Gutenberg and Printing: A View from Strasbourg

Strasbourg, France, where I now live, is justly proud of Johannes Gutenberg (about 1406-1468), who invented the printing press. He was born in Mainz, nearby in what is now Germany, and returned to it later, but his crucial first steps in developing the printing press were taken in Strasbourg, where a statue and a plaza commemorate him.

One would think that Gutenberg’s idea for a printing press would have been a flash of insight that everyone would have immediately appreciated. But he did his initial work as a sideline and without funding from other people, as far as we know. His main work seems to have been as a goldsmith, polishing gems, and making mirrors. He got his idea for the printing press from another kind of press: the wine-press, which removed juice from grapes. Perhaps if he had just stuck to his polishing and mirrors, or had gone into the wine-press business, he might have had fewer financial setbacks. At least, the return on investment was very slow. His few major investors sued him. But, if Gutenberg had not persisted, the world would not have had what is now widely considered one of its most important inventions.

As a result of the printing press, ideas could now be publicized through a large number of copies, rather than copied by hand or by meticulous engravings that were affordable only for illustrations. Gutenberg developed an alloy of lead, tin, and antimony that could be melted and re-used. The greater number of copies allowed the written ideas to spread more widely and gain a recognition that they would not otherwise have had, or had only after a long delay.

Some examples of such ideas, themselves changing the course of history, are depicted on panels on the Gutenberg monument. One of them shows the signing of the American Declaration of Independence, with a Gutenberg press squarely and symbolically in the middle of the Continental Congress. Copies of the Declaration then spread around the world, where they stirred the ideas of liberty and democracy more than any handwritten document could have done.

Another example is the idea of emancipation of slaves and the end of the institution of slavery. Were it not for the printing press, relatively few people would have been aware of how cruel a system slavery was. Anti-slavery documents stirred the hearts of good people and embarrassed those who owned or profited from slavery. This plaque graphically depicts the cruelty of slavery.

Another example is education. The ideas and works of all kinds of intellectuals, from Descartes to Kant to Mozart to Milton to Newton, might have been lost had it not been for the printing press making their creations widely available. As the plaque shows, it was almost entirely white male creators who benefited from this, but the spread of knowledge was a process which, once started, could not be restrained.

Who knows what great ideas might be lost even today because, even if published, go unnoticed. How much worse it would be had there been no way to publish them.

White Superiority? Not.

I recently posted an essay (July 4), on my other blog about how the Founding Fathers thought they had found a natural basis for government: natural selection leads to democracy. This was a flawed idea, but an advance over all previous European thought about government.

Americans often  make the erroneous, and dangerous, assumption that America became strong because of the cultural, maybe even biological, superiority of immigrant white Europeans over Native Americans. The Europeans beat the Natives, and that is why America is mostly white, or the descendants of slaves or later immigrants, rather than mostly Native Americans.

But it is clear that there is no inherent cultural or biological superiority of Europeans. The reason that European immigrants (mostly from England, France, and Spain) beat the Natives was because the Europeans had guns, and used them to slaughter literally countless Natives. The Europeans also brought diseases.

The evidence for this is, in part, that an earlier European invasion of North America failed as miserably as the 1492 invasion succeeded. I refer to the Viking invasion.

Vikings invaded many places in Europe, and conquered those places, before eventually blending in. In stark contrast, the Vikings who invaded North America had only a foothold (Vinland, in what is now Newfoundland) and soon departed without leaving any descendants. Unlike later invaders, the Vikings had only spears, swords, and other weapons that were not too different from those that the Natives possessed. That is, they were more equally matched with their intended victims. Under these conditions, the Natives easily expelled the Vikings. Why did this happen?

It happened because the Vikings were small and sick. Against the strong, healthy Natives, they didn’t stand a chance.

As I was writing chapter 1 of my forthcoming Forgotten Landscapes (due out in 2025 from Rowman and Littlefield), I found that the evidence of Viking weakness and Native strength was mostly indirect. Direct evidence is hard to come by. I thought it would be easy to prove, from skeletal remains, that Natives were taller than Vikings. Frequently, a less well-nourished population has shorter people. But there is little skeletal evidence for this. It is undeniably true that some Native tribes, with an average height of five feet eight inches, had the tallest people in the world before European contact, based on skeletal remains. But the Vikings were almost as tall. Late medieval Europeans averaged five feet five inches tall. The difference is due mostly to nutrition and disease.

But, to me, the indirect evidence is convincing. Native American tribes had less poverty, therefore better nutrition. They also had better health. They had almost no plagues of disease. For example, they did not have the low-level ergotism, which created constant sickness among poor Europeans, resulting from a fungal toxin in rye bread.

There is also the anecdotal evidence. Anecdotal it may be, but it is still a valid test of the hypothesis that Vikings were small and weak. When Richard Fleischer directed the 1958 movie The Vikings, starring Kirk Douglas and Tony Curtis, he wanted to model the Viking ship after an actual archaeological specimen. The actors who played the warrior roles, however, could not fit into the ship. The set designers had to rebuild the ship, leaving more leg room for the actors. The actors were men of ordinary modern build, resulting from ordinary modern nutrition and exercise.

The Viking invasion, without guns and plagues, failed. The later European invasion, with guns and germs, succeeded. Clearly the Europeans were not superior to Native Americans, except for the guns and germs.

Will America Celebrate July 4, 2025?

Of course we will. But it might be a profoundly different kind of celebration.

Donald Trump consistently refuses to recognize the legitimacy of ANY election that does not go in favor of Him or His Chosen Followers. He says any election (or court case) that He loses is fraud. And His Christian devotees agree with Him totally on this point.

Whether Trump wins or loses in the November election, He will declare Himself the legitimate ruler of America. If He loses the popular and electoral votes, He will urge His devotees to take swift and decisive action against the American government, as He did in 2021. Only this time His followers can inflict much more damage. If He wins, He may not permit any more free elections. The reason is simple. If He considers all elections that do not confirm Him to be the winner to be frauds, He will have to establish a system (such as they have in places such as Russia) in which it is impossible for Him to lose. This will be, of course, against the constitution. So He will not proclaim Himself permanent president. Instead, He will proclaim Himself permanent Steward—that is, taking care of America during the time in which an election that He recognizes as legitimate can take place. This would be a temporary situation, but “temporary” could mean many years.

It is possible that on July 4, 2025, Americans will know that there is no real choice in what they will continue to call democracy. But most Americans, believing Trump to be the Chosen of God, will be just fine with it. But most other countries in the world will recognize that America will no longer be a democracy.

Meanwhile, where I live in France, many people are upset about the strong showing of the political right wing in French elections, happening this week. Mainstream and liberal French fear what will happen if Marine LePen’s National Rally party gains control. But Marine LePen would be considered a moderate Republican in America. She more closely resembles Liz Cheney or Nikki Haley than Donald Trump, in terms of policy and attitude. She resembles John McCain, whose very memory Trump detests and will not tolerate, more than she resembles Him.