Print capitalism is a theory underlying the concept of a
nation
A nation is a type of social organization where a collective Identity (social science), identity, a national identity, has emerged from a combination of shared features across a given population, such as language, history, ethnicity, culture, t ...
, as a group that forms an
imagined community
An imagined community is a concept developed by Benedict Anderson in his 1983 book '' Imagined Communities'' to analyze nationalism. Anderson depicts a nation as a socially-constructed community, imagined by the people who perceive themselves a ...
, that emerges with a common language and discourse that is generated from the use of the
printing press
A printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a printing, print medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring the ink. It marked a dramatic improvement on earlier printing methods in whi ...
, proliferated by a
capitalist
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...
marketplace. Capitalist entrepreneurs printed their books and media in the
vernacular
Vernacular is the ordinary, informal, spoken language, spoken form of language, particularly when perceptual dialectology, perceived as having lower social status or less Prestige (sociolinguistics), prestige than standard language, which is mor ...
(instead of exclusive script languages, such as
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
) in order to maximize circulation. As a result, readers speaking various local dialects became able to understand each other, and a common discourse emerged. Anderson argued that the first European nation-states were thus formed around their "national print-languages."
Terminology
The term was coined by
Benedict Anderson
Benedict Richard O'Gorman Anderson (August 26, 1936 – December 13, 2015) was an Anglo-Irish political scientist and historian who lived and taught in the United States. Anderson is best known for his 1983 book ''Imagined Communities'', which e ...
, and explained in depth in his book ''
Imagined Communities'' in 1983.
Development of the modern nation-state
The printing press is widely credited for modern nationalism and the birth of the
nation-state
A nation state, or nation-state, is a political entity in which the state (a centralized political organization ruling over a population within a territory) and the nation (a community based on a common identity) are (broadly or ideally) con ...
as the primary actors in political legitimacy. Soon after the invention of the Gutenberg-style printing press in 1454, literature such as the
Bible
The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...
was printed in vernaculars. The publication of the
95 Theses in 1517 sparked the
Reformation
The Reformation, also known as the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation, was a time of major Theology, theological movement in Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the p ...
, under which Europe went through 200 years of warfare that led to the gradual establishment of the nation-state as the powers that were dominant, over the previous dominance of the Roman Catholic Church. Print capitalism continues to influence the development of nationalism through the spread of the printing press.
[Reed, Christopher. '' Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism, 1876-1937''.]
References
Political science terminology
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