DELHI PUBLIC SCHOOL, BANGALORE NORTH

Print Culture and the Modern World

REVISION WORKSHEET

1. How did print revolution spread in other European countries?

Ans.. In the hundred years between 1450 and 1550, printing presses were set up in most
countries of Europe.
B. Printers from Germany travelled to other countries, seeking work and helping start new
presses.
c. As the number of printing presses grew, book production boomed.
D. The second half of the fifteenth century saw 20 million copies of printed books flooding
the markets in Europe. The number went up in the sixteenth century to about 200 million
copies

2. Why was Manocchio executed?

A. Manocchio, a miller in Italy, began to read books that were available in his locality. B
B.He reinterpreted the message of the Bible and formulated a view of God and Creation that
enraged the Roman Catholic Church.
C. When the Roman Church began its inquisition to repress heretical ideas, Manocchio was
hauled up twice and ultimately executed.
D. 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..

3. How did the Print revolution lead to the development of a reading mania in Europe?
Ans.
A. As literacy and schools spread in European countries, there was a virtual reading mania.
People wanted books to read and printers produced books in ever increasing numbers.
B. New forms of popular literature appeared in print, targeting new audiences. There were
almanacs or ritual calendars, along with ballads and folktales.
C. In England, penny chapbooks were carried by petty pedlars known as chapmen, and sold
for a penny, so that even the poor could buy them. In France, were the ‘Biliotheque Bleue’,
which were low-priced small books printed on poor quality paper, and bound in cheap blue
covers.
D. 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 interests.
 E. The periodical press developed from the early eighteenth century, combining information
about current affairs with entertainment.
F. Newspapers and journals carried information about wars and trade, as well as news of
developments in other places.
G. Similarly, the ideas of 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 Isaac Newton began
to publish their discoveries.
H. 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.

4. How did the printing press help in collecting children as its readership?
Ans.
A As primary education became compulsory from the late nineteenth century, children
became an important category of readers. Production of school textbooks became critical for
the publishing industry
B. A children’s press, devoted to literature for children alone, was set up in France in 1857.
This press published new works as well as old fairy tales and folk tales.
C. The Grimm Brothers in Germany spent years compiling traditional folk tales gathered
from peasants.
D. Anything that was considered unsuitable for children or would appear vulgar to the elites,
was not included in the published version.
E. Rural folk tales thus acquired a new form. In this way, print recorded old tales but also
changed them

5. Trace the development of printing technology in Europe.

Ans
A. . 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.
B. 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.
C. In the late nineteenth century, the offset press was developed which could print up to six
colours at a time.
D. From the turn of the twentieth century, electrically operated presses accelerated printing
operations.
E. 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.

6. Who brought the print revolution to British India and how?

 Ans
A. 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’.
B. So it was private English enterprise, proud of its independence from colonial influence,
that began English printing in India.
C. 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 officials in
India.
D. 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.
E. By the close of the eighteenth century, a number of newspapers and journals appeared in
print.
F. There were Indians, too, who began to publish Indian newspapers. The first to appear was
the weekly Bengal Gazette, brought out by Gangadhar Bhattacharya, who was close to
Rammohan Roy.

7. Print lead to intense controversies between social and religious reformers and the
Hindu orthodoxy. Support the statement with example.
Ans.
A. From the early nineteenth century, there were intense debates around religious issues.
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.
B. Some criticised existing practices and campaigned for reform, while others countered the
arguments of reformers. These debates were carried out in public and in print.
C. Print lead to intense controversies between social and religious reformers and the Hindu
orthodoxy over matters like widow immolation, monotheism, Brahmanical priesthood and
idolatry.
D. To reach a wider audience, the ideas were printed in the everyday, spoken language of
ordinary people.
E. Rammohun Roy published the Sambad Kaumudi from 1821 and the Hindu orthodoxy
commissioned the Samachar Chandrika to oppose his opinions.

8. "Printing technology gave women a chance to share their feelings with the world
outside."Support the statement with example
Ans.
A. We know the story of a girl in a conservative Muslim family of north India who secretly
learnt to read and write in Urdu. Her family wanted her to read only the Arabic Quran which
she did not understand. So she insisted on learning to read a language that was her own.
B. In East Bengal, in the early nineteenth century, 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 Jiban which was published in 1876. It was the first full-length
autobiography published in the Bengali language.
 C. From the 1860s, a few Bengali women like Kailashbashini Debi wrote books highlighting
the experiences of women – about how women were imprisoned at home, kept in ignorance,
forced to do hard domestic labour and treated unjustly by the very people they served.
D. 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.

9. How did the British pass certain regulations to control freedom of press in India?
Ans.
A. By the 1820s, the Calcutta Supreme Court passed certain regulations to control press freedom
and the Company began encouraging publication of newspapers that would celebrate Britsh
rule.
B. In 1835, faced with urgent petitions by editors of English and vernacular newspapers,
Governor-General Bentinck agreed to revise press laws. Thomas Macaulay, a liberal colonial
official, formulated new rules that restored the earlier freedoms.
C. After the revolt of 1857, the attitude to freedom of the press changed. Enraged Englishmen
demanded a clamp down on the ‘native’ press.
D. As vernacular newspapers became assertively nationalist, the colonial government began
debating measures of stringent control.
E. In 1878, the Vernacular Press Act was passed, modelled 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 provinces.
F. 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.

10. How were workers influenced by the print revolution?

Ans
A. Lending libraries had been in existence from the seventeenth century onwards.
B. In the nineteenth century, lending libraries in England became instruments for educating
white-collar workers, artisans and lower-middle-class people.
C. Sometimes, self-educated working class people wrote for themselves.
D. After the working day was gradually shortened from the mid-nineteenth century, workers
had some time for self-improvement and self-expression. They wrote political tracts and
autobiographies in large numbers

11. Describe in brief how printing developed in Japan.

Ans.
A. Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing technology into Japan around
AD 768-770. The oldest Japanese book, printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra,
containing six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations.
B. Pictures were printed on textiles, New words Calligraphy – The art of beautiful and
stylised writing 155 Print Culture playing cards and paper money.
 C. In medieval Japan, poets and prose writers were regularly published, and books were
cheap and abundant. Printing of visual material led to interesting publishing practices.
D. In the late eighteenth century, in the flourishing urban circles at Edo (later to be known as
Tokyo), illustrated collections of paintings depicted an elegant urban culture, involving
artists, courtesans, and teahouse gatherings.
E. 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.
Eg.Kitagawa Utamaro,born in Edo in 1753,was widely known for his contributions to an art
orm called ukiyo.

12. How were the ideas and information written before the age of print in India?
Ans.
A. India had a very rich and old tradition of handwritten manuscripts – in Sanskrit, Arabic,
Persian, as well as in various vernacular languages.
B. Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper.
C. Pages were sometimes beautifully illustrated. They would be either pressed between
wooden covers or sewn together to ensure preservation.
D. Manuscripts continued to be produced till well after the introduction of print, down to
the late nineteenth century. Manuscripts, however, were highly expensive and fragile. They
had to be handled carefully

14. Many historians have argued that print culture created the conditions within which
French Revolution occurred .Discuss.
Ans.
A First: print popularised the ideas of the Enlightenment thinkers. Collectively, their writings
provided a critical commentary on tradition, superstition and despotism. They argued for the
rule of reason rather than custom, and demanded that everything be judged through the
application of reason and rationality. They attacked the sacred authority of the Church and
the despotic power of the state, thus eroding the legitimacy of a social order based on
tradition. The writings of Voltaire and Rousseau were read widely; and those who read these
books saw the world through new eyes, eyes that were questioning, critical and rational.
B. Second: print created a new culture of dialogue and debate. All values, norms and
institutions were re-evaluated and discussed by a public that had become aware of the
power of reason, and recognised the need to question existing ideas and beliefs. Within this
public culture, new ideas of social revolution came into being.
C. Third: by the 1780s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and
criticised their morality. Cartoons and caricatures typically suggested that the monarchy
remained absorbed only in sensual pleasures while the common people suffered immense
hardships. This literature circulated underground and led to the growth of hostile sentiments
against the monarchy.