The Age of Industrialisation Notes | Class 10 History
These standardised notes cover Print Culture and the Modern World, one of the core Class 10 History chapters. They trace how print technology grew from hand-carved wood blocks in East Asia to Gutenberg's printing press, how a cheap flood of books created a new reading public, and how print shaped religious debate, revolution and the freedom struggle in India. You can find more study notes in our Class 10 History notes collection.
The first printed books in East Asia
The earliest print technology was developed in China, Japan and Korea. Books in China were printed by rubbing paper against wood blocks. They could not be printed on both sides, as the paper was thin and porous, so the Chinese 'Accordion Book' was folded and stitched on one side. Before books were printed, the text was copied by skilled craftsmen with great accuracy. The art of writing beautifully is called calligraphy.
Why was China the major producer of printed material?
China recruited its large number of bureaucrats (civil service officers) through examinations sponsored by the imperial state, and these examinations required a large number of textbooks for students to prepare from. Print culture then spread for other reasons too.
- Use by traders: as urbanisation and trade grew, merchants started using print to collect and store trade information.
- Leisure activity: reading also became a leisure activity. Rich women began to read and write, and a great deal of fiction, poetry, anthologies and autobiography was written.
- New technology: mechanical presses and Western printing techniques were adopted, and Shanghai soon became the hub of the new print culture.
Western-style schools also began to flourish, and there was a gradual shift from hand printing to mechanical printing.
Print in Japan
Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing technology to Japan. The Buddhist 'Diamond Sutra' is the oldest Japanese book. Pictures began to be printed on many materials, such as textiles, playing cards and paper money.
Illustrated collections of paintings depicted an elegant urban culture of artisans, courtesans and teahouse gatherings. Libraries and bookshops were packed with hand-printed material of many types: books on women, musical instruments, calculations, the tea ceremony, flower arrangement, etiquette, cooking and famous places.
What is 'ukiyo'?
Kitagawa Utamaro, an artist born in Edo (Tokyo), contributed to the development of the 'ukiyo' art form. It refers to 'pictures of the floating world', or the depiction of ordinary human experiences, especially urban ones.
Print comes to Europe
Chinese paper reached Europe through the silk route in the eleventh century. Marco Polo brought the knowledge of print to Italy, and it eventually spread across Europe. The wealthy employed scribes, or skilled hand-writers, to increase the production of handwritten manuscripts.
Luxury editions were still handwritten on very expensive vellum (calf skin), meant for aristocratic circles and rich monastic libraries, which scoffed at printed books as cheap vulgarities. Merchants and students in the university towns bought the cheaper printed copies. However, handwritten manuscripts could not satisfy the ever-increasing demand for books, because they were fragile, awkward to handle and could not be carried around or read easily. Copying was also an expensive, laborious and time-consuming business.
Gutenberg and the printing press
In the 1430s, Johann Gutenberg developed the printing press. He had learnt the art of polishing stones, become a master goldsmith, and acquired the expertise to create lead moulds used for making trinkets. He adapted the existing technology of the olive press to make his printing machine.
The first book Gutenberg printed was the Bible. It took three years to print about 180 copies. This new technology did not at once displace the old art of handwritten manuscripts. The first printed books closely resembled written manuscripts in appearance and layout: borders were illuminated by hand with foliage and other patterns, and illustrations were painted. In books printed for the rich, space for decoration was left blank on the printed page, so each purchaser could choose the design and decide which painting school would do the illustrations.
A new reading public
Between 1450 and 1550, printing presses were set up in most countries of Europe. About 20 million copies of printed books flooded the European markets during the second half of the fifteenth century. The time and labour required to produce each book fell sharply, and multiple copies could be produced with much greater ease. Common people now had access to books, and the oral culture of a hearing public was gradually replaced by a reading public.
How did oral culture enter print?
Printers began publishing new ballads and folktales with illustrations. These were sung and recited at gatherings in villages, and in taverns in towns, for those who could not read. In this way oral culture entered print, and printed material was orally transmitted. The line that separated oral and reading cultures became blurred, and the hearing public and the reading public became intermingled.
Religious debates and the fear of print
The new printed literature was criticised, as many feared that if there was no control over what was printed and read, then rebellious and irreligious thoughts might spread. Those who disagreed with established authorities could now print and circulate their ideas.
1517: the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote his 'Ninety-Five Theses', criticising many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church, and challenged the Church to debate his ideas. Deeply grateful to print, Luther said:
Printing is the ultimate gift of God and the greatest one.
Luther's writings were immediately reproduced in vast numbers and read widely. This led to a division within the Church and to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
1558: the Roman Church, troubled by the effects of popular reading and questioning of faith, imposed several controls over publishers and booksellers and began to maintain an Index of Prohibited Books. Menocchio, a miller in Italy, was hauled up twice and ultimately executed, because he reinterpreted the message of the Bible and formulated a view of God and Creation that enraged the Roman Catholic Church. Several scholars think that print brought about a new intellectual atmosphere and helped spread the new ideas that led to the Reformation.
The reading mania
By the end of the eighteenth century, literacy rates in parts of Europe were as high as 60 to 80 per cent. Churches of different denominations set up schools in villages, carrying literacy to peasants and artisans. New forms of literature appeared in print that targeted new audiences, such as almanacs (astronomical calendars) or ritual calendars, along with ballads and folktales.
- In England, penny chapbooks were carried by petty pedlars known as chapmen. They were sold for a penny, so even the poor could afford them.
- In France there were the 'Bibliotheque Bleue', low-priced small books printed on poor-quality paper and bound in cheap blue covers.
- Ancient and medieval scientific texts were compiled and published, and maps and scientific diagrams were widely printed.
- The discoveries of Isaac Newton and the writings of Thomas Paine, Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau were widely printed and read.
People believed that books could change the world, liberate society from despotism and tyranny, and herald a time when reason and intellect would rule.
Print culture and the French Revolution
Print culture created the conditions within which the French Revolution occurred. It did not directly shape people's minds, but it did open up the possibility of thinking differently.
Print popularised the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers
These thinkers attacked the sacred authority of the Church and the despotic power of the state, eroding the legitimacy of a social order based on tradition. Voltaire and Rousseau were widely read. All values, norms and institutions were re-evaluated and discussed by a public that was inquisitive, critical and rational, and new ideas of social revolution came into being.
By the 1780s, literature mocked the royalty and criticised their morality, which fed hostile sentiments against the monarchy. Louis-Sebastien Mercier, a novelist in eighteenth-century France, declared:
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. They devour books, are lost in the world that books create, and become enlightened in the process. Convinced of the power of print, Mercier proclaimed: 'Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world! Tremble before the virtual writer!'
Children, women and workers
As primary education became compulsory from the late nineteenth century, children became an important category of readers. In 1857, a children's press devoted to literature for children alone was set up in France. It published new works as well as old fairy tales and folktales. The Grimm Brothers in Germany spent years compiling traditional folktales gathered from peasants. Anything considered unsuitable for children, or vulgar to the elites, was left out of the published version, so rural folktales acquired a new form. In this way, print recorded old tales but also changed them.
Women became important readers and writers. Penny magazines were meant especially for women, as were manuals teaching proper behaviour and housekeeping. The writings of George Eliot, Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters were read and enjoyed, and helped define a new type of woman: a person with will, strength of personality, determination and the power to think.
Further innovations
By the mid-nineteenth century, Richard M. Hoe of New York had perfected the power-driven cylindrical press, which could print 8,000 sheets per hour. In the late nineteenth century, the offset press was developed, which could print up to six colours at a time. From the turn of the twentieth century, presses operated electrically, methods of feeding paper were improved, the quality of plates got better, and automatic paper reels and photoelectric controls of the colour register were introduced.
With the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s, publishers feared a decline in book buying. To sustain sales, they brought out cheap paperback editions. In the 1920s in England, popular works were sold in cheap series called the Shilling Series, and book jackets were also introduced.
In the nineteenth century, lending libraries in England became instruments for educating white-collar workers, artisans and lower-middle-class people. After the working day was gradually shortened from the mid-nineteenth century, workers had some time for self-improvement and self-expression, and they wrote political tracts and autobiographies in large numbers.
India and the world of print
India had a very rich and old tradition of handwritten manuscripts in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian and other vernacular languages. Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper and preserved between wooden covers or sewn together. They were highly expensive, fragile and often hard to read. Even though pre-colonial Bengal had developed an extensive network of village primary schools, students very often did not read texts. Teachers dictated portions of texts from memory and students wrote them down, so many became literate without ever actually reading any kind of text.
Print comes to India
- Mid-sixteenth century: the first printing press came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries. By 1674, about 50 books had been printed in the Konkani and Kannada languages.
- Cochin, 1579: Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book, and also printed Malayalam books to propagate their religion.
- By 1710, Dutch Protestant missionaries had printed 32 Tamil texts.
From 1780, James Augustus Hickey began editing the Bengal Gazette, a weekly magazine. Hickey published many advertisements, including those relating to the import and sale of slaves, but he also published a lot of gossip about the Company's senior officials in India. Governor-General Warren Hastings persecuted Hickey and encouraged the publication of officially sanctioned newspapers that could counter information damaging to the colonial government. Note that the first Indian-edited newspaper was also called the Bengal Gazette, brought out by Gangadhar Bhattacharya, who was close to Rammohun Roy.
Religious reform and public debates
From the early nineteenth century, there were intense debates around religious issues. Some criticised existing practices and campaigned for reform, while others countered the arguments of the reformers. Public tracts and newspapers spread new ideas and generated discussion.
- 1821: Raja Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi, and the Hindu orthodoxy commissioned the Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinions.
- From 1822, two Persian newspapers were published, the Jam-i-Jahan Nama and the Shamsul Akhbar. A Gujarati newspaper, the Bombay Samachar, was also published.
- In North India, the ulema were deeply anxious about the collapse of Muslim dynasties. They used cheap lithographic presses to publish Persian and Urdu translations of holy scriptures and to print religious tracts and newspapers.
- The Deoband Seminary, founded in 1867, published thousands of fatwas telling Muslim readers how to conduct themselves in everyday life and explaining the meanings of Islamic doctrines.
- Calcutta, 1810: the first printed edition of the Ramcharitmanas of Tulsidas, a sixteenth-century text, appeared.
- From the 1880s, the Naval Kishore Press at Lucknow and the Shri Venkateshwar Press in Bombay published numerous religious texts in the vernaculars.
New forms of publication
New literary forms such as novels, lyrics, short stories and essays about political and social matters reinforced a new emphasis on human lives and intimate feelings. By the end of the nineteenth century, visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies. Painters such as Raja Ravi Varma produced images for mass circulation, and cheap prints and calendars were easily available in the bazaar. These prints shaped ideas about modernity and tradition, religion and politics, and society and culture. By the 1870s, there were imperial caricatures lampooning nationalists, as well as nationalist cartoons criticising imperial rule.
Women and print
Liberal husbands and fathers began educating the women of their households at home and sending them to school. Many journals began carrying writing by women and explaining why women should be educated. Conservative Hindus, on the other hand, believed that a literate girl would be widowed, and some Muslims feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances.
- 1876: Rashsundari Debi's autobiography, Amar Jiban, was published. It was the first full-length autobiography published in the Bengali language.
- From the 1860s, a few Bengali women such as Kailashbashini Debi wrote books highlighting the experiences of women.
- In the 1880s in Maharashtra, Tarabai Shinde and Pandita Ramabai wrote with passionate anger about the miserable lives of upper-caste Hindu women, especially widows.
While Urdu, Tamil, Bengali and Marathi print culture had developed early, Hindi printing began seriously only from the 1870s, and a large part of it was soon devoted to the education of women. These publications discussed women's education, widowhood, widow remarriage and the national movement, and some offered household and fashion lessons and brought entertainment through short stories and serialised novels.
Conservative print
- In Punjab, Ram Chaddha published Istri Dharm Vichar to teach women how to be obedient wives.
- The Khalsa Tract Society published cheap booklets with a similar message, many in the form of dialogues about the qualities of a good woman.
Print and poor people
Very cheap and small books were brought to markets in the nineteenth century. In Madras towns, some were sold at crossroads, so poor people travelling to the market could buy them. Public libraries were set up from the early twentieth century, mostly in cities and towns and sometimes in prosperous villages.
- 1871: Jyotiba Phule, the Maratha pioneer of the 'low caste' protest movements, wrote about the injustices of the caste system in his Gulamgiri.
- 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.
- 1938: Kashibaba, a Kanpur millworker, wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal. The poems of Kashibaba and Sudarshan Chakr, another Kanpur millworker, were compiled in Sacchi Kavitayen.
By the 1930s, Bangalore cotton millworkers set up libraries to educate themselves. These were sponsored by social reformers who tried to restrict excessive drinking, to bring literacy and, sometimes, to spread the message of nationalism.
Print and censorship
Before 1798, the colonial state under the East India Company was not too concerned with censorship. By the 1820s, the Calcutta Supreme Court passed regulations to control press freedom, and the Company began encouraging the publication of newspapers that would celebrate British rule.
In 1835, faced with urgent petitions by editors of English and vernacular newspapers, Governor-General William Bentinck agreed to revise the press laws, and Thomas Macaulay formulated new rules that restored earlier freedoms. After the revolt of 1857, press freedom was clamped down again.
1878: the Vernacular Press Act was passed, modelled on the Irish Press Laws. It gave the government extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the vernacular press. In 1907, when the Punjab revolutionaries were deported, Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote with great sympathy about them in his Kesari, which led to his imprisonment in 1908. During the First World War, under the Defence of India Rules, 22 newspapers had to furnish securities.
Why it still matters
The heart of this chapter is a single tension: as soon as printing made it cheap and fast to copy ideas, the people in power tried to control what everyone else could read. The Roman Church kept an Index of Prohibited Books, Menocchio was executed for reading the Bible in his own way, and the British passed the Vernacular Press Act to muzzle Indian newspapers. That argument over who controls information never really ended.
You can see it in the news today. In the 2025 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), India was ranked 151 out of 180 countries. That was an improvement from 159 in 2024, but India still sits in the group RSF calls a 'very serious' situation for journalists. In other words, the same questions the chapter raises, about censorship, about who gets to speak, and about the safety of writers, are live questions right now.
Historians also compare Gutenberg's press to our own information revolution. The printing press once flooded Europe with cheap copies of ideas faster than any authority could check them, and people feared 'rebellious and irreligious' thoughts would spread. Swap the printing press for the internet, social media and now AI-generated text, and the debate sounds strikingly familiar: how do we spread knowledge freely while stopping the spread of false or harmful information? Understanding how societies handled that shock 500 years ago helps us think about the misinformation debates of our own time. If you enjoy connecting the past to the present like this, explore how ideas travel across subjects in the Learnacy Hub, or read more study notes on One Young India.