Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth-century India

doi:10.1080/01434630208666469

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Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth-century India

Journal Article•DOI•

Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Colonial Language Policy in Nineteenth-century India

01 Sep 2002-Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development (Taylor & Francis Group)-Vol. 23, Iss: 4, pp 260-281

TL;DR: The authors examines a crucial episode in the history of language policy in British colonial education: the Orientalist-Anglicist controversy of the 1830s over the content and medium of government education in India.

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Abstract: This paper examines a crucial episode in the history of language policy in British colonial education: the Orientalist–Anglicist controversy of the 1830s over the content and medium of government education in India. The bitter dispute over colonial language-in-education policy during this period raised fundamental questions about the roles and status of the English language and the Indian vernacular and classical languages in the diffusion of Western knowledge and ideas on the subcontinent. At the heart of many accounts of the controversy, not least those of a polemical nature, is Thomas Babington Macaulay's famous Minute of 1835, which advocated the creation of a class of anglicised Indians who would serve as cultural intermediaries between the British and their Indian subjects. This paper reassesses Macaulay's influence on British language policy in 19th century India. It begins by examining the background to the Orientalist–Anglicist dispute in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and then moves on ...

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Journal Article•DOI•

Masks of conquest: Literary study and British rule in India

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Bart J. Moore-Gilbert

01 May 1994-History of European Ideas

TL;DR: The Masks of conquest: Literary study and British rule in India as mentioned in this paper, is an example of such a study, with a focus on Indian literature and history of European ideas.

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327 citations

Towards a Theory of Language Policy

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Bernard Spolsky¹•Institutions (1)

University of Pennsylvania¹

01 Jan 2007

89 citations

Cites methods from "Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Coloni..."

...He taught at McGill University, Indiana University, the University of New Mexico and Bar-Ilan University, retiring in 2000....
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...(such as the Roman Army, the French Foreign Legion, the British controlled Indian Army, or the post-independence Israeli army) have encouraged an assortment of management policies, and the desire to communicate with the enemy or with the inhabitants of occupied territory has led to elaborate military language policies.14...
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...One model, adopted in the British Empire after failures of the English-only program in 19th century India (Evans 2002), was to provide initial education in the vernacular with gradual transition to English no later than the beginning of high school....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Language policy and language planning in Cyprus

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Xenia Hadjioannou, Stavroula Tsiplakou¹, Matthias Kappler²•Institutions (2)

Open University of Cyprus¹, University of Cyprus²

23 Nov 2011-Current Issues in Language Planning

TL;DR: This article provided a detailed account of language policy and language planning in Cyprus, using both historical and synchronic data and adopting a mixed-methods approach (archival research, ethnographic tools and insights from sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis) to trace the origins and trajectories of language polices in Cyprus and to relate these to issues of ethnicity, community and national identity formation, language maintenance and language shift, as well as the varying constructions of the role of language in education.

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Abstract: The aim of this monograph is to provide a detailed account of language policy and language planning in Cyprus. Using both historical and synchronic data and adopting a mixed-methods approach (archival research, ethnographic tools and insights from sociolinguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis), this study attempts to trace the origins and the trajectories of language polices in Cyprus and to relate these to issues of ethnicity, community and national identity formation, language maintenance and language shift, as well as the varying constructions of the role of language in education. It will be shown that, while linguistic variation and multilingualism were historically a core feature of the linguistic communities of Cyprus, the end of the anticolonial struggle and the separation of the island's two major linguistic communities post-1974 has helped to establish effectively monolingual language policies, with a strong prioritization of national standard languages as opposed to sociolinguistically stigma...

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72 citations

Cites background from "Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Coloni..."

...See Evans (2002) for an analysis of the impact of parsimony concerns on colonial education and language policy....
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...…exoticizing orientalist perceptions that heavily influenced pro-Indian language policies in the early period of British colonialism in India (see Evans, 2002), it appears that ‘romantic’, quasi-philhellenic discourses on the part of the colonial rulers had a role in shaping a laissez-faire…...
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...Though this analysis is not necessarily shared by all scholars of colonial educational policy, according to Evans (2002, 2008) and Pennycook (2002), language policies in the various colonies were decisively influenced by variables such as the ideological orientations of colonial administrators…...
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...…in an effort to secure Britain’s hold on Hong Kong by ‘integrating the Chinese elite into the colonial establishment’ (Evans, 2008, p. 52), and (c) the plan to create a local élite in India that would act as ‘cultural intermediaries between the British and the masses’ (Evans, 2002, p. 262)....
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Monograph•DOI•

Language Policy: List of tables

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Bernard Spolsky

01 Jan 2003

54 citations

Book•

The Languages of the Jews: A Sociolinguistic History

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Bernard Spolsky¹•Institutions (1)

Bar-Ilan University¹

27 Mar 2014

TL;DR: The authors explored the extent of scholarly disagreement over the answers to these questions, and showed the value of adding a sociolinguistic perspective to issues commonly ignored in standard histories, such as when does a language become "Jewish", what was the origin of Yiddish, how much Hebrew did the average Jew know over the centuries, and how was Hebrew re-established as a vernacular and a dominant language.

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Abstract: Historical sociolinguistics is a comparatively new area of research, investigating difficult questions about language varieties and choices in speech and writing. Jewish historical sociolinguistics is rich in unanswered questions: when does a language become 'Jewish'? What was the origin of Yiddish? How much Hebrew did the average Jew know over the centuries? How was Hebrew re-established as a vernacular and a dominant language? This book explores these and other questions, and shows the extent of scholarly disagreement over the answers. It shows the value of adding a sociolinguistic perspective to issues commonly ignored in standard histories. A vivid commentary on Jewish survival and Jewish speech communities that will be enjoyed by the general reader, and is essential reading for students and researchers interested in the study of Middle Eastern languages, Jewish studies, and sociolinguistics.

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43 citations

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References

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Book•

Ideologies of the Raj

[...]

Thomas R. Metcalf¹•Institutions (1)

University of California, Berkeley¹

01 Jan 1994

TL;DR: In this article, the authors describe the British and India in the eighteenth century and discuss the creation of difference, the ordering of difference and Coping with contradiction in the British Raj.

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Abstract: 1. Introduction: Britian and India in the eighteenth century 2. Liberalism and empire 3. The creation of difference 4. The ordering of difference 5. Coping with contradiction 6. Epilogue: Raj, nation, empire.

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428 citations

"Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Coloni..." refers background in this paper

...Impatience with the progress of engraftment in the government colleges was one manifestation of a growing sense of disenchantment with the wider policy of Orientalism among a new generation of officials, merchants and missionaries, who, confident in the supremacy of British power, culture and religion, increasingly came to believe that Britain’s mission on the subcontinent involved the transformation of Indian culture and society through the agencies of the English language and Christianity (Metcalf, 1995)....
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...In India, evangelical fervour found expression in the work of the company official, Charles Grant, who believed that the introduction of Western education and Christianity would transform a morally decadent society....
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...…and missionaries, who, confident in the supremacy of British power, culture and religion, increasingly came to believe that Britain’s mission on the subcontinent involved the transformation of Indian culture and society through the agencies of the English language and Christianity (Metcalf, 1995)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India.

[...]

Robert Eric Frykenberg, Gauri Viswanathan

01 Feb 1992-The American Historical Review

410 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Masks of conquest: Literary study and British rule in India

[...]

Bart J. Moore-Gilbert

01 May 1994-History of European Ideas

TL;DR: The Masks of conquest: Literary study and British rule in India as mentioned in this paper, is an example of such a study, with a focus on Indian literature and history of European ideas.

...read moreread less

327 citations

"Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Coloni..." refers background in this paper

...…that it may not be particularly illuminating to view the 1841 despatch in terms of victory or defeat for either Orientalist or Anglicist viewpoints since, as Viswanathan (1989) has observed, the two positions should not be seen as polar opposites but as points along a continuum of attitudes....
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...The policy of Orientalism interwove the company’s political need to reconcile Indians to the emerging British Raj (Viswanathan, 1989) with the scholarly interest of individual British officials in Indian languages and culture (Pachori, 1990)....
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Monograph•DOI•

British orientalism and the Bengal renaissance : the dynamics of Indian modernization, 1773-1835

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David Kopf

21 Jan 1970-Pacific Affairs

254 citations

"Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Coloni..." refers background in this paper

...…believed that effective governance depended on the presence of an elite corps of acculturated British officials, who, through their knowledge and sympathetic understanding of Indian institutions, laws and customs, would exercise power in the manner of traditional Indian rulers (Kopf, 1969)....
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Book•

John Stuart Mill and India

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Lynn Zastoupil

01 Jan 1994

TL;DR: This paper showed that important parallels exist between Mill's development as a thinker and his neglected India House career, and pointed out that Indian administration was insignificant for Mill's intellectual development, rejecting the long-accepted interpretation.

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Abstract: Beginning as a junior clerk in 1823, John Stuart Mill spent thirty-five years as a colonial administrator in India House, the London headquarters of the East India Company, which dominated the Indian subcontinent. In his Autobiography, Mill paid scant attention to his long imperial career, and following his lead, later commentators have concluded that Indian administration was insignificant for Mill's intellectual development. Rejecting the long-accepted interpretation, this book suggests that important parallels exist between Mill's development as a thinker and his neglected India House career.

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91 citations

"Macaulay's Minute Revisited: Coloni..." refers background in this paper

...Unlike Grant, who advocated complete immersion in English, Mill believed that modern European learning could be communicated more effectively through translations of English-language texts into the Indian vernacular languages rather than through direct study of the originals (Zastoupil, 1994)....
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