Print Culture and the Modern World

Lesson

Part 1 — how a technology born in East Asia changed what people read, believed and argued about, from China in the sixth century to Europe in the nineteenth.

In this lesson you will

Trace print from woodblock printing in China and Japan to Gutenberg's press
Explain how print created a reading public and fed religious debate and the French Revolution
Describe how children, women and workers became new readers in the nineteenth century
Answer a source-based question and a 5-mark question the way examiners mark them

Part 1 at a glance

Diagram

Print begins in East Asia

Table of print in China: woodblock books from AD 594 printed on one side and folded; state printing for the civil service examinations; seventeenth-century leisure reading by merchants and women; and late nineteenth-century Western presses with Shanghai as the hub
Place and time	What happened
China, from AD 594	Pages carved in wood, inked, and pressed onto paper by hand; "accordion" books, printed on one side, folded and stitched
China, for centuries	The imperial state printed textbooks for the civil service examinations
China, 1600s	Merchants, leisure readers and rich women read fiction, poetry and plays; some women published
China, late 1800s	Western mechanical presses; Shanghai emerges as the new centre of printing

Concept

Print in Japan

Buddhist missionaries from China brought hand-printing to Japan around AD 768–770.

Table of print in Japan: the Diamond Sutra of AD 868 with six sheets and woodcuts; regular publishing in medieval Japan; and in late eighteenth-century Edo, Utamaro and the ukiyo art of everyday city life
Milestone	Detail
AD 868	Oldest Japanese printed book: the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, six sheets of text with woodcut pictures
Medieval Japan	Poets and prose writers published regularly; books were cheap and plentiful
Late 1700s, Edo (Tokyo)	Kitagawa Utamaro and the art of ukiyo, "pictures of the floating world", showing city life

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