Printing money: how the economics of 16th century publishing houses reshaped Europe
The invention of Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press sparked a cultural revolution in 16th century Europe. By lowering the price of disseminating knowledge, it acted as a key driver in changes to society, particularly belief in religion. Yet little quantitative analysis has been carried out to measure the impact of this innovation. The INFO TECHNOLOGY project, supported by the European Research Council, sought to shed light on the ways in which the printing business helped to shape the kind of ideas that were shared among the public. “It’s about how one of the largest changes in information technology in history played out and changed Europe,” says project coordinator Jeremiah Dittmar.
Renaissance start-ups
Dittmar and his team carried out historical detective work to identify every German-language printer operating in 16th century central Europe, with details of what kinds of materials they were producing over time. They then used data mining tools, such as the kind usually employed for sentiment analysis on social networks, to draw out trends in the kinds of ideas being shared in the published works. “We gathered detailed evidence on the competitive structure of the printing industry,” explains Dittmar, who carried out the work at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the United Kingdom. “What that allows us to show is that a host of changes attributed to the technology itself were shaped by the underlying economics of the industry.” Unlike guilds, which were the common business archetype at the time, publishing was largely unregulated, and available to anyone who could pull together the initial large investment needed to build a press, and attract a stable of authors. “It was a highly concentrated industry, with a handful of producers jockeying for dominance in local markets,” adds Dittmar. His team found that where many small publishing houses vied for dominance, there was an increased variety of material being shared among the public. In areas where just a few publishers dominated, such as Cologne, the control of new ideas and censorship of dissenting opinions was more pronounced. “Where there were more competitive markets, we see large increases in overall output, a reduction in price, and greater diffusion of innovative, radical, socially daring content,” says Dittmar. “Economic competition led to the spread of ideas that were otherwise tightly controlled.”
Oligopolies old and new
This throttling of ideas was not limited to religious and political works. In cities with a diverse publishing industry, new innovations in business were quicker to spread. These included cashless payments and new accounting techniques. “We see all sorts of downstream outcomes, more people achieving things in the business field, cities developing in a more dynamic way,” notes Dittmar. “Free press is an engine for the whole economy.” The finding that oligopolies have a strong influence on the breadth of ideas shared in society is highly relevant with the advent of the World Wide Web, another revolutionary publishing tool that is controlled by a small number of companies. “It is sometimes assumed that science and technology unproblematically map into the development of ideas and economic development,” says Dittmar. “This history indicates that the nature of economic competition shapes how science and technology drive social and cultural outcomes.”
Keywords
INFO TECHNOLOGY, printing, press, publishing, business, guild, censorship, economic, competition, oligopolies, cultural, ideas