Abstract for the Historical Sociolinguistics network (HiSoN) conference on Language and History, Linguistics and Historiography, 2–4 April 2009, Bristol, UK.
University of Helsinki
Queen Mary, University of London
The establishment of the East India Company in 1600 led to increasing contacts between England and maritime Asia. From the start, the Company was aware of the multilingual nature of its enterprise and its hiring policy favoured those with linguistic skill and experience. The Company even planned and provided language training: young European boys were sent to "learn the language" at its trading posts throughout the East Indies, and Asian and African employees and slaves were trained in European languages at the trading posts. Thus the Company also had a vested interest in the publication of bilingual language manuals in England – as did those seeking employment with the Company, for such works could function as recommendations.
In this paper we will explore the connections between the East India Company and English scholarship on Asian languages during the long seventeenth century. Our focus is on published and unpublished works on Malay, for its value as a South-East Asian lingua franca was recognised quickly, and some of the earliest European scholarship on Asian languages is on Malay. We will look at the interaction between scholars and members of the Company in the creation of language manuals, and consider the role of the Company in the production of these guides in the context of the development of a permanent European presence in Asia. We argue that the Company's early involvement in linguistic projects fed directly into the growing European interest in Asian language and culture that formed the basis for the 'Orientalist' scholarship of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.