be
obedient wives.

Printed books helped women to emerge as rebels. Many women began writing and tried
to highlight the poor condition of women.

❇️ impact of print culture on Indian women :-

 Print enabled women to read in silence,discuss and debate among the like minded
persons.

Women express themselves and shape their ideas.

It connects women across caste religion or class.

many women writes their experiances and stories .

Many liberal husband and fathers allowed their wife and daughters to study.

❇️ Print and the Poor People :-

In the 19th century, very cheap and small books were brought to markets.

Cheap books were being sold at Madras so that poor people were also buy read.

Lending library were setup.

Paperback edition of novels were printed to make them affordable to the masses.

Literacy Rate was increased in Labour Class.

It helps to send the message of Nationalism to masses.

From the late nineteenth century, issues of caste discrimination began to be written
about in many printed tracts and essays.

In 1871 Jyotiba Phule wrote about the injustice of the caste system in his book
Gulamgiri.

Kashibaba, a Kanpur Mill worker, wrote and published Chote aur Bade ka Saval in 1938
to show the links between caste and class exploitation.

❇️ How did printing work to connect communities and people living in different
parts of India?

It created new platform for expression of ideas.

It is the cheapest and most simplest way of communication.

It brought about the problems of Indian Masses.

A large number of religious book were being transmitted to Indian Masses.

❇️ the role of print culture in encouraging the role of Nationalism in India :-

 Despite repression nationalist newspaper were reaching every nook and corner of the
country.

They brought to light the misrule of the British.

Revolutionary Bal Gangadhar Tilak started the newspaper named Kesari.

Bal Gangadhar Tilak was imprisoned in 1908 which led to widespread protest all over
India.

❇️ Reason of Vernacular Press Act passed in India :-

As Vernacular newspaper became more assertive the colonial government sought to
crush it.

In 1878, Vernacular Press Act was passed.

From now on the government can track the vernacular newspapers.

❇️ steps taken by the British to curb the freedom of press in India :-

After the revolt of 1857 ,enraged Englishmen demanded a clamp down on the native
press.

The Venacular Press Act, 1878 was passed. it provided the government with extensive
rights to censor reports in the vernacular press.

Government kept regular track of the vernacular newspapers.

when a report was judged as seditious, newspaper was warned and if the warning was
ignored the press was liable to be seized and the printing machinery confiscated.

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