Before reading this article, we sincerely invite you to click "Follow" at the top right, which is convenient for you to discuss and share, and you can read the latest content in time, thank you for your support.
According to SNB, the average amount of paper used per book across Sweden is declining, but the biggest decline is in Stockholm, the political hub.
This is less evident in the university towns of Uppsala and Lund, suggesting that the distribution of pamphlets is most prominent in the political debate in parliament. Although the period of freedom of printing was an exception in terms of printing and political activity, it must be noted that Parliament (in other words, meetings of the Swedish Parliament) apparently stimulated debate in print format. In the free era, printing reached its peak by parliamentary regulations, usually lasting a few months, but generally not a full year. Although our data does not include printing months, we can still say that parliamentary assemblies are associated with higher levels of publication, which is evident in particularly important or lengthy meetings, such as parliaments in 1719 and 1720, to discuss new forms of government and new heads of state. parliaments in 1740-41 and 1742-43 to discuss the war against Russia; Coronation of Adolf Frederick in 1751-52; Parliament in 1765-66, discussing the new Freedom of the Press Act; The Parliament of 1771-72, which ended with the revolution of Gustavus III.
However, the general conclusion is that throughout the period the printing press reached its peak at the local and in the council. The analysis also supports the established interpretation of the free age as an era of heritage power. It seems that during this period, parliament played a stronger role in triggering debate in the press than in the absolutist era of the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Advances in printing technology, particularly the use of steam and roller presses, and further urbanization also played a role here, but regardless of the multiple reasons behind the growth of printed documents, it is clear that a slow shift in public debate is underway and parliament provides a certain rhythm in this regard. This shift also seems to have long-term effects.
During the reigns of Gustavus III (1771-1792), Gustavus IV Adolf (1792-1809) and Charles XIII (1809-1818), the interrelationship between the peak of parliamentary and publishing activity seems to have continued. The development of parliaments as a place of public politics and the role of printed documents as a means of influencing decision-making are clearly interdependent. One can contrast the fluctuating relationship between parliament and public discourse with Habermas's ideal typology of the bourgeois public sphere that distinguishes between the state and the market, which Habermas mainly uses qualitative evidence to support his broad theory, but a detailed analysis of year-to-year publications and their relevance to parliaments reported above (figure 7) shows that the space for independent bourgeois debate varied considerably over the long eighteenth century. Instead, parliament seems to have created the rhythm for potential reforms and created possible opportunities to expand public discourse. In this sense, the Parliament of 1765-66 was exceptional.
The library catalogues used in this study were produced by national institutions as national catalogs planned – also for practical reasons. What emerges, however, is a national concern that does not always provide a complete picture of people's overall reading habits, book ownership, or book production in the past. For example, the FNB catalogue provides fairly accurate data on books printed in Turku before 1828, but the book culture of that city is actually quite different from what these data suggest, as shown in book ownership studies, it is much more transnational in modern terms than state-demarcated catalogs can grasp. While the study does not rely on a database of book ownership or the circulation of ideas through books, the places of publication clearly show that book production in Sweden and Finland is very uneven: some cities provide a thriving environment for publishing, while others do not.
We believe that understanding the dynamics between the main publishing cities of the Kingdom of Sweden (Stockholm, Uppsala, Turku and Lund) is a key step in understanding intellectual life and book publishing during this period. These cities published 74% of their print runs before 1828, but figuratively speaking, it is important to understand that they are also competing with each other. The intellectual life of one city mimics the patterns of other cities, and these comparative practices stimulate people to try to do new things with books. It is important to have your own local machine to produce books and other printed documents. Overall, from 1640 to the early 19th century, Stockholm produced more and more printed documents compared to other large cities in the Kingdom of Sweden. This growth is not only reflected in publications, but also in the entire print industry, including publishers, printing and distribution.
Based on this material, it is not possible to know whether more publishers and printers lead to specialization and competition, thus increasing the number of publications, or whether the growth of cities creates demand for more publications, thus also affecting the degree of specialization of publishers and printers. However, it is worth noting that trends in the publishing industry run counter to demographic trends. For example, other large cities Uppsala, Lund, Turku and Gothenburg surpassed Stockholm in population growth in the 18th century. From a historical demographic point of view, this suggests that the decentralization that took place in the eighteenth century seems to be a centralization issue in the world of publishing.
Publishers in Stockholm often expand into other cities. At times when the publishing industry was in decline, such as the 80s and 90s of the 18th century, the publishing industry withdrew from smaller towns and stuck to Stockholm's better infrastructure and more mature market. Stockholm's growing population, growing number of publishers, and growing publishing volumes are relevant, but the reasons for the slowdown in other upcoming cities are more difficult to pinpoint. Publishing activity in cities such as Uppsala, Lund and Turku is closely linked to universities, while other institutions that could have produced a more diverse book culture have yet to be established.
Although Stockholm does not have a university, it has an Academy of Sciences (founded in 1734), a patriotic association (founded in 1766), a large number of civic associations (especially in the second half of the 18th century), most functions related to the royal family, a majority of parliaments in the 18th century, the Svea Court of Appeal (Sveh Hofftt), the Swedish Supreme Court (founded in 1789) and the Royal Drama Court (founded in 1788). The city is also influential in international business and diplomacy, thus creating an ecosystem of organizations that produce printed materials or spark debate, all of which promote print culture. A city doesn't have to have a university to have a thriving book printing business. A thriving organizational structure seems to be reflected in a more diverse book culture, which becomes apparent when we observe the heterogeneity of the publishing industry.
For example, the city of Vasa (Vasa, Swedish) received a court of appeal in 1775 thanks to the reforms of Gustavus III and local politics (the activity of the court began in 1776), but the town itself did not host enough other organizations to cultivate a rich book culture. After the establishment of the court, Vasa was one of the municipalities with the largest number of printed documents, but this can be almost entirely traced back to the court, with few other types of publications.
In fact, the printing of Vaasa's books began with the establishment of the Court of Appeal and ended with the cession of Finland to Russia in 1809 and the subsequent stagnation of the Court. It was only after the reorganization of the court in the late 1910s that printing production slowly revived. A similar example is Linköping, where there was a bishop's seat, so it is justified to print locally relevant materials for most of the period analyzed here. Throughout the period, printed material continued to flow from Linköping, but in terms of subject matter, most of the titles seemed to be directly related to the cathedral parish. At the end of the eighteenth century, publications became more diverse, especially with the increase in economic literature. The local printing industry apparently remained controlled by the cathedral parish and the only printing house in town.
This does not mean that Linköping's publishers only focus on local affairs, or that all the books read in Linköping are printed locally. Published in Linköping in 1757, it was explicitly intended to reach the political center and readers on the other side of the Baltic Sea. Like Vasa, the town of Linköping did not have a complex ecosystem for printing and producing books until 1828. In the early modern period, publishers and printers naturally didn't have to be the same person. In some cases, it is difficult to distinguish between publishers and printers. Sometimes the owner of a printing house or privilege is also a publisher. Other publishers sometimes use printing equipment. However, it seems that towns outside Stockholm rely on their respective publishers and/or printing houses. Turku's publishers, for example, have little overlap or competition among themselves.
There are only two printing houses in the city, one belonging to the Turku Academy and the other to the Royal Printing House, to Bishop Gezelius and the printer H. C. Merkel. The two of them, as well as the different privileges of printing treatises, religious books and literary works in Finnish, were firmly anchored within the Academy's domain, and only a few of the different publishers who used the two printing houses operated simultaneously. Given the tight control over printing privileges, new publishers are more inclined to take over when old publishers move away, die, or stop trading for other reasons. In the meantime, there has been no real test of whether the heavily regulated book market will be able to support more publishers, but the prevailing perception seems to be that it cannot. The differences between the institutions that promote Swedish town publishing deserve further study. When we looked at Stockholm, Gothenburg (Gothenburg in Swedish), Turku, Uppsala, Lund, and Linköping separately, we quickly found that gaps in data made it difficult to obtain completely reliable results.
Due to the omission of some papers from the Swedish National Library catalog, we are unable to make meaningful comparisons of papers from Turku, Uppsala and Lund. In contrast, the catalogue of the National Library of Finland contains dissertations rigorously, making the discrepancy in the data noticeable. This bias is even more pronounced when we compare the demographics of towns and cities during this period. According to the SNB, the number of titles per capita in Stockholm, Turku, Gothenburg, Uppsala, Lund and Linköping from 1640 to 1810; Due to gaps in raw data, Uppsala and Lund have fewer publications than expected. However, the big picture is clear. Printing remains a major academic endeavor, and this is how the smaller university towns of Uppsala, Lund and Turku managed to produce considerable amounts of printed material relative to the size of their populations.
Gothenburg, the second largest city, is more business-oriented and does not have many organizations that promote or participate in local publishing. The material published in Stockholm stands out in almost every way. The city has more printing houses, fosters a culture of more rapid debate and encourages more diversity in the subject matter of the books published there. Books published in Stockholm are clearly not just for the local market, but all over Sweden. Stockholm has once again paved the way in terms of modern reading habits, which brings us back to the above test about the breakthrough in the eight-folio format and the shortening of the average length of titles in book publishing: Stockholm is clearly ahead of other towns. Stockholm also differs in terms of linguistic diversity used in printed materials, thus demonstrating the early process of dialectization in the publishing industry.
Not surprisingly, more Latin was published in college towns and more linguistically diverse in terms of publications. Shifts in the linguistic landscape occur at different speeds in different towns, which may have influenced the culture of debate on a structural level.