The Printer’s Galaxy: Colonial Asia (1511-1738)

The study: The Printer’s Galaxy: Social and Economic Influences of Printing in Colonial Asia,
is currently under development. An abstract describing a new emphasis can be read in the link above.

Introduction

The introduction of printing in the late 15^th century, an early form of information technology, has had far reaching consequences in Europe and around the world. By the 19^th century printing presses operated across Asia and were a major employer of ethnic workers in colonial territories. But an appreciation of printing’s social impact has only recently been acknowledged in these regions.[1] This was especially true in the Pearl River Delta of southern China, where large printing plants owned by Portuguese descendants from Macau became a pillar of local cultures and the economies of numerous “Treaty Ports” following the end of the Opium Wars (1838 – 1860).

Each short article discusses the cultural importance of printing as European trade in China developed into a global enterprise. As the Macanese grew dominant in the printing industry from the 1830s up to the middle of the 20^th century, a close study of their history allows us to explore how much of an impact this relatively obscure group of entrepreneurs had on colonial societies. Our primary focus will be on the significance of Macanese printing, not only to the growth of the “China Trade”, but to the social and cultural development of the Macanese community in Macau, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and other European enclaves. This analysis raises the possibility that racially-mixed communities played significant roles in the region’s development, and had a greater influence in the early years of the global economy than has been previously acknowledged.

To begin this study, we will first consider the earliest influences of printing in Europe and Asia. This will involve a discussion of printing during the Renaissance and in the overseas colonies on which merchant trade depended. We will then look more closely at the history of printing operations in Hong Kong and other Southeast Asian ports that began in the 19^th century. This section will involve an historical overview and a case study of one Macanese owned company as it rose and eventually fell as the colonial period unfolded. By employing a combination of historical and ethnographic analysis, we will attempt to illustrate how printing as an information technology and a productive tool proved critical as trade grew and as ethnic communities evolved in Southeast Asia over a one hundred and forty year period.

The Influences of Early Printing in Europe

As an innovation of the Renaissance, Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press around 1450 using moveable type initially led to the mass production of religious and secular manuscripts.[2] As a result, more accurate texts soon standardized national languages, and became a catalyst for education and literacy through the wide distribution of religious, scientific, and technical books. Printing also expanded and facilitated public discourse, allowing for the introduction of different ideas and philosophies to more people and different classes. These new ideas included the writings of Martin Luther, John Calvin, and other religious leaders who launched the Reformation’s challenge to the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and traditional interpretations of the Bible and ancient scriptures.[3]

Printing’s social influence, however, was unrecognized for several centuries, despite observations by such scholars as Francis Bacon.^[iv] It was not until the 20^th century when Marshall McLuhan and others suggested that printing had been a fundamental break from oral traditions as it became a medium of cultural meaning and significance.[v] Printing, modern scholars argued, not only disrupted medieval thinking but encouraged literacy through wider distribution of books that offered detailed information and knowledge about the world. In the process, mass production of the written word forever changed human history, evolving into other forms as the ideas of the Enlightenment and merchant capitalism moved across Europe.  

Even before Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, and England competed for colonial wealth, for example, the diffusion of printing technology became a major spur to local growth and community development. A study of European cities from 1400 determined that 205 cities near Mainz Germany (the original site of Gutenberg’s press) led to a 35% increase in commercial activity through the year 1600.[vi] These cities benefited from what an economist calls “positive spillovers in human capital accumulation”. This included the growth of ancillary businesses such as paper mills, binding shops, and bookstores, as well as schools and libraries, providing employment for teachers, writers, illustrators, accountants, and translators, This created incentives for cities to become more culturally dynamic through the attraction of migrant workers. Mass migrations led to larger pools of available laborers, tradesmen, and sailors in port cities, and increased awareness of religion, politics, and history. These developments led to such innovations as the production of instructional manuals, navigational maps, and religious catechisms, which grew in importance as more countries became involved in overseas trade by the 16th century.

The Uses of Printing in Colonial Development

One of the first applications was the publication of a mathematical text written in Portuguese by Gaspar Nicolas in 1519. The association of printing and commerce was evident in Nicolas’ introduction, in which he stated:

I am printing this arithmetic because it is a thing so necessary in Portugal for transactions with the merchants of India, Persia, Ethiopia, and other places.[vii]

Printing’s developmental path proved to be critical to development in Portuguese territories. Following the colonization of Goa in 1511, the earliest press using moveable type was imported from Lisbon to Goa in 1545. A document from that press was transported by ship to Rome in 1550 as a gift from King Joao III of Portugal to Pope Julius III.^[viii] While it is likely that there was only one press in Goa through the end of the 16^th century, several codices were produced during the period. These included a catechism by the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier posthumous published in 1557, and a “Compendia Espirituel” (Spiritual Compendium) published in 1561 by Gaspar Jorge de Leão Pereira, the first Archbishop of Goa. There were also six copies of a scientific pamphlet written in 1563 by Garcia d’Orta, a Sephardic Jew living in Goa, who was a physician, herbalist, and a pioneer in tropical medicine.^[ix], as well as a copy of a speech given in Latin by a visiting Japanese nobleman in 1588.^[x] Even in early years, the range of printed materials indicates the distribution of knowledge among literate classes in religion, medicine, agriculture, and international relations.  

Alternative forms of printing in Goa also involved methods previously unknown in Europe. These included a Chinese press that used carved wooden “xylographic” blocks first developed by the Song in the year 1040. Economists Li Bozhong and Jan Luiten van Zanden suggest that Imperial printers had few incentives for using moveable type because of an undeveloped market for books, low wages, and an abundance of Chinese laborers. There was also a lack of experience with the European invention.[xi] Before gaining access to a modern press, the Jesuit Michele Ruggieri used block printing to publish a Chinese catechism in 1584, the first Chinese text produced by a European. Ruggieri also compiled a Latin – Chinese vocabulary in 1585 using the same method with the help of another Jesuit, Mateo Ricci.^[xii]

Ricci spent several years in Macau learning Chinese while he waited for permission to begin his ministry on the mainland. He had an opportunity to utilize modern printing when the first moveable type press arrived from Lisbon in 1588 at the Jesuit residence at the College of the Mother of God.^[xiii] Ricci used the press to print the first Chinese – Portuguese dictionary, then took copies with him while traveling with Ruggieri to Canton and Zhaoqing to establish Jesuit missions there. Both Jesuits brought the texts with them to Beijing in 1601 at the invitation of Emperor Zhu Yijun (1563 – 1620).^[xiv]

After producing Ricci’s early works, the European press was sent to Nagasaki, then to Kyoto in 1591 and was used to create Japanese language catechisms.^[xv] Several copies were produced for local disciples who visited outlying villages, leading to almost 300,000 Christian conversions across the country.^[xvi] The press was also used to print cultural primers for Portuguese traders, who were active in the local silk trade. In total, up to eighty (80) books were printed by Jesuits in Japan during this period.^[xvii]

The Jesuit press then was sent back to Macau in 1614 as Christians in Japan began to be persecuted and expelled by the Tokugawa Shogunate. A ban on foreign missionaries and traders was fully enforced by 1639, and was followed by the overthrow of the Ming Dynasty in China by the Qing (Manchus) in 1644. Along with the Dutch capture of Malacca in 1641, the accumulation of such epic events paralyzed Portuguese enterprise in Asia for several decades.^[xviii]  The final blow was a ban in 1736 by Portuguese authorities in Lisbon of all printed materials in Macau, a precursor to the persecution of the Jesuits by the Marquis de Pombal that began in 1759.^[xix]

As Macau’s economy deteriorated, the government’s Legislative Assembly sought to restart trade in Southeast Asia, now virtually cut off from Goa and Portugal by the Dutch. The need for a protector and a powerful trading partner was answered by the appearance of the British East India Company (EIC).^[xx] EIC traders, however, made several unsuccessful attempts to set up temporary factories in Canton before gaining permission from the Imperial Court in 1699, and later sojourned on Macau island at the end of each trading season.^[xxi] Once the EIC took up residence in 1738, the resurgence of the printing industry in Macau and Canton in the early 19^th century was once again reliant on religious and commercial support.   

Next Time: Printing for Religion, Trade, and Propaganda in the Pearl River Delta

[1] Isabel Morais, “Darwinism, Freemasonry, and print culture The construction of identity of the Macanese colonial elites in the late nineteenth century”, Bulletin of Portuguese – Japanese Studies, # 2, June, 2001: 59-76.

[2] Gutenberg employed metallic type based on designs first introduced by Bi Sheng, an 11^th century Song Dynasty inventor, who used wooden and ceramic type. Tsien, Tsuen-Hsuin, Part 1: Paper and Printing, Joseph Needham, Science and Civilization in China. Vol. 5, Cambridge University Press, 1985: 201–217.

[3] For a general overview, see Cartwright, Mark, “The Printing Revolution in Renaissance Europe”, World History Encyclopedia (https://www.ancient.eu/article/1632/the-printing-revolution-in-renaissance-europe/)

[iv] “Again, we should notice the force, effect, and consequences of inventions, which are nowhere more conspicuous … namely, printing, gunpowder, and the compass. … innumerable changes have been thence derived, so that no empire, sect, or star, appears to have exercised a greater power and influence on human affairs …”  Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, Book 2, Aphorism 129 (1620).

[v] Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy: the making of typographic man. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1962. See also Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, Cambridge University Press, 1980, and Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450-1800, London, 1997.

[vi] Jeremiah Dittmar, “Information technology and economic change: The impact of the printing press”, Vox(eu) The Centre for Economic Policy Research, London, Feb. 2011: https://voxeu.org/article/information-technology-and-economic-change-impact-printing-press

[vii] Frank Swetz, Capitalism and Arithmetic: The New Math of the 15th Century, La Salle, IL; Open Court, 1987:25.

[viii] Jose Maria Braga, “The Beginnings of Printing in Macao”, English translation printed by the University of Hong Kong Library from the original published in Portuguese in Studia (Revista Semestral), No. 12, July 1962: 29-137.

[ix] Garcia d’Orta’, COLLOQUIES ON THE SIMPLES & DRUGS OF INDIA, NEW EDITION, Lisbon, 1895, Introduction: xi. https://archive.org/details/colloquiesonsimp00orta/page/n7/mode/2up.  C. R. Boxer, Two pioneers of tropical medicine: Garcia d’Orta and Nicolás Monardes. London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1963.  

[x] Braga, cit. op., p. 31. Garcia da Orta, op.cit. 1895, Introduction: xi. by Sir Clements Markham.

[xi] Li, Bozhong, and Jan Luiten van Zanden (2010), “Before the Great Divergence? Comparing the Yangzi Delta and the Netherlands at the beginnings of the nineteenth century”, CEPR Discussion Paper 8023, summarized here: https://voxeu.org/article/why-china-missed-industrial-revolution

[xii] Braga, cit. op., p. 33.

[xiii] Braga, cit. op., p. 34.

[xiv] Arthur K. Wardega, SJ, Foreword to Acta Pekinsensia: Western Historical Sources for the Kangxi Reign, Instituto Ricci de Macau, 2016: 11. While in Peking, Ricci was reported to have published an anthology of musical tunes in 1608 to be played on an European organ, which he took with him to China.

[xv] In addition to the Ricci’s press, the leading Jesuit in Asia, Fr. Alessandro Valignano, took his own press to Japan in 1587 to provide books he deemed fit for circulation. C.R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan: 1549 – 1650, University of California Press, 1951: 190.

[xvi] Boxer mentions the probability of only one press delivered from Goa or Macau to Japan between 1591 and 1614. Boxer, ibid, 191-192.

[xvii] Braga, op. cit. p.36.

[xviii] Braga, op. cit. p.38. Indicating the shift in priorities, it was reported that at least 124 titles in Chinese were produced by Jesuits in Macau by 1644.

[xix] C.R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire: 1415-1825, Knopf – New York, 1969:186-189.

[xx] The English capture of Calcutta in 1757 and its military check on both French and Dutch influence resulted in an expansion of British commerce in Asia just as Portuguese trade diminished. See George B. Malleson, The Decisive Battles of India from 1746 to 1819, London, 1885.

[xxi] Throughout much of the 17^th century British attempts to convince the Macanese to assist in establishing trade with the Chinese proved fruitless. Finally, in September 1699 the English ship Macclesfield succeed in securing trade relations directly with Canton. English residency began in 1738.  Rogerio Miguel Puga, The British Presence in Macau: 1635-1793, Hong Kong University Press, 2013:68-70.