Papermaking Tradition - Transcript

Duration of the podcast: 31:27
Interviewer: S
Interviewee: T
[00:00:02]
Intro
This is the Nordic Asia podcast.
[00:00:11]
S: Welcome to the Nordic Asia podcast collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region.
My name is Satoko Naito and I’m a docent at the Centre for East Asian studies at the University of Turku in
Finland.
I am delighted today to welcome Doctor Timo Särkkä, who is a researcher in the department of history and
ethnography at the University of Jyväskylä here in Finland.
[00:00:35]
S: He specialises in global economic history with an emphasis on economic imperialism, and has recently
published his book “Paper and the British Empire – The quest for Imperial raw materials 1861-1960” from
Routledge. He has very kindly joined us today to talk about technology of paper making and it's transfer
from East to West.
So thank you so much for joining us Timo.
[00:01:03]
T: Thanks very much for having me.
S: One of the elements that make your recent book especially insightful with regards the paper industry
especially, is your focus on the British Empire rather than on single countries or specific companies.
And the whole industry is so complex with intertwined issues of raw materials, technological innovation,
political economy and more.
[00:01:21]S: It is really so impressive how comprehensive yet accessible your monograph is and I realise that in your
research history or your research interests, the Empire or issues of imperialism came first, then paper
second, or perhaps third or fourth.
So could you tell us how and why did you begin to focus on the paper trade?
[00:01:53]
T: Thank you very much Satoko for your question.
I believe I initially got interested in the history of paper by studying textile Industries. As you know, fibres
are the key elements in both textiles and in paper, and traditionally economic historians have been very
interested in the context of the British Empire for example of the Indian cotton trade with the United
Kingdom so Indian cottons really are a paradigm of the colonial trade.
[00:02:29]
T: So cheap Indian cotton formed the basis for textile industries in the United Kingdom and was very
beneficial for, in the Colonial context, for the British industrialisation. So in that context, economic
historians have discussed a lot of fibres but I started to wonder why paper, which is fundamentally about
fibres, has not been discussed in the context of the empire and the colonial trade.
[00:03:03]
T: So that was initial question, I don't recall the exact time but 2008 I was in the final stage of my doctoral
thesis project and I had submitted my thesis already for review and I started to search for my postdoctoral
funding and topic. And so this topic, paper in the context of the British Empire. I think that was initially
setting for my research and the latest book is kind of the final conclusion for that project.
[00:03:41]
S: Okay I see, textiles and cloth of course are so fundamental to, if I can say civilization, but so is paper,
even more so. Thank you for explaining that.
Papermaking has of course a very long history can you give us a rough overview of the development of
paper making technologies?
[00:04:05]
T: Yes thank you for your question. So basically there are two paper making traditions. One is Asian
tradition and one is Arab tradition. And that Arab tradition of papermaking is what we are more familiar
with here in Europe.
In East Asian countries, in Korea and Japan and also to some extent in India, to list some of the big
countries in Asia, papermaking had a Chinese origin. [00:04:36]
T: For example, in Japan paper has been estimated to arrive around 610 AD with Buddhist monks, so it had
religious origins. The Arab tradition, it is to some extent mythologized as well, so we don't know the exact
origins of Arab paper making tradition, but probably it came through Samarkand and spread through the
Arab Empire to North Africa and came to Europe to al Andalus, today's Spain, at the beginning of the 14th
century.
[00:05:15]
T: So the first mill in the European soil is thought to be Sativa near by Valencia.
So the Arab tradition differs from the Asian tradition to the extent that similar fibres and the plants which
were commonly used in East Asian countries did not survive in the dry arid climate of central Asia, so the
Arab papermakers invented or possibly reinvented, through the Chinese, the method of making paper from
textile rags.
[00:05:53]
T: And that is the tradition of rag paper making in Europe which lasted up until mid-19th century. So before
Mid-19th century in Europe, paper was made, to a large extended we could say, from rags only, whereas in
Asian countries paper was made from plants like paper mulberry tree for example, and grasses, like--
[00:06:25]
T: To some extent bamboo is a prominent example of ancient paper making raw materials. So the
difference between the Asian tradition and the European or the Arab tradition is in raw materials
[00:06:39]
S: So you mention rags in the Arabic papermaking tradition. Can you say a little more about that?
T: Rags of fabrics are basically fibres which are already processed so they are already in their purest form.
For example, in cotton, the fibres are very long and in a cotton cloth it is nearly pure cellulose in itself.
So it is relatively easy to reduce into paper.
[00:07:14]
T: If you take for example of piece of a common paper and soak it into water, you can see how the papers
are dispersing in the water. And the solution is relatively easy to put back into a paper with a simple dense
wire mesh or a mould, you can collect the fibres and dry it out and then it becomes a paper again. [00:07:42]
T: The same goes with textiles, so with relatively little of processing textiles, pure fibre textiles like cotton or
linen for example or flax can be reduced back to kind of a solution of fibres and remade into a paper if you
like.
[00:08:04]
T: But the processing of plants like bamboo takes lots more effort. It requires much more complicated
technology so that is the reason why Arab papermakers which didn't have the same plants or at least they
didn't have the same abundance of those plants which for example Chinese or Japanese papermakers were
using, so they had to reinvent the process to some extent to make good paper.
[00:08:37]
T: So that is the fundamental difference between the Arab and European papermaking tradition and the
Asian tradition which is more involved with raw materials so to speak.
And the European or Arab tradition is more involved with refuse materials as we call, rags of fabric for
example.
[00:09:01]
S: Am I simplifying it by saying they are recycling the fabrics?
T: Yeah. Even today, most of paper is made from paper. So paper is still the main raw material for paper.
But in some countries which are very rich in suitable plants, the situation might be different, like in Finland
we have a suitable plants meaning coniferous trees for making paper. We are normally using the virgin
fibers, but in countries which are poor in plants or forest resources making paper from paper.
S: Right. I’d love to ask you a little more later about this kind of eco-paper industry but for now, you just
mention you were kind of dividing the Arabic and European papermaking versus the Chinese or the East
Asian papermaking.
[00:09:55]
S: But does the East Asian papermaking technologies and traditions also enter for example the British
Empire or Europe in general?
T: Yes, that is a very fundamental realization in my research when I became aware that in Europe the British
were very keen of investigating and studying the ancient Asian papermaking history. And the obvious
reason was that the United Kingdom and the British Isles in general is not very forest rich country. They are
lacking in suitable plants which were normally used in, for example, continental Europe for making paper. In many places of continental Europe, coniferous trees can be found and used for papermaking, but British
Isles didn't have the raw material basis so it was natural for them to use the materials they could supply
from their Colonial Empire, for example, India.
[00:11:02]
T: And through that connection they became aware of them the rich paper culture which was already in
place in for example in India and started to study whether it could be somehow modified for the modern
needs. The Asian papermaking tradition up until 19th century had made paper, but in Europe at the
beginning of the nineteenth century the modern technology developed in the way that paper was started
to make with Fourdrinier machines according to the inventors Henry and Sealy Fourdrinier, who were
French brothers connected with stationary business.
[00:11:47]
T: And their name is used as a kind of generic term for papermaking machine, Fourdrinier.
And at the beginning of 19th century that machine became more and more common in European countries.
And it allowed making paper much faster and that means also much more lower cost.
[00:12:11]
T: But it also meant that the raw materials were needed in much more larger quantities than previously had
been the case and that was the driving motivation for the British cellulose and paper experts to study the
Asian technologies and whether the Asian raw materials could be used in European papermaking as well.
[00:12:36]
S: I see. This is primarily through Indian raw materials and technologies that came from China.
T: Yes, they were mostly Indian experiences the British where using. India is, as we know, a very rich in
various plants and in the tropics the speed of the growth is quicker than we have in temperate zones, so
India was very alluring from that perspective. There was knowledge about the Chinese and Japanese paper
making traditions as well, but we could say that the European perceptions about those traditions came very
late and the point of fact is that paper, like the word in English and in many other European languages is
derived from papyrus, the ancient writing medium of the ancient Egyptians.
[00:13:40]
T: So it was the perception of Europeans until the Renaissance that paper was a development of papyrus,
which it is of course, we know nowadays that it was invented in ancient China hundreds of years before
that realisation.
[00:14:00]T: But until the mid-19th century it was still, if not a perception of science it was the kind of popular
perception that paper came from Mediterranean world. But because of the globalization, the
communication improved. People became more aware of the world beyond Europe.
[00:14:22]
T: They started to realise that there have actually been ancient paper cultures in place nearly maybe 2
millennia in China for example.
So it was kind of a widening of perspective and kind of intellectual development of Europe that the
realization came that there have been rich papermaking traditions in place in some Asian countries for a
very long time.
[00:14:51]
S: So you talked about India and how significant it was for the British Empire in many ways of course, but in
the paper industry. You discussed bamboo. It's a kind of an ideal raw material because it does grow fast,
but I understood that you've said it takes a long time for at least the first mill using bamboo as raw material
to open in India. Is that right that it’s really very recent?
[00:15:17]
T: That is connected with the modern papermaking technologies. Papermaking technology is very
complicated and it involves a lot of various types of machines. It includes a lot of chemistry knowledge and
involves for example cellulose expertise. So in a nutshell, establishing a modern paper mill with Fourdrinier
machines was very expensive project.
[00:15:48]
T: So even though there was this information that bamboo could be used in modern paper mills as a raw
paper material, and even though there was demand for that type of paper which could be produced from
bamboo, which as you mention makes an excellent paper. Despite those advantages it was very difficult to
establish a paper mill and that includes the difficulty of finding capital for the project and the logistics as
well.
[00:16:22]
T: Because paper is a bulk product already at the beginning of the twentieth century, it requires large
quantities to make paper a profitable enterprise. So really establishing a papermill was one thing but
making it in a way that it was economically viable, profitable business, it required a lot of infrastructure like
I said, capital, expertise. So really it took a very long time and we believe that it was during the First World
War and shortly after that that the first mills using bamboo as primary raw material were established in
India, and probably there were two other mills, which I mention in my book very briefly, in French IndoChina as well.[00:17:17]
T: But those projects were probably the first in the world which were trying to use bamboo as primary raw
material and using modern technology. But like I explain in my book as well, it was kind of an experimental
phase of the industry, and it involved a lot of failures. It required a lot of new type of understanding of the
business, and at the beginning of the 20thcentury since the world was already very connected by telegraph
wires, steamboats, so information and communication was already fairly modern as we understand
modern today, despite those benefits it wasn’t very easy to try to reinvent and do something differently as
Europeans had been doing for centuries through the Arab traditions.
[00:18:15]
S: I see. You were recently a visiting researcher at the Kyoto Sangyo University. And I understand it is not
your primary expertise but can you speak a little about Japanese papermaking?
[00:18:27]
T: Yes. I would love to speak and learn more about the Japanese papermaking tradition which I believe is
the richest paper culture that’s still exists in the world today. And there are many reasons why Japan has
managed to preserve its long papermaking tradition. The obvious reason is that Japan was up until mid-19th
century a fairly closed economy or at least it was for many centuries, so that kind of preserved the ancient
papermaking tradition in Japan. Other explanations are that Japan is relatively rich in papermaking raw
materials so it did not have to import but could use its own materials, and the third explanation is probably
the very large domestic markets which were in Japan and the advanced literature culture which created
kind of a natural demand for paper in Japan.
[00:19:39]
T: So Japanese papermaking tradition kind of survived in its own context. And even today the washi, or
Japanese papermaking techniques have very similar characteristics as the ancient papermaking traditions
had. So by studying washi papermaking today in Japan we can understand the ancient papermaking
traditions by studying the raw material processing for example and the actual papermaking process as well.
[00:20:19]
T: So the history and appreciation of paper which is very much a part of the Japanese culture, makes Japan
very alluring or beneficial environment for a researcher who is interested in the history of paper. There is
appreciation in the culture and in the academia as a whole for the history of paper.
[00:20:45]
T: So Japan in that perspective is very interesting environment for studying paper. The other reasons are
the soil in Japan is to some extent beneficial for archaeological evidence as well. So we now for example
that during the Nara period (710-794 CE) the government official were still using the wooden tablets or
mokkan as a writing surface. So paper was about to come to Japan but it wasn’t established as a main medium of writing at the time but the subsequent Heian period (794-1185) when we see obviously the
advantage of culture in Japan in general. The Heian era development allowed the paper culture to bloom.
[00:21:39]
T: So the commercial uses and cultural uses were fairly similar to what we know today. But unfortunately
washi paper is unsuitable for machine making so at the beginning or mid-19th century, at the beginning of
1870s, Japan introduced Western paper, yōshi, for making, for example, newspapers and other end
purposes which require a large amounts of very inexpensive paper.
[00:22:15]
T: So Japan is rich in both histories; the handmade paper and the machine made paper. And today you can
buy from normal convenience stores or even hundred yen shops very inexpensive washi, but actually it is
not made by hand but the business have learned to make washi imitations with machines.
T: So if you go to your calligraphy class or sumi-e class and you are using calligraphic paper for example for
practising your kana, it is probably that you are using machine made washi rather than original, genuine
washi.
S: I see, Thank you for indulging me, I know it is of course far from your primary research area, but I am
very personally interested in washi, thank you for that.
[00:23:15]
S: I wanted to ask if you could address the issue of sustainability and ecological responsibility, it is such a big
issue but since you have talked about pulp and paper industries, they have been if not greatest, one of the
greatest polluters of recent years, of the 20th century. But as I understand it from your work, it is changing.
If you could tell us how the papermaking industries of different regions, or as a whole, have dealt with
these problems, I’d love to learn more about that.
[00:23:51]
T: Yes, thank you Satoko, that is a very important question. Sustainability is really one of the key concepts
for understanding global businesses today. And I think paper and pulp industry, we usually combine paper
and pulp because paper and pulp are usually made in integrated mills, so it is good to emphasize that it is
both paper and pulp industry which we are dealing with today. But sustainability is a topic that probably
has entered paper and pulp industry we could fairly say fairly late. Back in 1980s, or even slightly before
that for example in Germany, kind of together with the green movement, the consumers started to
question the sustainability of paper, for example using very glossy magazine paper which obviously involves
a lot of various chemicals.
[00:24:57]T: And really the biggest question is how sustainable it is to use virgin forest resources for making such a
low-cost product like paper. So paper, If we take for example newspaper, and we read it maybe once and
then we recycle it, the question is raised whether that is a sustainable way of using for example conifers
that we have here in northern hemisphere which grow maybe 50, 60 or 80 years before they are ready to
be harvested. Is that a sustainable way of using those resources, for example, for newspapers which is read
once?
[00:25:43]
T: So even though that paper luckily is nowadays, with a high percentage, recycled to make a new paper
product, probably a packing material for example, it’s still the question of how sustainable the industry is
from a global perspective. And various answers have been come up with that, kind of a challenge of
sustainability, one is to use secondary forests instead of virgin forests.
[00:26:16]
T: So planted forests for making paper. That development started about a hundred years from ago. The first
eucalyptus forest, planted forests, were believed to be Portuguese, so in Portugal they started to use
Australian eucalyptus species for making paper.
[00:26:37]
T: The soil and the climate of certain parts of Portugal was very beneficial for that kind of an exotic plant,
for making paper. So that is one solution, to use secondary forests instead of virgin forests. Other examples
I could mention is to boost the recycle rate of the wastepaper and as I mentioned at the beginning of this
talk, paper is today the main raw material for making paper.
[00:27:09]
S: Right.
T: So that is the one address for that question. And the third which is very industry oriented, is to develop
the papermaking process itself more sustainable. That means reducing the energy resources which are
used for making paper for example, reduce the use of chemicals, by recovering the chemicals which are
used in the process and reuse them in the second phase of the process for example.
[00:27:41]
T: Or by trying to come up with products which would be more sustainable than for example news printing.
For example textiles, which we hopefully use a bit longer than just once. So, developing the fibres in a way
that they could be used for textiles. And that is, here in Finland, what some of the companies are now
doing. They are investigating whether the plants which we are using in Finland for making paper could be
actually used for making textiles.[00:28:19]
T: So that the product itself would be more of high value, and it would probably encourage the customers
to use it a bit more sustainably.
S: Right, I wonder about the masks. At least parts of the machinery, if not the chemical properties, they
must have some overlap in the paper making and the mask making process. Now, of course with the
situation that we’re in, I’m sure there are innovators out there.
T: Yeah, usually what we can learn from history is that crises are periods of time when people are more
innovative if you like, so it is natural that the crisis and hopefully this crisis as well will have some positive
outcomes in terms of new innovations.
[00:29:09]
T: So, masks are a great example. They are used in vast quantities and they are very disposable products.
You are encouraged to use them only once. Those kinds of applications, the industry is searching at the
moment in order to make the product more sustainable. As the industry doesn’t believe of course that the
outcome of digitalization, that we can read everything online. There is no need of printed media anymore,
the industry doesn’t believe in that, and I don’t believe that either.
[00:29:49]
T: Personally I still want to feel the paper whether I’m writing or reading or using for packaging, it’s not
really the same if you only use the digital product. But that’s my personal opinion, so I think that still in the
future we will see a lot of new innovations which is very exciting to me because knowing that paper has
such a long, long history, whether we can as humans whether we can still reinvent the product in some way
that it would be more sustainable for the whole planet earth in itself.
[00:30:30]
S: Right. I love how this is ending on a hopeful note. Thank you so much Timo for your time. I really hope
that you’ll be able to sooner rather than later to go off to Osaka university for your visiting professorship
and thank you very much for your time today, it was really very fascinating.
T: Thank you Satoko for having me, it was a great opportunity for me to talk about paper which I love.
[00:30:59]
S: My name is Satoko Naito from University of Turku and we were joined by Doctor Timo Särkkä of
University of Jyväskylä. And thank you for joining the Nordic Asia Podcast, showcasing Nordic collaboration
in studying Asia. Thanks again.
[00:31:19]
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