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The print culture created the conditions within which the French Revolution occurred:

(i)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.

(ii)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.

(iii)Third: by the 1780s there was an outpouring of literature that mocked the royalty and criticised their morality. In the process, it raised questions about the existing social order. 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.

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Print in Japan:

(i)Buddhist missionaries from China introduced hand-printing technology into Japan around AD 768-770.

(ii)The oldest Japanese book, printed in AD 868, is the Buddhist Diamond Sutra, containing six sheets of text and woodcut illustrations. Pictures were printed on textiles, playing cards and paper money.

(iii)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.

(iv)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.

(v)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.

Tips: -

Imp.

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By the end of the nineteenth century, a new visual culture had taken shape: 

(i)With the setting up of an increasing number of printing presses, visual images could be easily reproduced in multiple copies.

(ii)Painters like Raja Ravi Varma produced images for mass circulation.

(iii)Poor wood engravers who made woodblocks set up shop near the letterpresses, and were employed by print shops.

(iv)Cheap prints and calendars, easily available in the bazaar, could be bought even by the poor to decorate the walls of their homes or places of work.

(v)These prints began shaping popular ideas about modernity and tradition, religion and politics, and society and culture.

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The history of printing in India:

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

(ii)Manuscripts were copied on palm leaves or on handmade paper.

(iii)Pages were sometimes beautifully illustrated. They would be either pressed between wooden covers or sewn together to ensure preservation.

(iv)Manuscripts continued to be produced till well after the introduction of print, down to the late nineteenth century.

(v)Manuscripts, however, were highly expensive and fragile. They had to be handled carefully, and they could not be read easily as thescript was written in different styles.

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The effects of print on the women in India:

(i)Lives and feelings of women began to be written in particularly vivid and intense ways.

(ii)Women’s reading, therefore, increased enormously in middle-class homes.

(iii)Liberal husbands and fathers began educating their womenfolk at home, and sent them to schools when women’s schools were set up in the cities and towns after the mid-nineteenth century.

(iv)Many journals began carrying writings by women, and explained why women should be educated.

(v)They also carried a syllabus and attached suitable reading matter which could be used for home-based schooling.