Of real use to the people’
The Tanjore printing press and the spread of useful knowledge
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8961675 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Savithri Preetha Nair (Centre for Contemporary Studies Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2011 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 497-529 |
| Publication date | 2011-12-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/001946461104800402 |
| OpenAlex | W1977146594 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 31 |
This article throws light on the self-consciously modern attempt on the part of Raja Serfoji II (r. 1798–1832) of Tanjore, South India to establish a Devanagari press in 1802–07 for the dissemination of ‘useful knowledge’. Adopting a social constructivist approach, this article concerns itself with the locality, materiality and the historical contingency of knowledge production, thus opting for a highly detailed case study of the Tanjore press. It focuses on people, objects, knowledge, technologies and labour that flowed along short- and long-distance networks connecting the local and the global in the early nineteenth century, to produce the printed book in the ‘locality’ called Tanjore. The article argues that the superior and elegant Devanagari types cast for Serfoji were not simply ‘crafted out’ of a European template, but were the result of a five-year long typographical experiment funded and directed by the Tanjore court involving several kinds of expertise that cut across geographical and cultural boundaries. Serfoji’s celebration of the social and intellectual uses of this piece of European technology so early in the nineteenth century is indeed a remarkable historical episode, and a reflection of the nature of enlightened modernity he wished to articulate through the vernacular printed book
Aesthetics · Art · Contingency · Devanagari · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literature · Locality · Materiality (auditing · Modernity · Political science · Sociology · Vernacular · Visual arts · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Computer Science · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Philosophy
The coming of the book
Science in action
Between Empires
The Culture of Print
The Social Space of Language
The Printing Press as an Agent of Change
The Nature of the Book
Languages and Nations
The Rise of the Public in Enlightenment Europe
Useful Knowledge
The Nation and Its Fragments
The cabinet of King Serfoji of Tanjore
Native Collecting and Natural Knowledge (1798–1832)
Local knowledge and comparative scientific traditions
British Orientalism and the Bengal Renaissance
Power in Print
Imagined communities
Locality in the History of Science
The Nature of the Book
Re-Presented for the Pandits
The 'Ulama of Farangi Mahall and Islamic Culture in South Asia
Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |