Paper Regimes of the Publishing World: A Bird’s Eye View on the Materiality of Global Book History

This article highlights key stages in the global history of paper used in publishing. As paper was universally adopted by publishing cultures worldwide, paper as a physical artifact offers a comparative and long-term perspective on the materiality of making books across many different regional book cultures and traditions. We argue that the material histories of a paper-using humankind – coined as “paper regimes” – from the second century BCE to the present are relevant and crucial to understanding global history. By synthesizing the findings of regional experts, we aim to illustrate how paper regimes manifested themselves globally across different book cultures, belief systems, and political constellations in increments of one hundred, five hundred and a thousand years. This article sets out to demonstrate that the globally used artifact “paper” offers a decentered approach to global history by highlighting parallel developments, entanglements, and integrations between the world’s paper-using cultures, recognizing possible disruptive and restrictive aspects of the use of paper within book cultures.