NOTESlite

THE FOLLOWING CHAPTERS ARE PRESENT HERE



Globalisation refers to an economic system that has emerged since the last 50 years or so. But, the making of the global world has a long history – of trade, of migration, of people in search of work, the movement of capital, and much else. From ancient times, travellers, traders, priests and pilgrims travelled vast distances for knowledge, opportunity and spiritual fulfilment, or to escape persecution. As early as 3000 BCE an active coastal trade linked the Indus valley civilisations with present-day West Asia.



  • The Pre-modern World


  • Globalisation refers to an economic system that has emerged since the last 50 years or so. But, the making of the global world has a long history – of trade, of migration, of people in search of work, the movement of capital, and much else. From ancient times, travellers, traders, priests and pilgrims travelled vast distances for knowledge, opportunity and spiritual fulfilment, or to escape persecution. As early as 3000 BCE an active coastal trade linked the Indus valley civilisations with present-day West Asia.


  • Globalisation refers to an economic system that has emerged since the last 50 years or so. But, the making of the global world has a long history – of trade, of migration, of people in search of work, the movement of capital, and much else. From ancient times, travellers, traders, priests and pilgrims travelled vast distances for knowledge, opportunity and spiritual fulfilment, or to escape persecution. As early as 3000 BCE an active coastal trade linked the Indus valley civilisations with present-day West Asia.


  • Silk Routes Link the World


  • Silk routes are a good example of vibrant pre-modern trade and cultural links between distant parts of the world. Several silk routes have been identified by historians, overland and by sea, connecting vast regions of Asia, and linking Asia with Europe and northern Africa. In exchange of textile and species from India, precious metals – gold and silver – flowed from Europe to Asia.


  • Food Travels: Spaghetti and Potato


  • Food offers many examples of long-distance cultural exchange. New crops were introduced by traders and travellers. Ready foodstuff such as noodles travelled west from China to become spaghetti. Our ancestors were not familiar with common foods such as potatoes, soya, groundnuts, maize, tomatoes, chillies, sweet potatoes, and so on about five centuries ago. Many of our common foods came from America’s original inhabitants – the American Indians.


  • Conquest, Disease and Trade


  • The Indian Ocean, for centuries before, had known a bustling trade, with goods, people, knowledge, customs, etc; crisscrossing its waters. The entry of Europeans helped in redirecting these flows towards Europe. America’s vast lands and abundant crops minerals began to transform trade and lives everywhere. The Portuguese and Spanish conquest and colonisation of America was decisively underway by the mid-sixteenth century.


  • Europeans’ most powerful weapon was not a conventional military weapon, but germs such as those of smallpox that they carried on their person. It proved to be a deadly killer. Until the nineteenth century, poverty and hunger were common in Europe. Until well into the eighteenth century, China and India were among the world’s richest countries. However, from the fifteenth century, China is said to have restricted overseas contacts and retreated into isolation. Europe now emerged as the centre of world trade.


  • The Nineteenth Century (1815-1914)


  • In the nineteenth century, economic, political, social, cultural and technological factors interacted in complex ways to transform societies and reshape external relations. Three flows or movements were identified by economists.


  • The first is the flow of trade referred largely to trade in goods (e.g., cloth or wheat). The second is the flow of labour – the migration of people in search of employment. The third is the movement of capital for short-term or long-term investments over long distances. A World Economy Takes Shape In the nineteenth-century self-sufficiency in food meant lower living standards and social conflict in Britain. It happened because of population growth from the late eighteenth century. Corn laws were imposed which means restriction in the import of corn. The British agriculture was unable to compete with imports and vast areas of land were left uncultivated. So, thousands of men and women flocked to the cities or migrated overseas.


  • In Britain, food prices fell and in the mid-nineteenth century, industrial growth led to higher incomes and more food imports. In order to fulfil British demand, in Eastern Europe, Russia, America and Australia, lands were cleared to expand food production. In order to manage linking of railways to agricultural fields and building homes for people required capital and labour. London helped in terms of finance and terms of labour people emigrated from Europe to America and Australia in the nineteenth century.


  • By 1890, a global agricultural economy had taken shape, adapting complex changes in labour movement patterns, capital flows, ecologies and technology. In West Punjab, the British Indian government built a network of irrigation canals to transform semi-desert wastes into fertile agricultural lands to grow wheat and cotton for export. Even the cultivation of cotton, expanded worldwide to feed British textile mills.


  • Role of Technology
    Some of the important inventions in the field of technology are the railways, steamships, the telegraph, which transformed the nineteenth-century world. But technological advances were often the result of larger social, political and economic factors.


  • For example, colonisation stimulated new investments and improvements in transport: faster railways, lighter wagons and larger ships helped move food more cheaply and quickly from faraway farms to final markets. Animals were also shipped live from America to Europe till the 1870s. Meat was considered an expensive luxury beyond the reach of the European poor. To break the earlier monotony of bread and potatoes, many could now add meat (and butter and eggs) to their diet.


  • Late nineteenth-century Colonialism Trade flourished and markets expanded in the late nineteenth century. But, it has a darker side too, as in many parts of the world, the expansion of trade and a closer relationship with the world economy meant a loss of freedoms and livelihoods. In 1885 the big European powers met in Berlin to complete the carving up of Africa between them. Britain and France made vast additions to their overseas territories. Belgium and Germany became new colonial powers. The US also became a colonial power in the late 1890s by taking over some colonies earlier held by Spain.


  • Rinderpest, or the Cattle Plague
    In Africa, in the 1890s, a fast-spreading disease of cattle plague impacted people’s livelihoods and the local economy. Africa had abundant land and a relatively small population. In the late nineteenth century, Europeans were attracted to Africa due to its vast resources of land and minerals.


  • Europeans came to Africa hoping to establish plantations and mines to produce crops and minerals for export to Europe. But there was an unexpected problem – a shortage of labour willing to work for wages. Inheritance laws were changed and according to the new one, only one member of a family was allowed to inherit land. In the late 1880s, Rinderpest arrived in Africa carried by infected cattle imported from British Asia to feed the Italian soldiers invading Eritrea in East Africa. The loss of cattle destroyed African livelihoods.


  • Indentured Labour Migration from India


  • Indentured labour illustrates the two-sided nature of the nineteenth-century world. A world of faster economic growth as well as great misery, higher incomes for some and poverty for others, technological advances in some areas and new forms of coercion in others. In India, indentured labourers were hired under contracts and most of them came from the present-day regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, central India and the dry districts of Tamil Nadu.


  • Indian indentured migrants main destinations were the Caribbean islands (mainly Trinidad, Guyana and Surinam), Mauritius and Fiji. Indentured workers were also recruited for tea plantations in Assam. Nineteenth-century indenture has been described as a ‘new system of slavery’. In Trinidad the annual Muharram procession was transformed into a riotous carnival called ‘Hosay’ in which workers of all races and religions joined.


  • Similarly, the protest religion of Rastafarianism is also said to reflect social and cultural links with Indian migrants to the Caribbean. From the 1900s India’s nationalist leaders began opposing the system of indentured labour migration as abusive and cruel. It was abolished in 1921.


  • Indian Entrepreneurs Abroad


  • People need huge capital to grow food and other crops for the world market. So, for the humble peasant Shikaripuri shroffs and Nattukottai Chettiars were amongst the many groups of bankers and traders who financed export agriculture in Central and Southeast Asia, using either their own funds or those borrowed from European banks.


  • Indian Trade, Colonialism and the Global System


  • Cottons from India were exported to Europe. In Britain, tariffs were imposed on cloth imports. Consequently, the inflow of fine Indian cotton began to decline. Over the nineteenth century, British manufacturers flooded the Indian market. By helping Britain balance its deficits, India played a crucial role in the late-nineteenth-century world economy. Britain’s trade surplus in India also helped pay the so-called ‘home charges’ that included private remittances home by British officials and traders, interest payments on India’s external debt, and pensions of British officials in India.


  • The Inter-war Economy


  • The First World War (1914-18) was fought in Europe, but its impact was felt around the world. During this period the world experienced widespread economic and political instability and another catastrophic war.


  • Wartime Transformations


  • The First World War was fought between the Allies – Britain, France and Russia (later joined by the US); and the Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey. The war lasted for more than four years which involved the world’s leading industrial nations. It was considered as the first modern industrial war which saw the use of machine guns, tanks, aircraft, chemical weapons, etc; on a massive scale. During the war, industries were restructured to produce war-related goods. Britain borrowed large sums of money from US banks as well as the US public, transforming the US from being an international debtor to an international creditor.


  • Post-war Recovery


  • Post-war economic recovery, Britain, the world’s leading economy faced a prolonged crisis. Industries had developed in India and Japan while Britain was preoccupied in the war. Britain, after the war, found it difficult to recapture its earlier position of dominance in the Indian market and to compete with Japan internationally. At the end of the war, Britain was burdened with huge external debts. Anxiety and uncertainty about work became an enduring part of the post-war scenario.


  • Rise of Mass Production and Consumption


  • The US economy recovered quicker and resumed its strong growth in the early 1920s. Mass production is one of the important features of the US economy which began in the late nineteenth century. Henry Ford is a well-known pioneer of mass production, a car manufacturer who established his car plant in Detroit. The TModel Ford was the world’s first mass-produced car. Fordist industrial practices soon spread in the US and were also copied in Europe in the 1920s. The demand for refrigerators, washing machines, etc. also boomed, financed once again by loans. In 1923, the US resumed exporting capital to the rest of the world and became the largest overseas lender.


  • The Great Depression


  • The period of The Great Depression began around 1929 and lasted till the mid1930s, most parts of the world experienced catastrophic declines in production, employment, incomes and trade. The most affected areas were agricultural regions and communities. Combination of several factors led to depression. The first factor is agricultural overproduction, second is in the mid-1920s, many countries financed their investments through loans from the US. The rest of the world is affected by the withdrawal of US loans in different ways. The US was also severely affected by depression. Unfortunately, the US banking system collapsed as thousands of banks went bankrupt and were forced to close.


  • India and the Great Depression


  • Indian trade is immediately affected by depression. The prices of agriculture fell sharply but still, the colonial government refused to reduce revenue demands. In those depression years, India became an exporter of precious metals, notably gold. Rural India was thus see thing with unrest when Mahatma Gandhi launched the civil disobedience movement at the height of the depression in 1931.


  • Rebuilding a World Economy: The Post-war Era


  • Two decades after the end of the First World War, the Second World War broke out. It was fought between the Axis powers (mainly Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy) and the Allies (Britain, France, the Soviet Union and the US). The war continued for six years over land, on sea, in the air. The war caused an immense amount of economic devastation and social disruption. Post-war reconstruction was shaped by two crucial influences. The first one is that the US emerged as the dominant economic, political and military power in the Western world. The second was the dominance of the Soviet Union.


  • Post-war Settlement and the Bretton Woods Institutions


  • Two-key lessons were drawn out from inter-war economic experience. First, mass production cannot be sustained without mass communication. The second lesson related to a country’s economic links with the outside world. The Bretton Woods conference established the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to deal with external surpluses and deficits of its member nations. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (popularly known as the World Bank) was set up to finance postwar reconstruction. The IMF and the World Bank commenced financial operations in 1947.


  • The Early Post-war Years


  • An era of unprecedented growth of trade and incomes was inaugurated by the Bretton Woods for the Western industrial nations and Japan. During this decade, technology and enterprise were spread worldwide.


  • Decolonisation and Independence


  • After the end of the Second World War, large parts of the world were still under European colonial rule. The IMF and the World Bank were designed to meet the financial needs of the industrial countries. The IMF and the World Bank from the late 1950s shift their attention more towards developing countries. Most developing countries were not benefited from the fast growth the Western economies experienced in the 1950s and 1960s. They organised as a group – the Group of 77 (or G-77) – and demanded a new international economic order (NIEO). NIEO meant a system that would give them real control over their natural resources, more development assistance, fairer prices for raw materials, and better access for their manufactured goods in developed countries’ markets.


  • End of Bretton Woods and the Beginning of ‘Globalisation’


  • The US’s finance and competitive strength were weakened due to rising costs of its overseas involvements from the 1960s. In the mid-1970s the international financial system also changed and the industrial world was also hit by unemployment. MNCs began to shift their production to low-wage Asian countries. China became attractive destinations for investment by foreign MNCs. In the last two decades, the world’s economic geography has been transformed as countries such as India, China and Brazil have undergone rapid economic transformation.


  • Frequently asked Questions on CBSE Class 10 Political Science Notes Chapter 3: The Making of a Global World


  • What are the benefits of ‘globalisation’?


  • 1. Access to foreign cultures


  • 2. Technological innovation


  • 3. Improved living standards


  • 4. Emergence of new talent


  • 5. Higher standards of living


  • What are the ‘main elements of globalisation’?


  • Principle elements of globalisation are:


  • 1. International trade


  • 2. Foreign investment


  • 3. Capital market flows


  • 4. Labor migration


  • 5. Diffusion of technology


  • What are the ‘different types of globalisation’?
    Political, economic and cultural globalisation are the main types of globalisation.

    Chapter 4

    AGE OF INDUSTRALISATION


    Notes for class 10 cbse history chapter 4


  • Before the Industrial Revolution


    Proto-industrialisation is referred to the phase which existed even before factories began in England and Europe. There was large-scale industrial production for an international market not based on factories. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, merchants from Europe moved to the countryside, supplying money to peasants and artisans, requesting them to produce for an international market. Merchants were restricted to expand their production within towns because rulers granted different guilds the monopoly right to produce and trade in specific products. In the countryside, poor peasants and artisans eagerly agreed so that they could remain in the countryside and continue to cultivate their small plots. The Proto-industrial system was thus part of a network of commercial exchanges controlled by merchants.


  • The Coming Up of the Factory


    In the 1730s the earliest factories in England were set up, but only in the late eighteenth century, the number of factories multiplied. Cotton was the first symbol of the new era and its production boomed in the late nineteenth century. Richard Arkwright created the cotton mill where costly machines were set up and all the processes were brought together under one roof and management.


  • The Pace of Industrial Change


    First: In Britain, the most dynamic industries were cotton and metals. Cotton was the leading sector in the first phase of industrialisation up to the 1840s, followed by iron and steel industry. Second: The new industries found it difficult to displace traditional industries. Third: The pace of change in the ‘traditional’ industries was not set by steam-powered cotton or metal industries, but they did not remain entirely stagnant either. Fourth: technological changes occurred slowly.


  • James Watt improved the steam engine produced by Newcomen and patented the new engine in 1781. His industrialist friend Mathew Boulton manufactured the new model. Steam engines were not used in any of the other industries until much later in the century.


  • Hand Labour and Steam Power


    There was no shortage of human labour in Victorian Britain. Industrialists had no problem of labour shortage or high wage costs. Instead of machines industrialists required large capital investment. The demand for labour was seasonal in many industries. In all such industries where production fluctuated with the season, industrialists usually preferred hand labour, employing workers for the season.


  • Life of the Workers


    The workers’ lives were affected by the abundance of labour in the market. To get a job, workers should have existing networks of friendship and kin relations in a factory. Till the mid-nineteenth century, it was difficult for workers to find jobs. In the early nineteenth century, wages were increased. The fear of unemployment made workers hostile to the introduction of new technology. Spinning Jenny was introduced in the woollen industry. After the 1840s, building activity intensified in the cities, opening up greater opportunities for employment. Roads were widened, new railway stations came up, railway lines were extended, tunnels dug, drainage and sewers laid, rivers embanked.


  • Industrialisation in the Colonies


    The Age of Indian Textiles


    In India, silk and cotton goods dominated the international market in textiles, before the age of machine industries. A variety of Indian merchants and bankers were involved in this network of export trade – financing production, carrying goods and supplying exporters. By the 1750s this network, controlled by Indian merchants, was breaking down. The European companies came into power – first securing a variety of concessions from local courts, then the monopoly rights to trade. The shift from the old ports to the new ones was an indicator of the growth of colonial power. European companies controlled trade through the new ports and were carried in European ships. Many old trading houses collapsed, and those who wanted to survive had to operate within a network shaped by European trading companies.


  • What Happened to Weavers?


  • After the 1760s, the consolidation of the East India Company did not initially lead to a decline in textile exports from India. Before establishing political power in Bengal and Carnatic in the 1760s and 1770s, the East India Company had found it difficult to ensure a regular supply of goods for export. After the East India Company established political power, it developed a system of management and control that would eliminate competition, control costs, and ensure regular supplies of cotton and silk goods. It was established by following a series of steps.


  • By eliminating existing traders and brokers connected with the cloth trade, and establishing more direct control over the weaver.


    By preventing Company weavers from dealing with other buyers.


    The weavers were granted a loan to buy the raw materials once an order was placed. Weavers who took loans needed to hand over the cloth they produced to the gomastha. Weaving required the labour of the entire family, with children and women all engaged in different stages of the process. Earlier, supply merchants had a very close relationship with weavers, but new gomasthas were outsiders with no social link with the village.


  • In many places in Carnatic and Bengal, weavers set up looms in other villages where they had some family relation. In other places, weavers along with the village traders revolted, opposing the Company and its officials. Over time many weavers began refusing loans, closing down their workshops and taking to agricultural labour. By the turn of the nineteenth century, cotton weavers faced a new set of problems.


  • Manchester Comes to India


    In 1772, Henry Patullo said that the demand for Indian textiles could never reduce since no other nation produced goods of the same quality. But, unfortunately, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, India witnessed a decline in textile exports. In the early nineteenth century, exports of British cotton goods increased dramatically. At the end of the eighteenth century, import of cotton piece-goods was restricted into India. In India cotton weavers faced two problems:


  • Their export market collapsed


    Local market shrank and glutted with Manchester imports.


    By the 1860s, weavers faced a new problem. They could not get sufficient supply of raw cotton of good quality. Even the raw cotton exports from India increased due to which the price increased. By the end of the nineteenth century, other craftspeople faced yet another problem. Factories in India began production, flooding the market with machine-goods.


    Factories Come Up


    In 1854, the first cotton mill in Bombay set up and went into production two years later. By 1862 four more mills were set up and around the same time jute mills came up in Bengal. The first jute mill was set up in 1855 and another one after seven years in 1862. In the 1860s, in north India, the Elgin Mill was started in Kanpur, and a year later the first cotton mill of Ahmedabad was set up. By 1874, the first spinning and weaving mill of Madras began production.


  • The Early Entrepreneurs


    The history of trade started from the late eighteenth century when British in India began exporting opium to China and took tea from China to England. Some of the businessmen who were involved in these trades had visions of developing industrial enterprises in India. In Bengal, Dwarkanath Tagore made his fortune in the China trade. In Bombay, Parsis like Dinshaw Petit and Jamsetjee Nusserwanjee Tata built huge industrial empires in India. Seth Hukumchand, a Marwari businessman set up the first Indian jute mill in Calcutta in 1917. The opportunities of investments in industries opened up and many of them set up factories.


  • But due to colonial power, Indians were barred from trading with Europe in manufactured goods and had to export mostly raw materials and food grains – raw cotton, opium, wheat and indigo – required by the British. Three of the biggest European Managing Agencies are Bird Heiglers & Co., Andrew Yule, and Jardine Skinner & Co. who mobilised capital, set up joint-stock companies and managed them.


  • Where Did the Workers Come From?


    As the factories started expanding, the demand for workers increased. Most of the workers came from the neighbouring districts in search of work. Over 50 per cent workers in the Bombay cotton industries in 1911 came from the neighbouring district of Ratnagiri, while the mills of Kanpur got most of their textile hands from the villages within the district of Kanpur. As news of


  • employment spread, workers travelled great distances in the hope of work in the mills.


  • Even after the demand for workers increased, getting jobs was difficult. The numbers seeking work were always more than the jobs available. Most of the industrialists employed a jobber, which he brought from his village, to recruit new workers. Industrialists helped the jobber to settle down and provided them with money in need.


  • The Peculiarities of Industrial Growth


    European Managing Agencies were interested in certain kinds of products such as tea and coffee. They established tea and coffee plantations and invested in mining, indigo and jute. These products are used only for export purposes. In the late nineteenth century, Indian businessmen began setting up industries. The yarn produced in Indian spinning mills was used by handloom weavers in India or exported to China. The pattern of industrialisation was affected by a series of changes. When the swadeshi movement gained support, nationalists boycotted foreign cloth. From 1906, Indian yarn exports to China declined since produce from Chinese and Japanese mills flooded the Chinese market. Till the end of the First World War, industrial growth was slow. The war completely changed the whole scenario and Indian mills took advantage of the situation. They had a vast market to supply war needs: jute bags, cloth for army uniforms, tents and leather boots, horse and mule saddles and a host of other items. The industrial production boomed over the years and after the war, Manchester could never recapture its old position in the Indian market.


  • Small-scale Industries Predominate


    Small-scale industries continued to predominate the rest of the country. Only a small proportion of the total industrial labour force worked in registered factories. The rest worked in small workshops and household units. Handicrafts production expanded in the twentieth century. In the twentieth century, handloom cloth production expanded. It happened because of technological changes as they started adopting new technology which helped them improve production without excessively pushing up costs.


  • Certain groups of weavers were in a better position than others to survive the competition with mill industries. Some of the weavers produced coarse cloth while others wove finer varieties. Weavers and other craftspeople who continued to expand production through the twentieth century did not necessarily prosper. They worked for long hours including all the women and children. But they were not simply remnants of past times in the age of factories. Their life and labour were integral to the process of industrialisation.


  • Market for Goods


    When new products are produced advertisements helped people to make products appear desirable and necessary. They tried to shape the minds of people and create new needs. Today we are surrounded by advertisements which appear in newspapers, magazines, hoardings, street walls, television screens. From the very beginning of the industrial age, advertisements played a part in expanding the markets for products, and in shaping new consumer culture.


  • Manchester industrialists put labels on the cloth bundles, to mark the quality. When buyers saw ‘MADE IN MANCHESTER’ written in bold on the label, they were expected to feel confident about buying the cloth. Some of the labels were made with images and were beautifully crafted.


  • Images of Indian gods and goddesses appeared on these labels. Printing calendars were started by manufacturers to popularise their products. In these calendars, figures of gods were used to sell new products. Later, advertisements became a vehicle of the nationalist message of swadeshi.


  • Conclusion


    The age of industries has meant major technological changes, growth of factories, and the making of a new industrial labour force. Hand technology and small-scale production remained an important part of the industrial landscape.

    Print Culture and the Modern World


  • The First Printed Books


    China, Japan and Korea developed the earliest kind of print technology, which was a system of hand printing. Books in China were printed by rubbing paper from AD 594 and both the sides of the book were folded and stitched. China for a long time was the major producer of printed material. China started conducting civil service examinations for its bureaucrats and its textbooks were printed in vast numbers. Print was no longer confined to scholar-officials. Merchants used print while collecting their trade information. Reading became a part of leisure activity and rich women started publishing their own poetry and plays. This new reading culture attracted new technology. In the late 19th century, Western printing techniques and mechanical presses were imported.


  • Print in Japan


    Hand-printing technology was introduced by Buddhist missionaries from China into Japan around AD 768-770. The Buddhist Diamond Sutra is the oldest Japanese book, printed in AD 868, containing six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations. Printing of visual material led to interesting publishing practices. In the late 19th century, illustrative collections of paintings depicted an elegant urban culture and libraries and bookstores were packed with hand-printed material of various types – books on women, musical instruments, etc.

  • Print Comes to Europe


    Marco Polo returned to Europe after exploring China and along with him, he brought the knowledge of woodblock printing and soon the technology spread to other parts of Europe. Gradually, the demands of books started increasing so booksellers began exporting books to many different countries. But the production of handwritten manuscripts could not satisfy the ever-increasing demand for books. Europe widely started using woodblocks to print textiles, playing cards, and religious pictures with simple, brief texts. Johann Gutenberg developed the first-known printing press in the 1430s.

  • Gutenberg and the Printing Press


    Gutenberg was an expert in the art of polishing stones and with this knowledge, he adapted existing technology to design his innovation. The first printed book with the new system was the Bible. With the adaption of new technology the existing art of producing books by hand was not entirely displaced. Books printed for the rich left blank space for decoration on the printed page. In the hundred years between 1450 and 1550, printing presses were set up in most countries of Europe. The shift from hand printing to mechanical printing led to the print revolution.

  • The Print Revolution and Its Impact


    Print revolution is not only a new way of producing books it transformed the lives of people, changing their relationship to information and knowledge, and with institutions and authorities.

  • A New Reading Public


    The cost of books was reduced due to the print revolution. Markets were flooded with books reaching out to an ever-growing readership. It created a new culture of reading. Earlier, elites are only permitted to read books and common people used to hear sacred texts readout. Before the print revolution, books were expensive. But, the transition was not as simple as books could only be read by the literate. Printers started publishing popular ballads and folk tales illustrated with pictures for those who did not read. Oral culture entered print and printed material were orally transmitted.

  • Religious Debates and the Fear of Print


    Print introduced a new world of debate and discussion. Printed books are not welcomed by everyone and many were apprehensive of the effects that the wider circulation of books could have on people’s minds. There was a fear of spreading rebellious and irreligious thoughts. In 1517, the religious reformer Martin Luther wrote Ninety Five Theses, criticising many of the practices and rituals of the Roman Catholic Church. His textbook printed copy led to a division within the Church and to the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.

  • Print and Dissent


    In the sixteenth century, Menocchio began to read books available in his locality. He reinterpreted the message of the Bible and formulated a view of God and Creation that enraged the Roman Catholic Church. Menocchio was hauled up twice and ultimately executed. From 1558, The Roman Church began to maintain an Index of Prohibited Books.

  • The Reading Mania


    In most parts of Europe, literacy rates went up, through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Schools and literacy spread in European countries due to which people wanted production of more books. Other forms of reading mainly based on entertainment began to reach ordinary readers. Books were of various sizes, serving many different purposes and interests. From the early 18th century, periodical press developed which combined information related to current affairs with entertainment. Journals and newspapers carried information related to wars, trade and developments in other places. Issac Newton discoveries were published which influenced scientifically-minded readers.

  • ‘Tremble, therefore, tyrants of the world!’


    Books were considered as a means of spreading progress and enlightenment by the mid-eighteenth century. According to Louise-Sebastien Mercier, a novelist in eighteenth-century France said that ‘The printing press is the most powerful engine of progress and public opinion is the force that will sweep despotism away.’ 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!’

  • Print Culture and the French Revolution


    Historians argued that print culture created the conditions for the French Revolution. Three types of arguments were put forward.

  • Print popularised the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers. Their writings provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism. The writings of Voltaire and Rousseau were read widely; and people saw the world through new eyes, eyes that were questioning, critical and rational.

  • Print created a new culture of dialogue and debate. Within this public culture, new ideas of social revolution came into being.

  • By the 1780s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and criticised their morality.

  • Print helps in spreading ideas. They accepted some ideas and rejected others and interpreted things their way. Print did not directly shape their minds, but it did open up the possibility of thinking differently.

  • The Nineteenth Century


    Large numbers of new readers among children, women and workers were added to the mass literacy in Europe during the 19th century.

  • Children, Women and Workers


    From the late 19th century, primary education became compulsory. In 1857, a children’s press was set up in France devoted to literature for children. Traditional folks tales were gathered by Grimm Brothers in Germany. Rural folk tales acquired a new form. Women became important as readers as well as writers. Magazines were published especially dedicated for women, as were manuals teaching proper behaviour and housekeeping. In the nineteenth century, lending libraries in England became instruments for educating white-collar workers, artisans and lower-middle-class people.

  • Further Innovations


    Press came to be made out of metal by the late eighteenth century. Printing technology saw a series of further innovations by the 19th century. During that century, power-driven cylindrical press was perfected by Richard M, which was particularly used for printing newspapers. The offset was developed which was capable of printing six colours at a time. By the 20th century, electrically operated presses accelerated printing operations followed by other series of development.

  • Methods of feeding paper improved

  • The quality of plates became better

  • Automatic paper reels and photoelectric controls of the colour register were introduced

  • India and the World of Print

  • Manuscripts Before the Age of Print

  • India is a country rich in old tradition of handwritten manuscripts – in Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, as well as in various vernacular languages. These handwritten manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper. The production of the manuscript continued well after the introduction of print. It is considered highly expensive and fragile. In Bengal, students were only taught to write due to which many became literate without ever actually reading any kinds of texts.

  • Print Comes to India


    In the mid-sixteenth century, the first printing press came to Goa with Portuguese missionaries. Catholic priests printed the first Tamil book in 1579 at Cochin, and in 1713 the first Malayalam book was printed by them. The English press grew quite late in India even though the English East India Company began to import presses from the late seventeenth century. A weekly magazine named the Bengal Gazette was edited by James Augustus Hickey. Advertisements were published by Hickey and he also published a lot of gossip about the Company’s senior officials in India. By the close of the eighteenth century, a number of newspapers and journals appeared in print.

  • Religious Reform and Public Debates


    Religious issues became intense from the early nineteenth century. People started criticizing existing practices and campaigned for reform, while others countered the arguments of reformers. Printed tracts and newspapers spread new ideas and shaped the nature of the debate. New ideas emerged and intense controversies erupted between social and religious reformers and the Hindu orthodoxy over matters like widow immolation, monotheism, Brahmanical priesthood and idolatry. In 1821, Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi. In 1822, two Persian newspapers published Jam-i-Jahan Nama and Shamsul Akhbar. In the same year, a Gujarati newspaper, the Bombay Samachar, was established. 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.

  • Print encouraged the reading of religious texts, among Hindus, especially in the vernacular languages. Religious texts reached a very wide circle of people, encouraging discussions, debates and controversies within and among different religions. Newspapers conveyed news from one place to another, creating pan-Indian identities.

  • New Forms of Publication


    New kinds of writing were introduced as more and more people got interested in reading. In Europe, the novel, a literary firm, was developed to cater to the needs of people who acquired Indian forms and styles. New literary forms entered the world of reading such as lyrics, short stories, essays about social and political matters. New visual culture took shape by the end of the nineteenth century. Cheap calendars were available in the bazaar which can be bought even by the poor to decorate the walls of their homes or places of work. These prints began shaping popular ideas about modernity and tradition, religion and politics, and society and culture. Caricatures and cartoons were being published in journals and newspapers, commenting on social and political issues by 1870s.

  • Women and Print


    Women’s reading increased enormously in middle-class homes. Schools were set up in cities for women. Journals also started carrying writings by women and explained why women should be educated. But, Conservative Hindus believed that a literate girl would be widowed and Muslims feared that educated women would be corrupted by reading Urdu romances. Social reforms and novels created a great interest in women’s lives and emotions. In the early twentieth century, journals, written and edited by women, became extremely popular. In Bengal, an entire area in central Calcutta – the Battala – was devoted to the printing of popular books. By the late nineteenth century, a lot of these books were profusely illustrated with woodcuts and coloured lithographs. Pedlars took the Battala publications to homes, enabling women to read them in their leisure time.

  • Print and the Poor People


    Cheap books were bought at markets. Public libraries were set up mostly located in cities and towns. In the late 19th century, caste discrimination started coming up in many printed tracts and essays. Factory workers lacked education to write much about their experience. In 1938, Kashibaba wrote and published Chhote Aur Bade Ka Sawal in 1938 to show the links between caste and class exploitation. In the 1930s, Bangalore cotton millworkers set up libraries to educate themselves.

  • Print and Censorship


    Censorship was not a concern under the East India Company. The Calcutta Supreme Court passed certain regulations to control press freedom and in 1835, Governor-General Bentinck agreed to revise press laws. Thomas Macaulay formulated new rules that restored the earlier freedom. The freedom of press changed after the revolt of 1857. In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed, modelled on the Irish Press Laws, which provided the government with extensive rights to censor reports and editorials in the vernacular press. Government started keeping track of the vernacular newspapers. Nationalists newspapers grew in numbers all over India. In 1907, Punjab revolutionaries were deported, Bal Gangadhar Tilak wrote with great sympathy about them in his Kesari which led to his imprisonment in 1908.