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1
Charting the “Rise of the West”
Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term perspective
from the sixth through eighteenth centuries
Eltjo Buringh and Jan Luiten van Zanden
Eltjo Buringh is an independent scholar
Utrechtseweg 90
6866 CN Heelsum
the Netherlands
e-mail: buringh@xs4all.nl
Jan Luiten van Zanden
International Institute of Social History
Cruquiusweg 31
1019 AT Amsterdam
The Netherlands
e-mail: jvz@iisg.nl
We wish to thank Bas van Bavel, Tine de Moor, the participants in seminars at the
Economics Department of Groningen University and the Economic History Group at
LSE, and two anonymous referees for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper, as
well as Peter Koudijs and Maarten Bosker for their help with the econometrics
2
Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A long-term
perspective from the sixth to the eighteenth centuries
This paper presents estimates of the development of manuscripts and printed books in
Western Europe in the course of thirteen centuries. These estimates show that medieval
and early modern book production was a dynamic economic sector, with an average
annual growth rate of around one percent. Growth after the middle of the fifteenth
century was probably a result of the decline in book prices and the growth of literacy.
To explain the more complex dynamics of medieval book production we provide
estimates of urbanization ratios and numbers for universities and monasteries.
Monasteries seem to have been most important in the early period, while universities
and laypeople dominated the later medieval demand for books.
3
1. Introduction: why study book production
The quantitative reconstruction of book production can help shed new light on the long-
term development of the European economy in the centuries before the Industrial
Revolution. It can be argued that books were very strategic commodities. They were a
crucial part of the information infrastructure of the societies under study, in a way, they
were the “hardware” in which all ideas were stored. The production and accumulation
of books can therefore be used as a proxy for the production and accumulation of ideas
– an important variable in endogenous growth theory.
1
Also, the demand for books will
to a large extent be determined by the level of literacy in a given society, although other
variables such as income per capita and the relative price of books also played a role (as
well as cultural influences such as religion). In short, the production of books is linked
to a number of variables used in new growth theory, such as human capital and
knowledge production.
Second, books and manuscripts are luxury products whose demand increases
with income. Economic prosperity will therefore generally lead to the flowering of this
industry; depression (and warfare, invasions, and civil unrest) will result in declining
demand and production. Of course, this relationship is more complex, and we will show
that cultural and political variables also influence the level of book production, without
fundamentally changing the correlation between income and book production.
2
Finally,
we deal with real artifacts from the period itself, many of which have been preserved in
libraries and private collections, and which therefore can be counted and analyzed.
There exists a large literature about the production of books in this period, which helps
to date and catalogue them; for manuscripts and printed books, information about where
1
Kremer, “Population Growth and Technological Change: One Million B.C. to 1990.”
2
On the basis of recent (ca. 1995) data, it is possible to establish that the correlation between book
production and GDP per capita is very strong, r being .90 or higher; data on the production of book titles
from http://www.ipa-uie.org/statistics/annual_book_prod.html; GDP per capita from Maddison, The
World Economy.
4
and when they were transcribed or published is often available, making it possible to
create datasets containing this information. As will be explained shortly, these datasets
form the basis of estimates of the total number of manuscripts and printed books
produced in the period from 500 to 1800.
These arguments suggest that the number of manuscripts and printed books
produced in a given society are complex measures of economic performance and
societal capabilities, and are therefore a valuable guide to the study of long-term
economic change. This was probably already true for the Carolingian period, as is, for
example, argued by Rosamond McKitterick:
3
Such an investment in wealth cannot be ignored. Book ownership as much as
land ownership was a mark of social status and means. As part of the trade in
luxury items (which many would have regarded as necessities), the book trade
deserves to be recognized as a crucial indication of what men and women were
prepared to spend their money on. Furthermore, the books surviving from the
Carolingian period are a clear and rarely fully appreciated index of Carolingian
prosperity. No historian can afford to ignore the evidence of the book produced
and owned when assessing the level and the range of economic activity under
the Carolingian rulers. It was an economy in which the cultivation of literacy
and learning played a fundamental part.
If this is true for this early period, which, as we will show, had a relatively low
level of “investment” in books, it must be equally true for later periods, when an
increased portion of income was spend on this luxury product. Therefore, a
3
McKitterick, The Carolingians and the Written Word, p. 163.
5
quantification of book production makes it possible to address some of the larger
debates in the economic history of Europe. These relate to the timing of growth: when,
for example, was the European economy at its lowest point after the collapse of the
Roman Empire? Was it during the sixth and seventh centuries, or did recovery only start
in the tenth century? How dynamic was this industry (and the economy at large) during
the High Middle Ages, and how did book production react to the famous “crisis” of the
late medieval period? Or was the period after the Black Death, by contrast, a period of
economic prosperity? What effects did the invention of the printing press have on book
production?
Equally important are issues related to the pattern of the European economy in
different countries: when did the change in trade occur from the Mediterranean to the
North Sea routes? Was it a single shift, or can we discern a number of shifts in
economic gravity in the Latin West? When do the Scandinavian countries appear on the
scene – and how does central Europe (Poland, for example) enter in this context? An
important question in this respect concerns patterns of convergence and divergence that
can be discerned in European history: in which periods were there differences in levels
of book production in the various countries that reflect income and point to growing
economic homogeneity, and when did the gaps between the core regions of
development and the “periphery” increase?
Further, there is a series of questions related to the reasons why book production
increased so dramatically over the very long term. How did income growth and
urbanization affect this growth? Was there a link to the rise of universities (during the
Middle Ages) and the growth of Protestantism (from the sixteenth century on)? How to
explain the fact that we find continuous strong growth of book production and
consumption (per capita), whereas other indicators of human welfare do not show long-
6
term progress (as the evidence collected by Nikola Koepke and Joerg Baten on the
heights of Europeans suggest
4
)? Studying book production does not provide any final
answers to these questions, of course, but the estimates presented here do shed a new
light on these issues.
We will first present the datasets and estimates that form the basis for our series
of book production (Section 2) and then turn to a chronological and area analysis of the
patterns found (Section 3), answering the questions about when and where. Next, we try
to analyze the determinants of the growth in book production during the Middle Ages
(Section 4) and the early modern period (in Section 5). Finally, we turn to the world
outside the West, and discuss the “uniqueness” of the level of book production
established for Europe in the centuries before the Industrial Revolution (Section 6).
2. Datasets and estimates
The aim of this section is to present our estimates of the output of manuscripts and
printed books from 500 to 1800. The dataset consists of two parts: estimates of
manuscripts written per century from 500 to 1500, and of books printed from 1454 to
1800. The unit of analysis of the first part is the individual manuscript, the unit of
analysis of the second part is the (new) title or edition; we made additional estimates of
average print runs from 1454 to 1800, resulting in estimates of total book production for
that period as well. The region studied is Western Europe; we use the current
boundaries for the following countries: British Isles (for printed books a distinction is
made between Ireland and Great Britain), the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany,
4
Koepke and Baten., “The biological standard of living during the last two millennia.”
7
Switzerland, Italy, France, the Iberian Peninsula (for printed books only Spain), Austria,
Bohemia (Czech Republic), and Central Europe (CentrE, comprising Hungary,
Slovakia, Poland, and the Scandinavian countries). For printed books Poland, Sweden,
and (very tentatively) Russia have been analyzed separately, but the Russian figures are
not included in the estimates for Western Europe.
In separate appendices we present the method for estimating the output of
manuscripts and printed books in greater detail.
5
Appendix I presents details of the
estimates for the production of manuscripts from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries.
First, on the basis of literature references, we constructed a database of 17,352
manuscripts written in eleven regions of Western Europe from 501 to 1500. The
representativeness of the database was tested by comparing its results with detailed
studies of, among other things, Latin Gospel Books from the fifth to eighth centuries,
ninth-century monastic catalogues, Latin bestiaries from the eleventh to fifteenth
centuries, and the entire European corpus of manuscrits datés (CMD).
Then we performed a number of mathematical operations to correct for the
inevitable geographical and selection biases in the data, and estimated the more absolute
numbers of surviving manuscripts by comparing the relative results of the database with
the number of absolute pegs describing numbers of surviving manuscripts. For the
period prior to the ninth century, there is a collection of (fragments) of manuscripts,
which is covered extensively by Lowe in his series Codices Latini Antiquiores, leading
to the absolute numbers of surviving manuscripts for this period. For the ninth century
the estimate of the numbers of surviving manuscripts is mainly based on work done by
Bernard Bischoff. The third peg may be found in the remaining Latin bestiaries from
5
The appendices are available on the “global historical bibliometrics” Website at
http://www.iisg.nl/bibliometrics/.
8
England, mainly from the thirteenth century, on which Ron Baxter reports.
6
After
adjustment, the more absolute information was combined with the distribution over time
of surviving manuscripts and printed books from medieval libraries of Great Britain
presented by Neil Ker.
7
The above steps resulted in estimates of the number of surviving manuscripts per
century and area. These absolute numbers of surviving manuscripts have to be corrected
for the losses that occurred in the period between the original copying of the manuscript
and the present in order to get the numbers produced in medieval times. The data
presented by Ker is also pivotal for the quantification of the losses of medieval
manuscripts.
8
Ker‟s data allow us to calculate the loss rates in percent per century of
medieval books from libraries in Great Britain for the twelfth to sixteenth centuries,
which leads to an estimate of medieval production of manuscript books.
The estimates of the output of printed books are based on the number of titles or
editions that appeared in Western Europe from 1454 to 1800, multiplied by estimates of
the average size of print runs. The definition of title and edition (and re-edition) are
derived from the OECD, which collects this kind of data for the present.
9
A title is “a
printed publication which forms a separate whole, whether issued in one or several
volumes. Different language versions of the same title published in a particular country
should be considered as individual titles”; this includes first editions and re-editions, the
latter being a “publication distinguished from previous editions by changes made in the
6
Baxter, Bestiaries and their Uses in the Middle Ages.
7
Ker, Medieval Libraries of Great Britain, A list of surviving books.
8
Ibid.
9
OECD definitions: the OECD collects information on: Number of titles of non-periodic printed
publications (books and pamphlets) published in a particular country and made available to the public.
Unless otherwise stated, statistics on titles refer to both first editions and re-editions of books and
pamphlets; Title: Term used to designate a printed publication which forms a separate whole, whether
issued in one or several volumes. Different language versions of the same title published in a particular
country should be considered as individual titles; First edition: First publication of an original or
translated manuscript. Re-edition: Publication distinguished from previous editions by changes made in
the contents (revised edition) or layout (new edition) and which requires a new ISBN; see
http://www.uis.unesco.org/ev.php?ID=5058_201&ID2=DO_TOPIC
9
contents (revised edition) or layout (new edition) and which requires a new ISBN.”
Titles may be books (which have by definition more than 49 pages) or pamphlets (for
example, smaller publications). The first printing of Gutenberg‟s Bible is one title, new
editions of the Bible will again be counted, but a reprint of exactly the same manuscript
would not be included.
The most important sources for counting new titles are meta-catalogues (or short
title catalogues) that are based on the books in library catalogues and present inventories
of editions published in different countries and/or languages. Such meta-catalogues are
available for incunabula (all books printed in Western Europe before 1500), for books
printed in the Netherlands and Belgium, for books in English (covering not only Great
Britain but also Ireland, the United States, Canada, etc.), and – but this catalogue is
sometimes incomplete – for books published in Western Europe from 1454 to 1830 (the
so-called Hand-Press Book File). For a few countries – in particular Sweden and
Switzerland – the latter catalogue appears to be complete. For other countries the degree
to which this source underestimates new titles can be estimated by comparing it with the
much more complete Incunabula Short Title Catalogue. For the period 1454-1500, this
results in an estimate of the extent to which the former dataset underestimates book
production, a ratio that varies from 27.5 percent (France) to 48.4 percent (Italy). To
estimate total book output per country, the number of books according to the Hand-
Press Book File has been corrected by this ratio, which gives a systematic series of book
production from 1455 to 1800. The problem with this procedure is that it assumes that
the extent of underestimation of the Hand Press Book File is constant over time, which
may not be the case (for example, there appears to be a discontinuity in the number of
Spanish titles included in the file, as the number suddenly drops from 742 in 1700 to
175 in 1701 and 133 in 1702). So we checked the results of this procedure on a country-
10
by-country basis, using the available literature on book production in those countries
(see Appendix II for the details).
The same method for estimating new titles can be applied to Germany and Poland
(and Russia), but the resulting estimates are much lower than the number of new titles
mentioned in the catalogues of the Leipzig and Frankfurt Buchmesse from the same
years (a series that begins in 1565); so the Hand Press Book File and the additional
corrections made seriously underestimate the output of new titles in these cases. For
these countries we have therefore relied on the figures from the book fairs, although
these are also low estimates (not all books were presented there).
10
For a number of reasons our figures should be interpreted as low estimates: we do
not correct where all trace of a book has been lost, nor for the fact that at the book fairs
only part of the production was presented. Serial publications are not included either.
The estimates of print runs are also conservative: we follow the literature, which
suggests that average sizes of editions from the 1450s to 1500 probably increased from
100 to 700; there is ample evidence that this increase continued after 1500, but at a
slower pace. We tentatively estimate that it went up to 1,000 in 1800; again, this is a
conservative estimate; Michael Harris,
11
for example, assumed that this level had
already been reached during the sixteenth century, but that is probably an
overestimate.
12
For relatively small markets such as those of Poland and Russia, these
estimates of print runs are rather high, but this somewhat compensates for the fact that
the figures of new titles for these countries are probably too low.
10
Finally, for six countries – Norway, Denmark, Portugal, Hungary, Austria, and the Czech Republic, we
were unable to estimate book production directly, as the numbers in the Hand Press Book File and the
catalogues of the book fairs were very small; to get total estimates for Western Europe that are
comparable with those for manuscript production before 1500, we estimated, on the basis of the share of
these six countries in the Hand Press Book File, the total volume of the printing industry – but this share
was extremely small (it increased from 0.18% in 1454-1500 to 1.54% during the eighteenth century).
11
Harris, History of Libraries in the Western World.
12
For a discussion of print runs, see Febvre et al., The Coming of the Book, p. 216-22; St Clair, The
Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, p. 458 ff. p. 466; Harris, History of Libraries in the Western
World, p. 121.
11
One way to test the accuracy of our results is to look at what they tell us about the
production of manuscripts and printed books in the second half of the fifteenth century,
when both techniques coexisted. As can be seen from a comparison of tables 1 and 2,
there is also a strong correlation between the structure of manuscript production during
the fifteenth century and the output of incunabula from 1454-1500.
13
Margins of error
for our estimates are relatively large, especially for the earlier periods. The incunabula
of the second half of the fifteenth century are perhaps the most intensely studied kind of
books, and the data for these are particularly good. This period can therefore be seen as
an anchor for the two sets of estimates of printed books and manuscripts. However,
because the total numbers of manuscripts in the millennium from 500 to 1800 increase
nearly 50,000-fold, there may still be considerable errors in our estimates, up to a factor
of two or three in the early centuries, which are dwarfed by the overall developments,
but valid comparisons can be made even with our uncertain early production estimates.
3. Long-term patterns
European book production increased enormously in the period under study, from
somewhat more than 12,000 manuscripts per century (or 120 per year) from 500 to 700,
to more than one billion books published during the eighteenth century (the peak year is
1790, when more than 20 million copies were printed). Because such a long period is
covered here, the average rate of growth does not seem excessive: slightly more than 1
percent per year for Western Europe as a whole. Tables 1 and 2 also show the ups and
13
For 18 libraries we can also establish the ratio between the total numbers of manuscripts (calculated
from the manuscript database) and the number of incunabula there, which is 4.95. The total number of
surviving manuscripts has been estimated at 2.9 million, thereby implying an estimate of 590,000
incunabula that currently still exist globally. Neddermeyer, Von der Handschrift zum gedruckten Buch , p.
77, estimates the average survival of incunabula to be 4.2%, which leads to an average estimated
production of 13.9 million incunabula. This estimate accords well with the estimates acquired from
counting the editions, multiplied by the average print runs, which is 12.6 million for the same period.
Thus, for the incunabula both approaches yield very similar results.
12
downs of book production. First there is a decline from the sixth and seventh centuries;
the latter is the lowest point in the series, consistent with recent interpretations of the
long-term development of the West European economy following the disintegration of
the (west) Roman Empire (see Michael McCormick and A. Verhulst for recent
overviews of the debate
14
). This is followed by the Carolingian Renaissance of the
eighth and ninth centuries, which is one of the periods with the most rapid growth of
book production, albeit starting from a very low level (see Rosamond McKitterick 1989
for the flowering of book production in this period
15
). Then follows another dip in the
tenth century, most apparent in France and Austria, presumably as a result of the
disintegration of the Carolingian Empire and invasions from the north and east (by
Vikings and Magyars).
16
The eleventh century shows a recovery (to the level of the
ninth century), which is sustained and extends to the strong expansion of the medieval
economy in the next 250 years, especially impressive are the leaps from the eleventh to
thirteenth centuries.
The Black Death of 1348 and the resulting decline in population levels had a
complex effect on book production. In the short term, output probably declined
significantly, as is shown in figure 1, which contains more detailed (decade by decade)
estimates of dated manuscripts from German-speaking countries from 1300 to 1500
(derived from Uwe Neddermeyer
17
). The rapid growth that occurred in the first half of
14
McCormick, Origins of the European Economy; Verhulst, “The origins of Towns,” and “The
Carolingian Economy.”
15
McKitterick, The Carolingians.
16
This is suggested by the fact that production decline was most dramatic in France, where during the
tenth century a power vacuum emerged as a result of the disintegration of the Empire; this led to the
Peace of God movement trying to restore law and order there; see, for example, Cowdrey, “The Peace
and the Truce of God in the eleventh century”; other parts of Western Europe were less affected, as is
clear from the relative favorable performance of Germany, where the Holy Roman Empire witnessed an
„Ottonian Renaissance‟ in the late tenth century, and by the continued growth of book production in
England and Ireland, where both political developments (a certain centralization of power) and the
flowering of monastic life led to a further increase of book production.
17
Neddermeyer, “Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer Quantitativen Bestimmung der Buchproduktion im
Spätmittelalter.”
13
the fourteenth century suddenly stopped, and the creation of new manuscripts from
1340/49 to 1360/69 declined by some 50 percent (but population also fell probably by
about a third in the same period). However, after this temporary decline, production
rebounded significantly, and an even sharper increase in output began, resulting in an
almost tenfold increase in the next hundred years (average rate of growth was 2.2
percent over the 1360/69-1460/69 period, whereas it had been 1.8 percent during the
first half of the fourteenth century).
18
The strong decline in manuscript production after
1470 (shown in figure 1) is an effect of the invention of printing (and can be found
everywhere in Europe). But it is clear that production of textual output per capita
continued to grow during the century and a half following the Black Death, a period
sometimes referred to as the “crisis of the late medieval period”
19
; it probably
accelerated after 1370, and again after 1470 as a result of the invention of the printing
press. The number of incunabula (printed books produced during the second half of the
fifteenth century) was already 150 percent higher than manuscript production during the
entire fifteenth century, which was in turn almost twice the manuscript production of the
fourteenth century (see table 2).
The acceleration in the growth of books that occurred after 1454 continued until
the end of the sixteenth century; in 1550, for example, our annual estimates show that
the total output of the Western European printing industry was more than 3 million
books, or more than the total production of manuscripts during the fourteenth century.
During the rest of the early modern period growth continued, but at a slightly slower
pace (somewhat under 1 percent per year).
18
See also Bozzolo et al., “La production du Livre en quelques pays d‟Europe occidentale aux XIVe et
XVe siècles,” 1984, who present similar time series of manuscript production in Italy, Germany, and
France, showing a strong increase in output during the second half of the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries.
19
Epstein, “Cities, Regions and the Late Medieval Crisis”, and Hatcher and Bailey, “ Modelling the
Middle Ages” for different approaches to this “crisis”.
14
We will now take a closer look at the patterns that can be observed in the
different countries. Two indices are used to study this: the regions that produce the bulk
of book output (which is dominated by the big countries), and those with the highest
output per capita (here the small countries shine) (see tables 3 and 4).
20
One of the
problems with this approach is the unequal size of the countries; if we had more detailed
data on, for example, northern Italy or the north of France (including Paris), these
regions would do much better in the second measure.
During the first two centuries (sixth and seventh), levels of book production
largely reflect the extent to which the information infrastructure of the Ancient economy
had remained intact during the mass migrations that followed the disintegration of the
Roman Empire. Italy in the sixth century was (still) the most important center of book
production, both in absolute terms (it produced about two-thirds of total output) and
output per capita. This was arguably the last flowering of the Roman Empire, or in fact
the Ostrogothic “client” state of Byzantium headed by Theodoric in the north, with
Ravenna as its capital city.
21
During the seventh century book production in Italy went
down substantially, a decline that was only partially compensated by growth elsewhere,
in particular in France, Spain, and on the British Isles. In per capita terms Ireland
probably became the leading producer in the eighth and ninth centuries, since it
produced, according to our database, 36 percent (seventh century) to 28 percent (ninth
century) of the total manuscripts of this area, whereas it had a population of perhaps no
more than 20 percent of that of the British Isles as a whole.
20
Population figures from McEvedy et al., Atlas of World Population..
21
Bertelli, “The production and distribution of books in late Antiquity”, p. 55, demonstrates that “No
other western centre witnessed such an intense activity of book production and in the book market as
Ravenna at the time of the Ostrogothic kings.”
15
The new structure of book production that emerged during the Carolingian
period consisted of the core region of the empire of Charlemagne – northern France,
Belgium, and western Germany – producing the bulk of the manuscripts, with additional
important production taking place in Switzerland, Austria, and Spain. The latter country
was temporarily the European “leader” in the tenth century, reflecting the flowering of
the (Islamic part of the) Spanish economy in this period.
22
Again, in the twelfth and
thirteenth centuries, France and Germany were the most important production centers,
and neighboring Belgium had the highest output per capita. So the period from 800 to
1300 – with the exception of the crisis of the tenth century – shows a remarkable degree
of continuity in which the core area of the (former) Carolingian Empire dominated the
industry.
During the Renaissance Italy emerged (again) as the most important center of
book production, whereas production in Germany and France stagnated in the
fourteenth century, and even declined in the British Isles and Belgium, although the
latter country remained the leader in per capita production. The same pattern is clear
from the production of incunabula (from 1454 to 1500): in spite of the fact that
Gutenberg made his innovations in southern Germany, Italy (Venice in particular) soon
became the most important producer. Italy was also the only large country that, from
1454 to 1500, could compete with small countries such as Switzerland and the
Netherlands in per capita production. Thus, the growth spurt of (northern) Italy leads to
a new pattern in which the core area of Carolingian Europe (Belgium, the western and
southern parts of Germany, and eastern and northern France) was linked to northern
Italy. We witness the emergence of the urban belt of Western Europe, stretching from
22
Glick, Islamic and Christian Spain in the Early Middle Ages.
16
northern Italy, via southern Germany to the Low Countries as the new core area of
Western Europe.
23
During the sixteenth century Switzerland has the highest per capita output of
books, which is largely due to the flowering of reformation printing in cities such as
Basel and Geneva.
24
During the seventeenth century the northern Netherlands first
emerges as a new center within this urban belt. Later on this belt was extended to
include England, which became the most important producing area from 1650 to 1750
(although the difference in production from France and Germany was not very large). In
the second half of the eighteenth century, France regained this position (perhaps as a
reflection of the Enlightenment). Per capita, the Dutch had no rivals during the period
from 1600 to 1800; Britain was often a close second, but in the second half of the
eighteenth century it was overtaken in this respect by a “newcomer,” Sweden, where the
policy of increasing the literacy of the population led to a growing demand for books
and an “explosion” in the printing industry.
To round off this brief presentation of long-term trends, we add a few words
about two regions that failed to continue their once strong performance: Ireland and
Spain. The definite Irish lead during the seventh and eighth centuries and the almost
complete “disappearance” of this island from the book-making scene in the next
millennium are some of the most striking developments shown by our data. During the
early medieval period, Irish monasteries were focal points in the religious infrastructure
of Western Europe and storehouses of knowledge and literacy. But, for reasons not fully
understood, it does not seem to have participated in the great expansionary boom that
characterized the economies and societies of Western Europe from 1000 to 1300, and its
23
De Vries, European Urbanization 1500-1800.
24
Gilmont, The Reformation and the Book.
17
relative contribution to European book production clearly declined in the centuries after
1000 (it was a latecomer in the production of printed books, compare table 2).
25
The relative decline of Spain was almost equally dramatic; its share in European
production declined from roughly a third in the tenth century to 2 to 2.5 percent from
1600 to 1800. Spain did participate in the boom from 1000 to 1300 and maintained a
level of book production not far below the Western European average. Relative decline
set in during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when per capita book production
declined to less than a quarter the European average, after which it more or less
stabilized at this level. Thus, the relative decline of Spain coincided with the period that
is often seen as the “Golden Age” of Spanish economy and society.
Against these two examples of decline, there are comparable examples of
progress: in per capita production, Switzerland, the Netherlands (very marginal before
the fourteenth century), Great Britain, and, perhaps most surprisingly, Sweden (again
very marginal until the seventeenth century) become important centers of book
production; it is probably not a coincidence that these were also the countries where the
Protestant reformation of the sixteenth century was most successful (see Section 5).
These comparisons also show that the shift in the cultural and economic center
of gravity from south to north was not really a single process. Instead, there were
several complex, shifts during this thirteen-century period . The most decisive perhaps
was the shift from Italy, the political and commercial core area before and during the
sixth century, to the Carolingian core area of northern France, southern Germany, and
Belgium, which already occurred from 700 to 800. This new core succeeded in
generally maintaining its position from 800 to 1300, although Ireland, Britain, and
Spain were also important centers during part of this period. During the Renaissance the
25
Compare Crónín, Early Medieval Ireland, pp 196-232, for the flowering and (relative) decline of Irish
culture; the chapter on the tenth century and after is appropriately titled “the waning star” (p. 229).
18
center of gravity returned to the south, and northern Italy became relatively important
again. The final shift to the north occurred only after 1600, when Italy lost its leading
position in the book industry to the Netherlands, France, and England. The strong
performance of Sweden in the eighteenth century further added to this shift in the center
of gravity of the European economy.
Finally, looking at patterns of convergence and divergence reflected in the
coefficients of variation in tables 3 and 4, two long-term processes can be discerned.
From 600 to 900 there is a distinct reduction in inequality among the various countries,
partly due to the emergence of new centers of book production in formerly peripheral
parts of Western Europe such as the British Isles, Germany, Switzerland, and Austria,
which were followed in the next wave of Christianization by the central and north
European countries. In tables 3 and 4 we see that the zeros have disappeared, and book
production spreads from the south to the most distant corners of the Latin West. It
reflects the process of “Europeanization” that occurred during the Middle Ages, as a
result of which Western Europe acquired a certain homogeneity in cultural attitudes,
institutions, and (apparently) levels of economic development, although important
differences continued to exist.
26
The early modern period saw, by contrast, an increase in inequality among the
various countries, although differences within Europe remained rather limited
(including Russia in the calculations would, of course, significantly affect the
coefficient). This was caused by the gradual divergence of the northwestern part of
Europe, in particular the Netherlands and Great Britain. These trends can also be found
in estimates of real wages,
27
and of GDP per capita.
28
26
The best survey is Bartlett, The Making of Europe..
27
Allen,“The great divergence.”
28
Van Zanden, “Early modern economic growth.”
19
4. Convergence in levels of book production, 500-1500
One way to look at the spectacular growth of book production in the centuries before
1500 is to think of the book as a new innovation that matured in the centuries from 300
to 800. From the second to fourth centuries the codex, the bound book, was “invented”
and gradually replaced the “unwieldy scroll.”
29
Around 600 Irish monks developed a
system of writing that separated individual words, which greatly facilitated reading.
Finally, around 800, modern punctuation, uniform script, and division into paragraphs
were introduced, all also greatly helping the reader to understand the text quickly.
30
In
sum, a new information technology was created, which, as Ulrich Blum and Leonard
Dudley argued, helped launch the European economy in the period that followed. The
growth of book production shown in tables 1 and 3 is generally consistent with such a
view: initially growth rates are spectacular, especially during the eighth and ninth
centuries, a growth that is accompanied by the spread of book production from a small
core region in Italy to Western Europe as a whole. Moreover, thanks to additional
innovations in the High Middle Ages (in particular, substituting paper for parchment,
but also the spread of more efficient ways of hand copying manuscripts, such as the
pecia system
31
) and during the fifteenth century (the printing press), the price of books
was greatly reduced, providing additional impulse to the growth process. What is
striking in figure 2, which shows the long-term trends in per capita book production in
three different regions and in Western Europe as a whole, is how synchronized the long-
term changes in these different parts were, at least from the seventh century on. The
29
Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom, p. 23.
30
See Blum and Dudley, ”Standardised Latin and medieval economic growth,” who argued that these
innovations – and in their view in particular the standardization of Latin in 800 – launched not only the
book but a new, uniform, and more efficient form of writing, helping to promote European economy in
the centuries after ca. 950.
31
Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and their makers.
20
spectacular growth of book production occurred in all regions (with only one or two
exceptions, such as Ireland after 1000) at approximately the same pace, testifying to the
unity of the Western European experience.
The story is more complex, however. Supply and demand changed
fundamentally in the millennium from 500 to 1500. During a large part of the Middle
Ages, a close link existed between the monastic movement and book production:
monasteries were not only the most important sources of supply, but also for the
demand for books. Performing their religious duties and studying the word of God were
the core business of these “powerhouses of prayer.” Because, from early Christian
times, even minor deviations from official formulae were believed to render a religious
service ineffective, (written instructions on) the correct wording were essential, and
hence the permanent monastic and ecclesiastical emphasis on written texts. In the Early
Middle Ages, when markets were scarce, books had to be made in-house from the
monastic surplus of agricultural products. These links are illustrated by Michael
Gorman, whose writing on the production of manuscripts in Monte Amiata, one of the
most important monasteries in eleventh-century Tuscany, Italy, describes the close
interconnection between the financial position of a monastery and its library:
It is worthwhile to highlight the abbey‟s economic history because manuscript
production coincides with favorable economic factors. An active scriptorium
depends upon a great library, full of exemplars, and both require significant
financial resources. Many peasants must work hard to raise the sheep, make the
parchment and produce the wealth to be consumed by the monks toiling away in
the abbey‟s library and scriptorium.
32
32
Gorman, “Manuscript Books at Monte Amiata in the Eleventh Century,” pp 229.
21
We may therefore hypothesize that during the Early Middle Ages book
production was to a large extent driven by the number and size of monasteries, which
was in turn determined by the share of the agricultural surplus that regions and countries
directed to this part of the economy.
To test this hypothesis, we derived estimates of the numbers of monasteries in
the different regions and centuries from several sources (table 5), which can be plotted
against book production in the same time and place (see figure 3).
33
The correlation
between the two variables is fairly consistent, stressing the important role monasteries
played in this period.
The development of monasteries in the Middle Ages shows a pattern of
continuous growth during the first half of the period, when more than a thousand were
added to the stock each century, followed by a boom in the tenth to twelfth centuries.
The boom is partially explained by the reform movement begun by Cluny in the early
tenth century, which gradually spread to other parts of the Latin West. Apparently, these
reforms enhanced trust in monasteries and the services they supplied (such as prayers
for the souls of the deceased), resulting in increased investment in this form of religious
overhead. Additionally, after the collapse of the Carolingian Empire, parts of Western
Europe went through a political crisis characterized by a collapse of states and the
absence of law and order; to some extent the Church and its institutions (such as the
monasteries) became an alternative center of power, which tried to pacify the
countryside.
34
This may also have enhanced the status of monasteries and drawn funds
to their activities. Moreover, changes in the countryside that increased the powers of
33
Zero values for either the number of monasteries or book production have not been included in figure 2.
34
Van Zanden, “Economic growth in a period of political fragmentation 950-1300,” for a number of
hypotheses about these links between the religious revival of the tenth to twelfth centuries and
institutional and economic change.
22
local lords (such as monasteries) vis-à-vis the rural population and made possible an
increase in their share of the agricultural surplus may also have played a role. The tenth
and eleventh centuries witnessed the rise of the “seigneurie,” local lords who were
increasingly able to control the countryside around their castle, and used their power to
impose new taxes and duties or to reimpose old ones.
35
The combination of these
changes caused a dramatic growth in the monastic movement from 900 to 1300, which
greatly increased the production of books. After about 1300 this rapid growth came to a
halt, and from 1300 to 1500 the number of monasteries in the Latin West stabilized at
some 21,000.
36
The literature suggests that during the height of the Middle Ages other sources
of demand – the cities, universities, and more generally, the growth of literacy among
the lay population – were becoming increasingly important .
37
To test the ideas that
book production before the eleventh to twelfth centuries was driven by the monastic
movement and that afterwards urban factors took over, we have tried to perform a
regression for book production on the following variables: the number of monasteries as
shown in table 5, and then we estimated urbanization ratios from Paul Bairoch (table
6).
38
We are aware that these estimates are not as definitive as they might be, especially
for Spain. We estimated two sets of urbanization: for the Christian part of Spain and for
the country as a whole. Our dataset does not really cover manuscript production in the
Muslim part of the country, which was more urbanized and developed; for that reason
we also included a dummy variable for Spain in the regressions, which also helps to
35
Fossier, “Rural Economy,” pp. 50-53; see also the discussion on the feudal revolution in this period:
Bisson, “The Feudal Revolution”; Wickham, “Debate. The „Feudal Revolution.‟”
36
Only the Netherlands was an exception to this trend, as its numbers continue to grow (the rapid
expansion of relatively small and mainly urban monasteries during the fifteenth century is probably
related to the Modern Devotion of that period, which was concentrated in the northern Netherlands).
37
Rouse and Rouse, Manuscripts and their makers
38
Bairoch et al., La population des villes Européennes de 800 á 1850, estimates show many gaps, which
were intrapolated by us; when no estimates were available at all, we assumed that the city was below the
10,000 inhabitant threshold; all estimates for the period before 1000 are extremely tentative.
23
neutralize possible biases in the estimates of urbanization ratio. Finally, the number of
universities could easily be established (table 7).
One of the problems with these regressions is that some observations are zero,
making it difficult to use logs. On the other hand, the growth of book production is so
spectacular that it would normally be preferable to specify the model in log terms so
that observations about the later period do not dominate the regressions. Three different
sets of regressions were carried out: panel data regressions using only the non-zero
observations, and two procedures that make it possible to integrate the zeros. These
were Tobit regressions and a Heckman two-step procedure using time dummies as extra
determinants in the first stage. Moreover, two different versions of the hypothesis were
tested: the first model estimated all coefficients for the period 500-1500 as a whole, the
second tested for changes in the coefficients of monasteries and the urbanization ratio
before and after 1000 (table 8).
39
Alternative regressions using time dummies (fixed
effects) not shown here, provide almost identical results.
40
Table 8 shows the results of these regressions, which explain the log of per
capita book production in country x in period y by the log of the number of monasteries
(per capita), the number of universities (again per capita), the urbanization ratio
calculated from Bairoch,
41
and the dummy for Spain. If we take the Middle Ages as a
whole, the three factors we have data for – universities, monasteries, and urbanization –
together explain almost 60 percent of the variation in per capita book production (first
two columns). All coefficients show the expected signs, and do not change significantly
among the various tests (most striking in this respect is the increase of the coefficient
for monasteries when applying the Tobit estimation procedure). Dividing the period in
39
Because there were no universities before 1000, the coefficient of that variable could not be tested for
the first period.
40
The most significant change is that including time dummies leads to a decline in the coefficient of
universities, which tends to pick up some of the time trend.
41
Bairoch et al., La population des villes Européennes de 800 á 1850.
24
two shows the changes in the determinants for book production: the link to monasteries
is very strong in the first half of the period but much less so during the Late Middle
Ages. In both periods the coefficient of the urbanization index is positive; it is
somewhat surprising that this coefficient is larger for the early period than for the
second half of the Middle Ages (but levels of urbanization are much lower in the first
half of the period). The regressions confirm the hypotheses found in the literature about
the importance of monasteries during the early Middle Ages and of universities and
cities from 1000 to 1500, but they also show that even before 1000 urbanization
mattered for book production.
5. Book production and income growth: from 1450 to 1800
How to explain the significant increase in book production and consumption in the
centuries following the invention of moveable type printing in the 1450s? The effect of
the new technology (and important technological changes in the production of paper)
was that from the 1470s on book prices declined very rapidly. This had a number of
effects: consumption per literate individual increased, but it also became more desirable
and less costly to become literate. Moreover, economies of scale in the printing industry
and increased demand led to a reduction in prices over the long term, thus further
contributing to the cumulative growth of book production. Given these interactions
between supply and demand, it is difficult to separate the different factors involved.
One way to partially circumvent the problem is by first focusing on the growth of
literacy. For a few countries the literature shows estimates on the long-term evolution of
the portion of the population able to read and/or write. On this basis Bob Allen made a
number of informed guesses about the evolution of literacy in the period between 1500
25
and 1800, which can be checked against the estimates of book production and
consumption produced here.
42
Our estimates of book consumption per capita were
transformed into estimates of literacy via: 1) estimates of the development of relative
book prices (taken from Jan Luiten van Zanden and Gregory Clark
43
) and 2) an
estimate of the elasticity of demand for books taken from contemporary literature (of
1.4).
44
The long-term trends also identified by Allen – a rise of literacy from about 10
percent in 1500 to one-third three centuries later – is well reflected in these estimates,
and the differences among countries at about 1500 are generally consistent with the
Allen figures. The comparison suggests that Allen may have overestimated literacy in
Spain and Poland, and probably underestimated it in the Low Countries and Italy.
45
Other long-term trends known from the literature, such as the significant rise of literacy
in Great Britain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, followed by stagnation
during the eighteenth century, are also clearly reflected in the estimates in table 9.
46
The
overall pattern shows a strong increase in the North Sea area (including Sweden),
stagnation on the southern periphery (Spain), and slow increases in Italy and Poland.
47
The conclusion that can be derived from this is that the 30-fold increase in European per
42
Allen, “Progress and Poverty in Early Modern Europe.”
43
Van Zanden, “Common workmen, philosophers and the birth of the European knowledge economy,”
and Clark, “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Living Costs of the Rich versus the Poor in England,
1209-1869.”
44
We applied a demand function b/p = α * β * p -1,4, where b/p is book consumption per capita (from table
4), α is a constant derived for the Netherlands in the eighteenth century (where we have independent
estimates of the level of literacy), β is the estimated rate of literacy, and p is the real price of books from
Van Zanden, “Common workmen,” and Clark, “Lifestyles”; the elasticity of demand is from Ringstad,
“The demand for books,” which has a discussion of the different estimates for the price elasticity of
demand; the value of – 1.4 was suggested by a number of studies cited, and produces estimates of the
development of literacy consistent with the Allen 2003 estimates of literacy.
45
In fact, the estimates published here are probably still too low for the Low Countries; see Van Zanden,
“Common workmen.”
46
Stephens, “Literacy in England, Scotland, and Wales, 1500-1900.”
47
This approach probably provides better estimates for large countries than for small ones, such as
Belgium or Ireland (or the Netherlands in the sixteenth century), which were partially dependent on
imports of books whose magnitude is difficult to estimate. Applying the same procedure to the period
before 1450, and using the estimates of book prices that can be derived from Bozzolo et al., Pour une
histoire du livre manuscript au moyen âge, and assuming that before 1200 real book prices remained
constant, yields the following estimates of the level of literacy in Europe (per century): eleventh: 1.3%,
twelfth: 3.4%, thirteenth: 5.7%; fourteenth : 6.8%, first half of the fifteenth: 8.6%.
26
capita production from 1450/1500 to 1700/1800 can be decomposed in two elements: a
tenfold increase caused by falling book prices and a (slightly less than) threefold
increase in literacy.
27
Falling book prices dominated the growth of book production, but the pattern of
increased divergence within Western Europe cannot be explained by this. To understand
these patterns, we tried to analyze what caused the increase in literacy: was it driven by
urbanization and income growth, or did Protestantism, often mentioned in the literature
on the subject, play a major role? Did state formation have an impact? Did decentralized
states such as the Netherlands, Germany, or Italy experience a more favorable
development of literacy than did centralized states that were able to suppress the free
press (following J. De Long and Andrei Shleifer
48
)? To test these ideas, a panel
regression was carried out on the estimates of literacy in the period from 1450 to 1800.
The following independent variables were used:
- income measure: GDP per capita,
49
or real wages
50
- urbanization ratio (portion of the population living in cities with more than
10,000 inhabitants), from De Vries
51
;
52
- dummies for Protestantism (after 1550: 1 for Britain, Sweden, the Netherlands;
Germany, being half Protestant and half Catholic, is given a .5)
- dummies for a centralized state/monarchy versus decentralized state or republic
(taken from De Long and Shleifer
53
)
- number of universities per capita (from Encyclopedia Britannica
54
) (see table
7).
55
48
De Long et al., “Princes and Merchants: City Growth Before the Industrial Revolution."
49
Van Zanden, “Early modern economic growth.”
50
Allen, “The Great Divergence in European Wages and Prices.”
51
De Vries, European Urbanization 1500-1800.
52
Experiments of urbanization ratios as estimated by Bairoch et al., La population des villes Européennes
de 800 á 1850, gives similar but overall somewhat less satisfactory results.
53
De Long et al., “Princes and Merchants: City Growth Before the Industrial Revolution.”
54
Encyclopedia Britannica, 1898, vol. 23, p. 858.
55
One problem here is that the Netherlands did not have a university before 1575, and that the zero
observation cannot be converted in logs; we therefore assumed that the northern Netherlands shared
Leuven University with the southern part of the Low Countries and had 0.5 university before 1575.
28
Switzerland and Ireland are not included in the regressions because there are no
estimates of real wages or of GDP per capita.
Table 10 presents the results of the explanation of the development of literacy in nine
countries. The Protestantism dummy dominates the regressions – conversion to
Protestantism appears to result in an increase in literacy by 16 to 24 percentage points.
The effects of other variables are much more limited: GDP per capita and urbanization
also show the expected signs and are often significant, but real wages do not have the
hypothesized effect (the negative coefficient is probably caused by the long-term
decline of real wages in large parts of Europe, whereas literacy shows a rising trend).
56
Universities and state formation do not seem to have any effect.
6. Book production outside Europe
So far we have seen that a number of processes led to a very rapid growth in book
production in Western Europe: first there was the flowering of the monastic movement,
second, the growth of urban demand and related institutions (such as the universities)
during the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, and third, the invention of the printing press
(which can be seen as a response to the growth of demand after 1350), leading to a
dramatic decline in book prices that further stimulated the growth of the market. Were
these changes – and the corresponding levels of book production and consumption –
unique for Europe, or do we find a similar expansion of the printing industry
elsewhere?
57
During the Middle Ages the level of literacy and book production in the Middle
East may easily have equaled and possibly surpassed that in Western Europe, but the
region did not make the transition to mass production of books using the printing press
56
Therefore, no further regressions with real wages are shown.
57
We do not include the Western offshoots in Northern America in our comparison, but it is clear that
book production as well as literacy and universities flourished there in the eighteenth century.
29
– nor did India, another highly developed and literate society. Toby Huff, in his
comparative study of “the rise of early modern science,” analyzed resistance to the
printing press in Islamic countries, which was ultimately based on a “distrust in the
common man” and “to prevent his gaining access to printed materials.”
58
The sultan of
the Ottoman Empire, for example, banned the possession of printed material after he
discovered what the invention of the printing press meant for Western Europe.
59
The
fact that the new technology could so easily be suppressed probably also suggests that
the demand for books was rather limited in the Ottoman Empire.
60
The two candidates for a level of book production similar to Western Europe are
China and Japan, both of which developed a commercial printing industry during the
centuries before 1800. Recently, the literature on the Chinese printing industry has been
growing rapidly, which makes detailed comparisons with Western Europe possible.
What emerges from this literature is that during the late Ming and the Qing, book
production in China expanded rapidly; it was during the sixteenth century in particular,
that printed books largely replaced manuscripts; the growth of the commercial printing
industry in the Yangtze delta played an important role in this transformation.
61
The best
evidence collected recently about the volume of output of the Chinese book industry is
for the second half of the Ming (1522-1644), which was probably the most dynamic
period. The two main centers of production, Jianyang (in Fujian) and Nanjing (in
Jiangsu) produced about 1,000 and 700 editions, respectively.
62
The estimates for the
other cities and provinces are much lower; according to Zhang‟s estimates not more
than 1600 titles were published in the rest of China, of which about half was also
58
Huff, Rise of Early Modern Science. Islam, China and the West, p. 232.
59
Pedersen, The Arabic Book, p. 133.
60
Already in the early sixteenth century, Italian printers tried to get access to the Ottoman market by
printing specialized books for it, but these ventures were not very successful from a commercial point of
view, which also points to a limited demand for (printed) books (Pedersen, The Arabic Book, p. 134).
61
Chow, Publishing, Culture, and Power in Early Modern China, p. 22; and McDermott, “The
Ascendancy of the Imprint in China.”
62
Chia, “Mashaben: Commercial Publishing in Jianyang from the Song to the Ming,” p. 128.
30
concentrated in the Yangtze delta. Combining these figures yields a total of about 3,300
new titles, or 27 titles annually.
63
Other recent estimates by Lucille Chia for the whole
of China during the 1505-1644 period indicate a level that is almost double this
estimate, i.e., 47 titles annually.
64
As with our European estimates, these figures are
based on books still available in libraries, and therefore underestimate real output. But
even if we multiply these figures by a factor of 10, they are low compared to the
estimates for Western Europe (which had a similar population size); the average annual
book production in Western Europe from 1522 to 1644 can be estimated at about 3750
titles, or about 40 times higher than the highest estimates for China in the same period.
For Qing China much less recent work has been done; the only estimate
available is that a total of about 126,000 new editions were published from 1644 to
1911, which means that the average annual output was 474.
65
Again, this was much
lower than output in Europe (which produced close to 6000 titles in 1644 alone), even
lower than the output for a small country like the Netherlands during much of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is the more striking as the printing industry
in China was probably quite efficient, producing books with relatively low prices
(although perhaps not as low as in Europe); it may indicate that the demand for books
was much more limited than in Western Europe.
66
63
During the Wanli period (1573-1610), when book production in Nanjing and Jianyang peaked, the
average per year may have been double this figure, 50 to 60 per year (based on Chia, “Mashaben:
Commercial Publishing in Jianyang from the Song to the Ming,” p. 128); Chow, Publishing, Culture, and
Power in Early Modern China, p. 22, gives much lower estimates: 19.1 on average per year for the 1573-
1644 period.
64
Chia, “Mashaben: Commercial Publishing in Jianyang from the Song to the Ming,” gives a total of
7,325 editions for the Ming (707 before 1505, and therefore 6,618 from 1505 to 1644; the latter would
imply an average of 47 per year, almost double the figure that could be derived from the estimates by
Zhang); this shows how large the extent of errors are, but the gap with Europe remains formidable no
matter which estimates are used.
65
Tsien Tsuen-Hsiun, Paper and Printing, p. 190, note f; in view of the significant growth in book
publishing in the nineteenth century (see Reed, Gutenberg in Shanghai ), the average for the period
before 1800 must have been even lower than 474.
66
For a discussion of Chinese book prices compared to those in Western Europe, see Rawski, Education,
p. 119; Chow, Publishing, p. 40ff, and Van Zanden, “Common workmen”; the different technologies used
by European and Chinese printers – movable type and woodblock printing – points in the same direction:
31
For Japan we have only found one estimate of book production in “the three
cities of Edo, Osaka, and Kyoto” of about 400 new titles between 1727-1731 and almost
600 between 1750-1754.
67
Again, these estimates are low by European standards;
France, which had a slightly smaller population, produced more than 1,500 books
annually from 1727 to 1731 and 2,350 per year from 1750 to 1754. Assuming that these
three cities produced at least 50 percent of the total Japanese output, Japanese levels of
book production were still considerably below those of France and most other European
countries, but higher than in China or anywhere else in the world. Nevertheless, it is
significant that the only major centers of large-scale book production outside Western
Europe (and North America) were in China and Japan, a region that according to other
studies was characterized by relatively high levels of human capital formation.
68
7. Conclusion
The estimates of book production presented in this paper show a remarkable and
consistent rate of growth during the long period studied here. The Middle Ages are
characterized by a very significant increase in book output; rates of expansion during
the Carolingian Renaissance of the eighth and ninth centuries, in the height of the
Middle Ages (eleventh to thirteenth centuries), and during the “Crisis of the late
Medieval period” (1350-1500) are quite high. After 1454 the invention of movable type
led to a further acceleration in output growth. Whereas during the sixth and seventh
movable type printing is characterized by large economies of scale, and is therefore efficient when the
market is large; the scale economies of woodblock printing were limited, and therefore this technology
suited the more limited Chinese (and Japanese) market better; this also suggests that the low number of
new titles produced in China was not compensated for by larger print runs; in fact, print runs in China
were probably smaller than in Western Europe.
67
Hayami et al., “Demography and Living Standards,” p. 241.
68
A related paper, Baten and Van Zanden, “Book Production and the Onset of Modern Economic
Growth,” found that book consumption in the eighteenth century was a good predictor of economic
performance during the nineteenth century; China was exceptional, however, as its performance was
much poorer than predicted on the basis of book consumption.
32
centuries on average only about 120 books were produced annually in Western Europe,
in the peak year of 1790 total production was more than 20 million books.
This spectacular growth was concentrated in certain regions. Initially, during the
sixth century, Italy was still the dominant producer of manuscripts, but already during
the Carolingian Renaissance the center of production shifted to the region of northern
France, western Germany, and Belgium, which remained the core until the fourteenth
century. But at times other countries – Ireland, Britain, and Spain – also substantially
contributed to the flowering of medieval manuscript production. During the
Renaissance of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the core again shifted to the south,
to northern Italy, and it was only during the seventeenth century that the “decisive” shift
to the North Sea region, to the Low Countries, and England occurred (although even
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Low Countries had a very high per
capita production of books and manuscripts). During the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, the Dutch Republic dominated per capita production, Great Britain became
the largest producer of books, and Sweden also emerged as a country with high levels of
book production and consumption.
The production of books and manuscripts was a form of “luxury,” which arose
from a surplus after the first essentials of life were fulfilled; it also indicates a certain
level of education existed that was necessary to write, and then to read the texts. The
way this surplus was mobilized fundamentally changed in the centuries from 500 to
1800. In the earliest period Christianization was an important element in the spread and
growth of manuscript production. Areas in central and Western Europe where the
church was not yet present in the sixth and seventh centuries had virtually no output, as
opposed to those areas where the Roman Catholic Church was established as the state
religion. Missionaries and monasteries were instrumental in spreading the Christian
33
religion in the rest of the Latin West in this early period. During this period the
monasteries dominated manuscript production in large parts of Europe – only in Spain
and perhaps in Italy did urbanization play a role. In the second half of the first
millennium, manuscript production was not yet a market. Carolingian production was
based on the orders of ecclesiastical and worldly dignitaries and had a primarily
spiritual function. Acceleration of growth after 1000 reflected the growth of the
monastic movement in this period.
From the eleventh to twelfth centuries on, however, the market took over the
role of the monasteries. Urban demand and the demand linked to the universities drove
the continuous growth of the book industry in the late Medieval and Early Modern
periods. The universities are indicators of a complex interplay of factors. On the one
hand they provide an indication of literacy and schooling, and on the other hand they
also show the emergence of education not directly controlled by the authorities, as
universities were often relatively free from state or ecclesiastical interference. The
growing literacy of the (urban) population, the long-term increase in their incomes
(which accelerated after 1348), and, in particular after 1454, rapid technological change
in the production of books, dominated the process in the Early Modern Period. The
regional variation in these patterns seems to be linked to regional differences in income
levels and the level of urbanization, but they were to a large extent also dominated by
the rise of Protestantism, which appears to have had a strong positive impact on literacy.
The long-term increase in book consumption was mainly due to the very
significant decline in book prices in the centuries after 1454. Already during the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, the use of paper (transferred to the Latin West from Muslim
countries via Italy and Spain) led to lower production costs and increased production. In
addition, scriptural developments also led to lowering the cost of manuscripts (smaller
34
letters, abbreviations, double columns). The universities introduced the academic pecia
system of manuscript production, making it possible for students and scribes to copy
certain manuscripts at lower cost. But the most radical change occurred during the
fifteenth century, when Gutenberg‟s inventions revolutionized the industry. It is striking
how fast the new technology spread across Europe; within one generation printing
presses appeared in the most distant corners of Western Europe, and the cost of books
had been cut by two-thirds or more. Demand reacted strongly – our estimates are
consistent with a price elasticity of demand of 1.4 - indicating that a decline in book
prices had a powerful impact on output. More subtle and indirect was the long-term
change in the level of literacy of the population, which also seems to have responded to
these changes. The net effect was the growth of a mass market for books, especially in
Protestant countries like Switzerland, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and Sweden.
One final question is: why did book consumption increase so spectacularly
despite the fact that at its height the standard of living of the majority of the population
did not increase or at all?
69
During most of this period, books were luxury products
consumed by the elite – the religious elite at first, but after 1100 increasingly the urban
and academic elites. They were, apparently, able to mobilize a growing portion of their
income to spend on these (and similar) items of luxury consumption. Urbanization
probably led to a significant increase in income inequality,
70
favoring the class of
merchants and professionals who became the main consumers of the product. Increased
income inequality may therefore be part of the explanation. The strong decline in the
price of books also played a role in explaining this paradox; in the early modern period
books came within the reach of the lower middle classes (and perhaps even the poor).
This development already started with the rise of “mass” literacy in the late fourteenth
69
Koepke and Baten, “The biological standard of living during the last two millennia.”
70
Van Zanden, „Tracing the beginning of the Kuznets curve.”
35
and fifteenth centuries, when new religious movements (such as the Modern Devotion)
began to encourage all believers to read the Bible. European citizens in 1800 may not
have been better fed than in 600, but their access to books and their capabilities for
reading them had definitely fundamentally changed.
36
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42
Table 1. Manuscript production in absolute numbers per century (sixth to fifteenth
centuries)
6th
7th
8th
9th
10th
11th
12th
13th
14th
15th
CentrE
0
0
0
0
0
3,983
27,530
120,987
301,833
376,650
Boh
0
0
0
0
0
657
1,136
5,377
42,066
45,363
Brit
81
1,026
5,474
7,926
9,793
20,360
81,044
200,654
155,513
208,729
Fran
1,682
2,441
15,920
74,190
12,752
45,061
197,831
510,828
564,624
1,195,783
Belg
0
127
1,111
3,029
1,555
8,529
43,219
119,588
106,148
572,124
Neth
0
26
60
82
58
354
1,731
2,066
13,179
171,974
Germ
0
0
7,503
59,771
45,703
49,548
166,876
270,392
293,814
515,116
Switz
0
30
594
5,330
1,799
1,090
2,355
3,821
6,349
10,652
Austr
0
0
2,735
9,414
0
2,808
37,370
37,408
39,777
88,623
Italy
10,194
4,478
6,536
20,307
15,215
38,768
95,207
253,013
879,364
1,423,668
Iberia
1,594
2,512
3,770
21,693
48,763
40,871
114,422
237,818
344,284
390,478
Western
Europe
13,552
10,639
43,702
201,742
135,637
212,030
768,721
1,761,951
2,746,951
4,999,161
Increase
per
Century
(%)
-21
311
362
-33
56
263
129
56
82
Sources: see Appendix I.
43
Table 2. Production of printed books per half century, 1454-1800 (in thousands of
books)
1454-
1500
1501-
1550
1551-
1600
1601-
1650
1651-
1700
1701-
1750
1751-
1800
G.Britain
208
2,807
7,999
32,912
89,306
89,259
138,355
Ireland
0
0
4
268
1,341
8,586
17,598
Fran
2,861
34,736
39,084
61,257
85,163
73,631
157,153
Belg
394
1,963
5,720
4,334
7,203
3,016
4,817
Neth
473
1,045
2,842
15,009
30,149
40,950
53,063
Germ
3,227
15,603
32,112
40,553
57,708
78,205
116,814
Switz
400
3,312
5,786
1,988
1,656
1,277
4,615
Italy
4,532
16,719
41,641
35,067
43,293
37,930
75,500
Spain
463
2,205
2,306
4,631
7,088
9,124
16,304
Sweden
6
34
49
2,080
3,756
6,654
21,305
Poland
1
63
146
1,807
2,062
3,468
9,208
Resta
22
530
718
1,000
2,310
2,974
14,067
Russia
0
0
0
123
165
1,275
12,367
Totalb
12,589
79,017
138,427
200,906
331,035
355,073
628,801
a Austria, Hungary, Portugal, Czech Republic, rest Scandinavia
b without Russia
Sources: see Appendix II.
44
Table 3. Per capita consumption of manuscript books annually (per million inhabitants),
sixth to fifteenth centuries
6th
7th
8th
9th
10th
11th
12th
13th
14th
15th
CentrE
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
10.8
72.4
186.1
443.9
509.0
Boh
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
8.2
10.3
35.8
247.4
283.5
Brit
0.9
11.4
54.7
61.0
54.4
88.5
270.1
466.6
370.3
485.4
Fran
3.5
5.1
32.5
142.7
22.0
62.6
217.4
384.1
418.2
919.8
Belg
0.0
4.2
37.0
101.0
38.9
170.6
540.2
1087.2
1061.5
5721.2
Neth
0.0
1.3
3.0
4.1
1.9
8.9
34.6
29.5
188.3
2149.7
Germ
0.0
0.0
23.4
181.1
134.4
130.4
333.8
360.5
376.7
660.4
Switz
0.0
1.0
19.8
177.7
60.0
27.3
47.1
54.6
90.7
152.2
Austr
0.0
0.0
54.7
156.9
0.0
35.1
339.7
233.8
248.6
553.9
Italy
25.5
12.4
17.2
47.2
31.7
71.8
146.5
294.2
1034.5
1674.9
Iberia
3.7
6.4
9.7
51.7
110.8
83.4
193.9
312.9
453.0
550.0
Western
Europe
6.5
5.3
20.9
88.1
52.6
70.2
206.1
330.0
507.8
929.2
Coefficient
of variation
2.37
1.56
0.83
0.81
1.06
0.80
0.77
0.90
0.67
1.23
Source: Table 1 divided by population data from McEvedy and Jones (1978)
45
Table 4. Per capita consumption of printed books annually, 1454/1500-1751/1800 (per
1,000 inhabitants)
1454-
1500
1501-
1550
1551-
1600
1601-
1650
1651-
1700
1701-
1750
1751-
1800
G.Britain
2.0
14.6
27.3
80.0
191.8
168.3
192.0
Ireland
0
0
0.1
3.8
14.2
61.7
77.7
Fran
3.2
29.9
33.7
52.2
70.1
58.7
117.9
Belg
4.7
17.7
48.2
33.2
73.6
30.7
44.5
Neth
7.9
14.2
33.5
139.0
259.4
391.3
488.3
Germ
4.1
21.2
43.4
54.0
78.7
99.7
122.4
Switz
9.3
48.1
78.5
9.3
14.6
14.2
32.3
Italy
6.8
21.3
51.0
42.1
56.3
48.4
86.5
Spain
0.9
4.2
4.3
8.8
14.3
18.5
28.3
Sweden
0.2
0.8
1.1
39.7
58.5
83.8
208.9
Poland
0.0
0.2
0.5
5.7
6.2
9.9
22.5
Resta
0.0
1.1
1.5
2.0
4.5
4.8
17.5
Russia
0
0
0
0.0
0.1
0.8
5.8
Western Europeb
3.1
17.5
29.1
40.6
66.7
66.7
122.4
Coefficient of variationb
1.06
1.05
1.00
1.06
1.16
1.33
1.13
aAustria, Hungary, Portugal, Czech Republic, rest Scandinavia
bwithout Russia
Source: Table 2 divided by population data from McEvedy and Jones (1978)
46
Table 5. Estimated numbers of monasteries in Western Europe (sixth to fifteenth
centuries).
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
CentrE
0
0
0
0
16
79
458
718
695
690
Boh
0
0
0
0
17
32
113
119
107
113
Brit
236
460
463
437
437
526
1,325
1,530
1,447
1,333
Fran
586
988
1,240
1,636
2,091
5,051
8,104
8,564
8,189
7,554
Belg
0
53
68
70
88
175
313
364
361
335
Neth
0
2
4
7
13
20
68
189
336
679
Germ
0
138
622
824
1,129
1,652
2,873
3,110
2,967
2,752
Switz
10
19
37
71
104
144
247
321
337
333
Austr
12
11
70
99
113
186
344
406
413
372
Italy
291
306
495
704
995
2,072
2,990
3,405
3,416
3,333
Iberia
58
117
170
537
1,340
2,549
3,290
3,223
3,003
2,876
Western
Europe
1,193
2,094
3,168
4,385
6,343
12,485
20,125
21,948
21,270
20,369
New
foundati
ons
(1,193)
1,021
1,284
1,533
2,397
6,776
8,888
3,836
1,516
1,226
Increase
in %
86
58
44
48
91
63
17
6
4
(Sources: for the Netherlands Schoengen (1941a,b, 1942), for the Iberian Peninsula adapted from Vaquero
et al., (1973), and for the other areas based on Cottineau (1939), though adapted for Germany, Austria,
Switzerland, Bohemia, and central Europe; all countries with a decay rate of 10% per century; for more
information, see Buringh 2008).
47
Table 6. Estimates of urbanization ratio (portion of the population living in cities with
more than 10,000 inhabitants), sixth to fifteenth centuries
Century
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
Centr Eur
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.1
0.2
0.6
1.6
Boh
0.0
0.0
0.6
0.9
2.0
4.3
5.9
Brit
0.4
2.4
3.1
2.2
2.2
2.5
2.1
Fran
0.5a
2.1 a
2.9
3.6
4.9
5.7
5.5
6.1
6.7
Belg
0.0
3.0
9.9
12.5
15.0
26.2
29.6
Neth
0.0
0.0
1.0
2.2
4.1
4.7
10.4
Germ
0.9 a
2.5 a
3.5
4.8
5.8
5.3
4.7
5.0
5.0
Switz
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.7
2.4
Austr
0.0
0.0
0.0
0.5
1.0
1.3
1.3
Italy
3 a
1.8 a
3.0 a
4.3
9.9
14.3
13.0
13.2
13.6
13.1
Iberia b
0.0/3.0 a
0.1/8.2
0.2/12.5
3.7/10.6
4.8/7.9
5.6/8.5
7.8
9.8
European
average c
0.6 a
1.4/2.0 a
2.0/3.5
3.6/5.6
5.9/6.8
6.0/6.4
5.9/6.2
6.7
7.2
Source: Calculated from Bairoch et al. (1988)
a Own estimate extrapolated from Bairoch et al. (1988); for Spain before 1200: Glick (1979).
b First figure for Iberia is based on urbanization in Christian part of Spain only; during reconquista
urbanization rapidly rises as Muslim cities are included.
cFirst figure European average based on urbanization in Christian part of Spain only; second figure is
European average including Muslim Spain.
48
Table 7. Cumulative distribution of foundation dates of Universities in Western
Europe, twelfth to eighteenth centuries
Area
<12th
12th
13th
14th
15th(i)
15th(ii)
16th(i)
16th(ii)
17th(i)
17th(ii)
18th(i)
18th(ii)
Centr Eur
0
0
0
3
3
5
6
6
8
9
10
11
Boh
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
2
2
2
2
2
Brit
0
1
2
2
3
5
5
7
7
7
7
7
Fran
0
1
4
10
13
15
15
15
16
16
16
16
Belg
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Neth
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
3
5
5
5
5
Germ
0
0
0
3
6
11
14
17
20
22
24
24
Switz
0
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
Austr
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
2
3
4
4
4
Italy
1a
4
10
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
17
Iberia
0
0
4
7
7
9
9
9
9
9
9
9
Latin West
1
6
20
44
52
66
70
80
89
93
96
97
a The University in Italy prior to the twelfth century is Salerno (medicine), presumed date of foundation in
ninth century.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1898, vol. 23: 858.
49
Table 8. Panel data regression on per capita production of manuscript books
Method
Only non-zeros
Tobit
Heckman 2-step
(1) (2)
(1) (2)
(1) (2)
Lmonasteries
0.77***
-
1.78***
-
0.61**
-
Lmonasteries<1000
-
1.00***
-
2.37***
-
0.77**
Lmonasteries>1000
-
0.51**
-
0.51
-
0.51*
Universities
1.21**
0.93**
1.21**
0.93*
1.19**
0.93**
Urbanizationa
0.11**
-
0.13***
-
0.11**
-
Urbanization<1000
-
0.15*
-
0.34**
-
0.12
Urbanization>1000
-
0.09***
-
0.09**
-
0.09***
Iberia
0.07
-
0.89
-
-0.09
-
Iberia<1000
-
1.01*
-
3.73***
-
0.53
Iberia>1000
-
-0.14
-
-0.14
-
-0.14
R^2
0.56
0.63
0.14
0.22
-
-
N
92
92
99
99
99
99
* = Significant at 5 percent level
** = Significant at 1 percent level
*** = Significant at 0.1 percent level
50
Table 9. Estimates of the development of the rate of literacy compared with those of
Allen, 1451/1500 – 1751/1800
Allen
1500
1451-
1500
1501-
1600
1601-
1700
1701-
1800
Allen
1800
Great Britain
6
5
16
53
54
53
Ireland
-
0
0
3
21
-
France
7
6
19
29
29
37
Belgium
10
10
17
25
13
49
Netherlands
10
17
12
53
85
68
Germany
6
9
16
31
38
35
Italy
9
15
18
23
23
22
Spain
9
3
4
5
8
20
Sweden
-
1
1
23
48
-
Poland
6
0
0
3
5
21
Western Europe
-
12
18
25
31
-
Sources: Table 4, and note 21
51
Table 10. Panel data estimates of the explanation for the development of literacy from
1451/1500 to 1751/1800
Independent
Variable
Literacy
Literacy
(time
dummies)
Literacy
(country
dummies)
Literacy
Constant
-7.54
-12.37
-15.14
10.17
Lreal wages
-
-
-
-.35
LGDP p.c.
.36*
.36*
.28
-
Urbanization
ratio
.46*
.22
2.31**
0.92*
DProtestantism
24.36***
20.34**
16.34**
28.14***
Universities p.c.
-1.82
0.64
-4.34
-1.83
Dcentralstate
-1.80
-3.99
1.50
-3.32
R^2
0.61
0.73
0.75
0.59
N
62
62
62
60
* = Significant at 5 percent level
** = Significant at 1 percent level
*** = Significant at 0.1 percent level
Source see text: according to style sheet JEH be explicit about the sources of the tables
52
Source: Neddermeyer 1996.
53
Sources: Tables 3 and 4.
54
Sources: Tables 1 and 5.