UpdatesExtension to 1700, part II: Sweden, Finland, Poland and Ukraine

We are very pleased at the USTC to present our second update as the extension to 1700 rolls on. We have now made available to our users coverage of the printed output for the second half of the seventeenth century of four further significant print zones: Sweden, Finland, Poland and Ukraine.

This update sees the addition of 14,174 editions to the USTC, some 25,000 copies, more than 15,000 references and 2,000 links to digital copies. With this part of the extension, we continue the expansion of our coverage of northern and east-central Europe. With the exception of Denmark, the USTC’s extension up to 1700 now comprises all major print cultures in Scandinavia, the Baltic region, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia.

This update presents two domains of printing that had divergent trajectories in the second half of the seventeenth century. Printing in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which comprised large parts of modern Poland and Ukraine, was in decline compared to its sixteenth-century heyday. Although Kraków retained an important role in the central European market, the overall output of Polish printing fell precipitously because of the political turmoil that rocked the Commonwealth from 1648 onwards. Numerous towns were devastated, and we note a significant movement of printers in this period, fleeing one zone of conflict to find themselves in another.

One of the main harbingers of Polish-Lithuanian doom was the kingdom of Sweden, at this point including Finland, as well as Estonia and parts of Latvia. Swedish and Finnish printing, in direct contrast to Poland, was very much on the rise. While the Swedes were renowned as book thieves, seizing libraries wherever they conquered (including in Poland-Lithuania), the domestic Swedish print market was expanding rapidly in the second half of the seventeenth century. This growth was fuelled by innovative new genres of publication, such as newspapers; work for academic institutions, the numerous Swedish universities and cathedral schools; and a large market for Lutheran works, partially sponsored by the Swedish crown, but increasingly also driven by commercial demand.

That this was an expansive market is attested by the activity of the Finnish university press at Turku (then Åbo) responsible between 1651 and 1700 for more than 3,500 editions, the majority of which were in some aspect associated with the local university. The university printers produced numerous student dissertations, but also academic ephemera: congratulatory poetry, wedding pamphlets, funeral orations and announcements. Similar publications underpinned Swedish presses at Uppsala and Lund, and at smaller provincial centres of printing, such as Västerås and Strängnäs, which possessed their own schools and ecclesiastical colleges.

Although Catholic Poland did not have a similar tradition of printed academic dissertations as Lutheran Sweden, commemorative ephemera did play a major role in sustaining its presses. Panegyric poetry for all occasions (weddings, funerals, birthdays, religious festivities, academic achievements or military triumph) appeared in all Polish centres of printing. As in Lithuanian Vilnius, the presses that managed to stay afloat during what was an extremely turbulent era were often those run by religious orders and institutions. This also helps explain the persisting dominance of Catholic books in the Polish print market, as a region plagued by instability turned to faith and the church for solace, and for a reminder of future salvation.

Our next extension update, due later in April, will see the addition of the printed output of Iberia and Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Central and South America and Asia.

We hope that you enjoy the second part of the extension of the USTC!