Mind-Munitions

88
Propaganda in the Age of Gunpowder and Printing
the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and, perhaps more
significantly, with the production of cheap paper replacing
expensive parchment in the first half of the fifteenth century, the
way was open to capitalize upon printing as a means of catering
for the increasingly literate population of Europe. By 1500,
printing presses had been set up in more than 250 places. But
Johann Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press some fifty
years earlier also opened up the floodgates for a massive growth in
literary persuasion of all kinds, not the least significant of which
was war propaganda. Thus, the phenomenon with which we are
familiar today begins to assume shape during the Renaissance and
the Reformation. Indeed, it is difficult to overstate the significance
of printing as an instrument of change. Thanks to books, for
example, the ‘realities’ of war – or rather literary representations
of those realities – become more accessible to people who were
unused to its actuality. Literary images of warfare disseminated to
a wide readership played on the collective imagination in a way
that monuments and paintings, fixed in time and place, could
never do. Moreover, visual images could now be reproduced to
communicate ideas to a wider audience than ever before. The
publication of maps and the advances made in cartography (not
least after Columbus ‘discovered’ America in 1492) further
stretched the imagination of rulers and ruled alike and served to
bring distant places more within their reach.