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Thread: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

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    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    The German inventor Johannes Gutenberg introduced printing to Europe during the 1440s AD with the movable type printing press incorporating the old screw press mechanism rooted in Greco-Roman technology. This came long after the Chinese invented woodblock printing during the Tang Dynasty in the 7th century AD and movable type during the Song Dynasty of the 11th century AD, although the latter (as described by the contemporary Song-period polymath scientist Shen Kuo) did not involve a mechanical printing press like the European invention and was only rarely used in China before the adoption of the Western-style printing press of the 19th century. Curiously enough, woodblock printing saw very limited use in Europe during the Middle Ages and the so-called European "block books" were actually produced well after Gutenberg's printing revolution took off, becoming popular during the 1460s AD. The Western block books also had no known direct connection to the previous Chinese woodblock printing method and were most likely rooted in a preexisting medieval European woodcut tradition. The woodcut method was already used for textiles, fabrics, and artworks in Europe well before Gutenberg's invention, so what was the major reason that Europeans didn't apply this to the printed word?

    One thing is certain, Western block books were simply cheaper to produce than the earliest works coming off the printing press during the 15th century AD, so they were used for smaller publications, usually Christian religious texts for spreading the gospel. It is curious, however, that this did not take off in Europe before Gutenberg, which could have introduced the printing revolution to medieval Europe much sooner than the mid-15th century AD. Paper was introduced to Europe during the 12th and 13th centuries, so feasibly they could have started this process as far back as the Levantine Crusades.

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    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    Quote Originally Posted by Roma_Victrix View Post
    The woodcut method was already used for textiles, fabrics, and artworks in Europe well before Gutenberg's invention, so what was the major reason that Europeans didn't apply this to the printed word?
    Probably because it was a time consuming process?
    From Needham's monumental work Science and Civilisation in China, check the concluding remarks,
    Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 5-1: Chemistry and Chemical Technology Paper and Printing
    (full book)
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    Default Re: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    Time consuming and perhaps too costly due to lack of customers.
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    Default Re: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    The issue, IMO, was the major difference between the European and Chinese writing systems and characters.

    The printing style that you describe, which was developed by Bi Sheng if I recall correctly, used clay pieces with single characters on them, and this passed in China because a page of their text results in far less individual characters than with any European script.

    So, in Europe, you would need many more character pieces for any single page, imagine writing an entire text block in German by using these;

    https://i.imgur.com/yv4DKnC.png


    Now, I am not saying that this could not have been revamped and gained advantage of in Europe, but I do consider that having a dozen men in any monastery available to just write and copy stuff by hand for several hours a day minimized the need for printing anything in the quantities that they were used to requiring.

    Or perhaps the issue was straight up rejection, it was the case that printing presses were not received well by a lot of religious figures.

    Even destroyed en masse by them in some parts of Russia and even the Ottoman Empire.

    Hell, the first printing press in Arabic was not constructed until the 18th century because before that printing in Arabic was seen as blasphemy and punishable by death.

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    Ludicus's Avatar Comes Limitis
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    Default Re: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    Quote Originally Posted by hellheaven1987 View Post
    Time consuming and perhaps too costly due to lack of customers.
    In fact, in Europe, the profit was the primum movens.
    Quoting Needham,
    ...There was another difference. While Chinese culture always had an extensiveliterary tradition, at the close of the Middle Ages Western civilisation possessedonly a very limited legacy of books.

    Yet as Europe emerged from the Dark Ages, the intellectual awakening resulted in a great demand for books. As soon as printing was available, it was utilised for book production to the maximum extent. In this respect, it was unlike printing in China, which has always produced an optimum number of copies for immediate use without excessive accumulation of copies in stock.
    Furthermore, Chinese printing was generally sponsored by government and private agencies without pecuniary motivation, whereas the European press was usually operated as a trade for profit. The different motives for printing seem also to have been responsible for different effects of the invention on society.
    Last edited by Ludicus; November 12, 2017 at 04:22 PM.
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    Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
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    Default Re: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    Interesting discussion, the points about the conservative literary culture in Europe and the number of characters are persuasive. Its no coincidence the explosion of printing presses is related to 1. the growth of religious heterodoxy in Europe (spreading bible literacy to the growing bourgeoisie , as well as new doctrines) and 2. truly rank political pamphleteering (analogous to today's social media based politics) as regimes and individuals battled over new forms of political legitimacy in the wake of religious fragmentation.
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    Default Re: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    Quote Originally Posted by Cyclops View Post
    Interesting discussion, the points about the conservative literary culture in Europe and the number of characters are persuasive. Its no coincidence the explosion of printing presses is related to 1. the growth of religious heterodoxy in Europe (spreading bible literacy to the growing bourgeoisie , as well as new doctrines) and 2. truly rank political pamphleteering (analogous to today's social media based politics) as regimes and individuals battled over new forms of political legitimacy in the wake of religious fragmentation.
    It's quite honestly hard to imagine the success of Luther's Reformation without the advent of the printing press and his ability to amplify his message via the printed word and woodcut propaganda images for the illiterate peasantry (who in addition to the nobility in some places were already disaffected with papal authorities).

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    Probably because it was a time consuming process?
    From Needham's monumental work Science and Civilisation in China, check the concluding remarks,
    Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 5-1: Chemistry and Chemical Technology Paper and Printing
    (full book)
    Thanks for sharing!

    Quote Originally Posted by hellheaven1987 View Post
    Time consuming and perhaps too costly due to lack of customers.
    The lack of customers is perhaps true given the generally very limited literacy in medieval Europe and the already strong scribal tradition of manuscript production for niche, elite consumption. The part about it being too costly I don't agree with, though, because those woodcut block books of the 15th century were only successful because they were cheaper than books that came off the new printing press.

    Quote Originally Posted by Mamlaz View Post
    The issue, IMO, was the major difference between the European and Chinese writing systems and characters.

    The printing style that you describe, which was developed by Bi Sheng if I recall correctly, used clay pieces with single characters on them, and this passed in China because a page of their text results in far less individual characters than with any European script.

    So, in Europe, you would need many more character pieces for any single page, imagine writing an entire text block in German by using these;

    https://i.imgur.com/yv4DKnC.png


    Now, I am not saying that this could not have been revamped and gained advantage of in Europe, but I do consider that having a dozen men in any monastery available to just write and copy stuff by hand for several hours a day minimized the need for printing anything in the quantities that they were used to requiring.

    Or perhaps the issue was straight up rejection, it was the case that printing presses were not received well by a lot of religious figures.

    Even destroyed en masse by them in some parts of Russia and even the Ottoman Empire.

    Hell, the first printing press in Arabic was not constructed until the 18th century because before that printing in Arabic was seen as blasphemy and punishable by death.
    Good points; I was unaware about the ban on printing in much of the Islamic world. That combined with the bypassing of the Ottoman land trade thanks to European global exploration and colonization help to explain the retarding of progress and development of the Middle East during the Early Modern period. Ironically, though, this was the age when they were increasing their territories and military power as so-called "Gunpowder Empires", i.e. the Ottoman, Safavid, and Mughal realms. That sort of expansion was totally curbed by the 18th century, though, as all three of these powers went into a full decline.

    The Chinese obviously experienced the tumultuous domestic rebellion of Li Zicheng and invasion of the Manchu at the end of the Ming and beginning of the Qing dynasty in the mid-17th century, but this hardly had an effect on their well-established traditions of printing. Woodblock continued to predominate for exactly the reasons you cited, though, since movable type was very unwieldy and time-consuming given the sheer amount of written Chinese characters. I still find it amazing that literary cultures without alphabets have worked their way around this in the modern age to wield the typewriter and then the keyboard efficiently. I suppose it boils down to the radicals and root characters in the Chinese writing system acting as a springboard for producing other more complex characters.

    As for medieval Europe, I definitely can imagine the notary and scribal professions, especially those tied to royal courts and the clergy, pushing back against the idea of printing, since it meant putting them out of business. The manuscript tradition continued in Europe well after the introduction of the printing press, but the latter was the ultimate reason for the virtual death of Western manuscript production. Is there solid, hard evidence, though, that woodblock printing was suppressed by these interests? You know: clear and literal statements from contemporary writers in the 14th-15th centuries who dissuaded their readers from this wicked pursuit of printing?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    In fact, in Europe, the profit was the primum movens.
    Quoting Needham,
    That's an interesting argument and you could certainly make the case that the Chinese literary corpus was larger than Europe's during both the Early and High Middle Ages. I don't think you could make the same argument for the Late Middle Ages, though, with the enormous profusion of Greco-Roman texts transmitted from the Byzantine and Arab worlds, in addition to the flowering of vernacular literature during the 14th and 15th centuries AD. Take for instance Dante Alighieri in Italy and Geoffrey Chaucer in England. Both of these figures were critical in legitimizing the literary use of vernacular Italian and English, respectively, as opposed to Latin or Greek. The monasteries also preserved a lot of books that suddenly entered greater circulation during the 15th century, both before and after Gutenberg's invention of the printing press.

    In the realm of historiography I'd say the Chinese and Europeans were roughly on an equal footing, given the long tradition of Western histories stretching back to the Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BC, and the Chinese tradition of writing dynastic histories stretching back to the historian Sima Qian during the 2nd century BC. Medieval Europe continued the Christian chronicling tradition of Late Antique Rome and the 4th-century-AD chronicler Eusebius. Barring theological and biblical literature, historical chronicles perhaps formed the greater part of the European secular literary corpus before the advent of the printing press. Virtually every European monarchy had its own court chroniclers, while the monasteries produced their own chronicles of universal history, local history, or topical history. In England this tradition stretches back at least to the writings of the Venerable Bede in the 8th century AD. The Chinese occasionally produced universal histories like the 11th-century Zizhi Tongjian by Sima Guang during the middle of the Northern Song period, but more often than not major compendiums and histories of previous dynasties were made only after these ruling dynasties were supplanted by a new, rival dynasty. This had much to do with the tradition of historical writing being heavily tied to the imperial court.

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    Default Re: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    Quote Originally Posted by Ludicus View Post
    In fact, in Europe, the profit was the primum movens.
    Yes, and it is so in China too. What Needham did not say is that there was a growing movement of urbanization in Europe since 14th Century, with that a growing urban, literate Middle Class which finally provide a large enough consumer base for book saling. It is hence not a surprise that when there are more book sales the associated industry and technology would grow too, with more literature production in same time (hence the Renaissance). There was a similar period in Chinese history during mid-Tang to the end of Song dynasty, hence it is perhaps not surprise that Chinese printing technique saw the largest improvement during those period too.

    Quote Originally Posted by Roma_Victrix View Post
    The lack of customers is perhaps true given the generally very limited literacy in medieval Europe and the already strong scribal tradition of manuscript production for niche, elite consumption. The part about it being too costly I don't agree with, though, because those woodcut block books of the 15th century were only successful because they were cheaper than books that came off the new printing press.
    Cost has to do with profit; when the profit is low, even lower production cost is still considered unattractive enough for merchant (a tycoon friend of mine once told me for professional investor today only a business with 60% profit margin is worth for investment). Furthermore, transportation is also a key here, and perhaps it is not a surprise that one key contribution of growing commercial activity after 15th Century has to do with better road web and traveling security (which had to do with centralization of government).
    Last edited by hellheaven1987; November 14, 2017 at 04:15 AM.
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    Default Re: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    Quote Originally Posted by Mamlaz View Post
    The issue, IMO, was the major difference between the European and Chinese writing systems and characters.

    The printing style that you describe, which was developed by Bi Sheng if I recall correctly, used clay pieces with single characters on them, and this passed in China because a page of their text results in far less individual characters than with any European script.

    So, in Europe, you would need many more character pieces for any single page, imagine writing an entire text block in German by using these;

    https://i.imgur.com/yv4DKnC.png


    Now, I am not saying that this could not have been revamped and gained advantage of in Europe, but I do consider that having a dozen men in any monastery available to just write and copy stuff by hand for several hours a day minimized the need for printing anything in the quantities that they were used to requiring.

    Or perhaps the issue was straight up rejection, it was the case that printing presses were not received well by a lot of religious figures.

    Even destroyed en masse by them in some parts of Russia and even the Ottoman Empire.

    Hell, the first printing press in Arabic was not constructed until the 18th century because before that printing in Arabic was seen as blasphemy and punishable by death.

    Although there are fewer Chinese characters per page than letters, since each character represents one word, the characters are as a rule more complex in shape than the individual letters, so the time to carve all the letters on a page is likely no more than the Chinese characters. Compare an "o", "s", "i" to even the simplest Chinese character.

    Still, you might have a point. Block books had a lot of illustration per page with only a little bit of text per page. Carvers at that time might have found it difficult to carve all the text. As you pointed out, more letters per page page were required than Chinese characters, and perhaps the shape was more difficult to carve - Chinese characters consist of a lot of straight lines, perhaps carvers found a rounded shape like an "s" or an P more difficult to carve.

    Also, before the 13th century or so, paper wasn't that common in Europe. Vellum and parchment were expensive, so even with printing the books would have remained expensive if you are just printing on parchment. Note, a printing press required a substantian investment, we know as much about Gutenberg as we do because of lawsuits resulting from when he could not pay back the money lent him

    The earliest printed books weren't meant to be as cheap as possible, just cheaper than books made by hand. It wasn't until you got people like Tynsdale, who wanted to print a bible that everyone could afford, that there became a big push to make books affordable to the masses.
    Last edited by Common Soldier; November 15, 2017 at 11:39 AM. Reason: spelling left off a sentence

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    Default Re: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    Update:. I recently found out more information on on wood block printing vs European movable type. Using Gutenberg system, an experienced worker could cast as many as 4000 metal movable type a day, while Chinese workers could only carve 100 to 150, maybe 200 characters a day. (I haven't found any evidence on how many letters or words European workers could carve in a day, but I doubt it would be significantly faster than what the Chinese workers could carve. One or 2 Chinese characters would be the equivalent of a word, and in English, a word is typically around 5 to 6 letters long on the average.
    Clearly, after the initial investment in making the metal punches and and molds, the economics greatly favor casting metal movable type over carving wooden blocks. Since a page of text typically has around 200 to 500 words (or Chinese characters), one could cast enough pieces of Gutenberg matal type to support a couple pages of print in a single day, while it would take a couple days to carve a sign page of print.

    As for type setting, an experience typesetter could set something like 750 to 1000 pieces of type an hour, which meant that an European worker could set several pages of of print a day for printing, while it would take a worker a couple days to carve a single page of print. Wood block printing would initially have lower investment cost, all you would have to pay for is wood blocks and someone to carve them, while for movable type you would have to pay for all the metal type, someone to cast the type, and skilled craftsman to make the punches and metal molds in the first place. But after you have the type and molds made, the cost of of movable type would seem to be less.
    Last edited by Common Soldier; April 29, 2019 at 02:31 AM. Reason: correct typo errors

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    Roma_Victrix's Avatar Call me Ishmael
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    Default Re: Why did Chinese-style woodblock printing not take off in medieval Europe before Gutenberg's movable type printing press?

    Good answer! Thanks for sharing and reviving my thread necromancer style.

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