Seventeenth-Century Printing

Timeline

1. c. 1450–1600Mainz and all of Europe · Central-Western EuropeJohannes Gutenberg invented metal movable-type printing around 1450 in Mainz. Within a century and a half, printing spread rapidly to Venice, Antwerp, Paris, London, Amsterdam, and other major European cities, and the output of books and religious pamphlets grew exponentially. Martin Luther's Ninety-five Theses of 1517 spread quickly thanks to the power of the printing press. By the end of the 16th century, Europe had hundreds of printing shops producing millions of books annually, laying the information infrastructure for the subsequent Scientific Revolution and political transformations.
2. 1600–1650Amsterdam and London · Western EuropeEntering the seventeenth century, Amsterdam became the center of European scholarly publishing through the Elzevir family printing house, renowned for its small, finely produced pocket editions of Latin classics. Around the English Civil War (1642–1651), London's printing industry expanded rapidly, with a flood of political pamphlets creating a battlefield of public opinion. John Milton wrote Areopagitica in 1644, an important document against press censorship. Monarchs and parliaments across Europe recognized the political power of the press, and struggles over licenses and censorship ran throughout the first half of the century.
3. 1651–1660London and Amsterdam · Western EuropeIn 1651 Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan was printed and published in London, sparking wide discussion across European intellectual circles and making the press once again a vehicle for revolutionary political philosophy. Cromwell's Protectorate imposed strict press controls; in 1655 only two official newspapers, Mercurius Politicus and The Public Intelligencer, were permitted to publish legally, while all other publications required licenses. Amsterdam's relatively relaxed publishing environment made it a refuge for persecuted European thinkers, and works by figures such as Spinoza were later printed there. Over this decade, printing was both the infrastructure of knowledge production and a central arena of political contest.
4. 1660Europe · EuropeAfter the English Restoration of 1660, the Royal Society was founded, and its journal Philosophical Transactions (1665) became one of the world's earliest scientific journals, marking a deep institutional integration of printing with the scientific community. Printing technology continued to improve thereafter, driving the Enlightenment, the encyclopedist movement, and even the mass production and dissemination of technical literature in the Industrial Revolution era, with profound and lasting effects on the course of world civilization.