Western Europe: African Linguistics and the Colonial Project

Abstract

The common denominator that sets African linguistics in some Western European countries apart from other world regions is the impact of colonialism on the formation of academic institutions and on concept formation in the discipline itself. The colonial project lent a strong incentive of practical application to Africanistics. Having grown from the earlier missionary project, the colonial boom of interest in African languages was fuelled by the practical purpose to effectively gain and exert administrative (and military) control over the colonies and to economically exploit them. Crucial differences in conceptual underpinnings of colonial policies entailed different effects on the development of Africanistics. While the ‘Romance’ colonial policy of assimilation kept the interest in African languages confined to small groups of individuals, the ‘Anglo-German’ indirect-rule approach produced an earlier incentive for the acquisition of comprehensive knowledge in African vehicular languages across a larger group of colonial staff such as officers, clerks and administrators, crystallizing in institutions of imperial training such as SOAS at London, the School of Oriental Languages at Berlin and the Colonial Institute at Hamburg.

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