Gutenberg in Shanghai

This vital reevaluation of Chinese modernity looks at how the advent of Chinese print capitalism had far-reaching and defining effects on Chinese culture.

Gutenberg in Shanghai demonstrates how Western technology and evolving traditional values resulted in the birth of a unique form of print capitalism whose influence on Chinese culture was far-reaching and irreversible.

In the mid-1910s, what historians call the "Golden Age ofChinese Capitalism" began, accompanied by a technologicaltransformation that included the drastic expansion of China’s"Gutenberg revolution." Gutenberg in Shanghaiexamines this process. It finds the origins of that revolution in thecountry’s printing industries of the late imperial period andanalyzes their subsequent development in the Republican era.

This book, which relies on documents previously unavailable to bothWestern and Chinese researchers, demonstrates how Western technologyand evolving traditional values resulted in the birth of a unique formof print capitalism whose influence on Chinese culture was far-reachingand irreversible. Its conclusion contests scholarly arguments that viewChina’s technological development as slowed by culture, or thatinterpret Chinese modernity as mere cultural continuity.

A vital reevaluation of Chinese modernity, Gutenberg inShanghai will be enthusiastically received by scholars of Chinesehistory and by specialists in cultural studies, political science,sociology, the history of the book, and the anthropology of science andtechnology.