and remarkably understudied, resource that deserves renewed attention.
Substances reminds its reader, over and over again, that writing surfaces used as conveyances for human ideas were first nonhuman matter. Koops begins his history of substances used to convey ideas in the ancient past, when “trees were planted, heaps of stone, or unornamented altars and pillars, were erected … to keep up the recollection of past facts.”54 As writing and alphabet systems developed, more complex means were used to recollect the past: “Since the art of writing was invented, several materials have been used on which was engraved or written what was wished to be conveyed to posterity,” and in short time, claims Koops, different kinds of substances were used to record different kinds of public and private writing: “A distinction has been made between public records and private writings. For the first; stones, timber, and metals, were chiefly used; and, for the latter, leaves and bark of trees.”55 The story that Koops tells may begin as a narrative of diversified formats used to distinguish between private and public records, but eventually, he settles into an arcing narrative in which one substance/substrate supersedes another substance/substrate. “The use of boards was superseded by the use of the leaves of palm, olive, poplar, and other trees,” he writes; then “the custom of writing on leaves of trees was superseded by the use of the raw bark of trees, and the interior bark” (emphasis mine).56 Pausing here, he notes that the language of books is rooted in trees: interior bark is called liber in Latin; these barks, rolled up so they could be carried about, are volumen;the word codex “notwithstanding its true meaning is the trunk of a tree … was adopted to describe many sheets of the said bark together.”57 Koops devotes some space to discussing various kinds of bark media from various locales, but only after noting that the use of inner bark (liber) is a short step away from making papyrus. In the narrative laid out in Substances, it becomes readily apparent that had northern-growing birch trees been more suitable for making writing substrates than southern-growing papyrus, the history of the book, and perhaps the history of civilization, would be quite different. Ecological availability and scarcity—we might say biodiversity—determine the course of paper and books in Koops’s narrative.
Intriguingly, when Koops turns to a consideration of parchment superseding papyrus, he tells an often-repeated anecdote about Ptolemy/Eumenes, but in a way that emphasizes not only political power, but also ecological scarcity and fear.58 In the usual story, Ptolemy wants a bigger, better library in Alexandria than Eumenes has in Pergamus, so he cuts off exports of papyrus (which Koops refers to as “Egyptian Paper,” though he clearly indicates that it is a precursor to paper). However, Koops suggests that Ptolemy’s decision might have been driven by ecological concerns: “It may be that this prohibition was not solely occasioned by jealousy, but from the fear that his dominions … would be again reduced to a state of ignorance for want of Paper, because the plant failed sometimes in unfavourable weather.”59 Having been cut off from the raw materials needed to record and convey ideas, the Pergamians, according to Koops, “were therefore obliged to devise other means for making Paper.” In response, they invent parchment, a writing material that “obtained its name from the city of Pergam, or Pergamus … the place where it was invented.”60 The narrative of supersession continues: born out of necessity and ecological scarcity, parchment “greatly surpassed the Egyptian Paper in fineness, smoothness, and strength.”61 Parchment, in Koops’s telling, also surpassed papyrus, because it was made from a reliable, sustainable, abundant, and geographically nonspecific material. The spread of parchment and especially parchment-making, he notes, was far broader than the spread of papyrus because, once learned, the techniques of parchment-making can be practiced in any climate where animals can be raised.
So, according to Substances, boards as a writing medium are superseded by leaves, which are superseded by the inner bark of trees, which are superseded by the rinds of papyrus plants, which are superseded by parchment. The title promises a historical account of substances “From the Earliest Date, to the Invention of Paper,” and at the bottom of page 46, almost exactly halfway through the 91-page volume, Koops turns to paper. His history of paper and papermaking follows the same pattern as his history of substances used before the invention of paper: paper from linen rags superseded paper from cotton rags partially because flax grows more abundantly in Europe. Notably, Koops claims “that the Greeks made use of cotton-paper sooner than the Latins; and that it was brought into Europe by the Greeks, earlier than by the Moors from Spain”; as a result, he says, in Germany cotton paper “was known in the 9th century by the name of Greek parchment.”62 That “Greek parchment” would be used to designate cotton paper highlights the recursivity of supersession narratives: the superseding object (paper in this case) makes sense of itself by reference to the presence or memory of the superseded object (parchment).63 Indeed, Koops refers to manuscripts from tenth- to twelfth-century Spain that are “intermixed parchment and thick cotton-paper leaves.” Scarcity is the reason for intermixing, he suggests, but he cannot determine if “cotton paper was scarcer than parchment, or that this mixture was necessary because sufficient parchment could not be obtained.”64
The same sort of incomplete supersession happens with cotton and linen paper in Koops’s account. According to Substances, the use of cotton paper in England “continued till the latter end of the 14th century,” he says, before it was “gradually supplanted by linen-paper.”65 Here it is hard to miss the agricultural pun, intended or not, that comes into play with the word “supplanted.” But beyond wordplay, there is a literal shift in the direction of replacement. To supersede something is to sit above it; to supplant something is to trip it from below. Cotton paper is, quite literally, tripped up from below by a new plant, flax. And yet, as Koops notes, the change is “gradual,” not sudden. In Fabriano, one of the earliest and most well-known Italian papermaking cities, Koops claims that “cotton might have been some time before mixed with linen-rags, till the superiority of the latter was fully ascertained.”66 Koops devotes ample attention to teasing out when linen paper was invented, but it turns out the when is in service of the where: nationalistic disputes abound when it comes to assigning credit for the innovation of linen-based paper. Koops ultimately sides with the view that the earliest-known linen paper was made in Germany in 1308. “It is, therefore likely,” writes Koops, “that Germany has the honour of its [linen paper’s] invention.”67 By 1342, linen paper was in use in England, Koops claims, but it was not until the end of the seventeenth century that “the art of making Paper arrived to a great degree of perfection in England.”68 But within one hundred years, production speed (and demand) outstripped supply in England, and, as a result, English papermakers had to import rags from Europe, leading to anxieties about the dissemination of nationally beneficial information and even the production of viable banknotes. Koops raises the concern, in contradistinction to the anonymous eighteenth-century writer cited by Hunter, that due to resource shortage, there might not be enough rags to make paper money.69
Extraordinary Scarcity
As Koops had already lamented at the beginning of Substances, “The great demands for Paper in this country have rendered it necessary to be supplied from the continent. This supply is extremely precarious, and is likely to be more wanted, as the consumption of Paper increases, because the material, which is the basis of Paper, is not to be obtained in England in sufficient quantity. The evil consequence of not having a due supply of Rags has been the stoppage of a number of Paper-mills.”70 According to Koops, though “all Europe has of late years experienced an extraordinary scarcity” of rags, England struggled more than any other country because it relied on raw materials from abroad.71 Parliament had already responded to rag scarcity by allowing rags, nets, old ropes, and waste paper to be imported duty-free. And yet, claims Koops, such measures were stopgaps, not solutions; in his words, they “cannot sufficiently obviate the lamentable scarcity.”72 Koops’s appeal ultimately hinges on the argument that continued rag dependence is shortsighted, as are attempts to fix the problem economically (duty-free imports of raw materials), politically (sanctions on exports of certain materials to certain countries), and socially (appealing to citizens
