With the westward movement of the Mongol armies, the link between China and west Asia, Central Asia and even Europe improved greatly and exchanges became more frequent. To kill time and to use as gifts back in Europe, many merchants often bought Chinese paper cards. Throughout the Crusades, many new things were introduced to Europe from the east, including paper cards, print painting and images. Many historians have noted that the soldiers fighting in the Crusades brought oriental block printing articles back to Europe.
Printed cards, paper money and religious paintings thus became the predecessors of printing technology in west Asia. French sinologist Abel Remusat commented that the shape, format and size of early paper cards in Europe were identical to what was used in China. Most were hand painted. Though paper cards are small, they use various techniques such as hand painting and wood block printing. They served as the most direct means for Europeans to learn the relevant technologies. What is more interesting is that because so many foreign paper cards were taken to Italy, the Venice government had to issue a directive prohibiting the import of printed articles from outside Venice in 1441. It has become a scholarly consensus that Chinese woodblock printing was introduced to Europe between the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century.
After the Europeans discovered woodblock printing, they soon found type carving to be very cumbersome and not suitable to alphabet language. Therefore, block printing became more common. By the late fourteenth century, wood and block printed paper cards appeared in Europe. The earliest known wooden religious print in Europe was the St. Christopher and Jesus in 1423. In this German painting, St. Christopher is carrying a young Jesus across a river holding a cross in his hand. The left corner has mill wheels from China and two lines under the carving to the effect that whenever you see this image you will be spared the fate of death.
Block printed books first appeared in Europe in the 1440s. In terms of printing method, either words or images were carved in intaglio on a wooden block. A piece of paper was gently brushed on top of the ink painted block. The similarity of technique and raw materials to Chinese counterparts proves that European block printing was influenced by the east.
To Europeans, moving from woodblock printing to movable type block printing was not very difficult. The later system was particularly suitable to the Latin alphabet. The Uighur ethic group in Xinjiang, China, which lived in the meeting place between Europe and Asia and in the link to Central Asia, had developed wooden Uygur Script moveable type suitable for alphabetic language as early as the twelfth century in the Turpan region. This system served as a reference to the transition of Chinese moveable type to alphabetic language.
In the fourteenth century, many tourists, merchants and missionaries from Europe brought back information about moveable type block printing from China, so wooden movable type blocks appeared in Europe first. Swedish scholar Theodor Buchmann (1500–1564) in 1584 describes how wooden blocks were made in Europe: “Initially people carved all the words on one single block, which was very time consuming and costly, so later people used wooden moveable blocks, and then spelt them together to make a block.” Wooden moveable block was a major link to the transition to metal moveable block.
It was against this background that the German Johannes Gutenberg started an in-depth exploration. Inspired by wooden movable type, he developed moveable type suitable for the European alphabet in 1450 using alloy made of lead, tin and antimony, which resolved in the long-standing problem of European language printing. He also invented a wooden printing press using screws to assert the pressure on the plate, instead of purely manual operation, which greatly enhanced the quality and efficiency of printing. Gutenberg’s invention of printing was a re-invention based on Chinese printing. His invention quickly spread to various parts of Europe and changed the reality in which only nobles and monks could read and receive higher education. It also allowed for the production of material conditions for scientific advances and emergence of the European Renaissance.
Karl Marx believed that printing, gunpowder and the compass were “a necessary precondition for the development of the bourgeoisie” and is of enormous and far-reaching significance to Europe and the world at large.
Exchanges between Domestic and Foreign Books
China was both importer and exporter of books. Before 1840, China exported more than it imported, and was in the leading position in global publishing for a very long time, particularly with countries and regions under the influence of Confucius. The situation was reversed from 1840 onwards. Chinese publishing also declined in terms of printing. Under the impact of the western world, Chinese publishing underwent a major transformation in the late nineteenth century and enjoyed another period of boom.
China is the most advanced and influential Asian country in terms of printing. Since the third century B.C, cultural and economic exchanges between China and Korea, Japan, Vietnam, India and other Central Asian countries have been ongoing, and so was the exchange in books. For a long time, with the wide spread of Chinese culture, books from China were also exported in large volume to neighboring countries. This point has been analyzed above. The following part will focus on the introduction of western books to China.