English Colonization

8 Key excerpts on "English Colonization"

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  eBook - ePub

  The Routledge Handbook of English Language Studies

  • Philip Seargeant, Ann Hewings, Stephen Pihlaja(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Secondly, ‘exploitation colonies’, e.g. in India, typically constituted a later stage which grew out of trading activities, when the colonizing nation attained some sort of political authority, and her representatives stayed there for extended periods of time (some for good). In line with Britain’s distanced attitudes and ‘indirect rule’ policy, their lifestyles often remained fairly segregated from the indigenous populations, and power structures were stratified. It is noteworthy that not only standard English was transported to the colonies, since many of the agents coming from the mother country were speakers of nonstandard dialects, so informal speech contributed significantly to local linguistic ecologies. Local elites and leaders participated in the exertion of political power in the interests of the colonizers, and were granted access to English, predominantly in scholastic contexts. The adoption and appropriation of English by these locals, and the further dissemination of second-language acquisition in the course of time, have ultimately produced the nativized varieties of ‘New Englishes’ which we find today, e.g. in Singapore, Malaysia, Kenya and Ghana. Thirdly, there are the ‘settlement colonies’ to which larger numbers of British emigrants moved, taking their language and dialects along. In these colonies, in North America, Australasia, parts of South Africa, and elsewhere, European settlers soon constituted a majority and interacted primarily amongst themselves, so language contact with indigenous speakers and its effects remained restricted largely to lexical borrowings, constrained by the demographic disproportions. Finally, some colonies saw an extensive need for manual agricultural labour, for example for sugar production in the Caribbean, and met this need by the importation of immigrant labourers, as slaves or indentured servants

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  Postcolonialism

  An Historical Introduction

  • Robert J. C. Young(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Colonization, as Europeans originally used the term, signified not the rule over indigenous peoples, or the extraction of their wealth, but primarily the transfer of communities who sought to maintain their allegiance to their own original culture, while seeking a better life in economic, religious or political terms – very similar to the situation of migrants today. Colonization in this sense comprised people whose primary aim was to settle elsewhere rather than to rule others. Though in most cases it also involved the latter, this was a by‐product of the former, the result of the land being already populated, though usually not ‘settled’ in the European sense. In Locke’s influential formulation, those who did not cultivate the land had no rights to it; in 1849 Roebuck still confidently defined a colony as a land without indigenous people whose inhabitants looked to England as the mother country (Roebuck 1849). Later colonizers sought to retain a distinction between the colonizers and natives, rather than integrate with the local population as generally occurred with earlier migrations or with the early colonization of Portuguese and some Spanish America, in which colonization developed into a mixed, creole society. In other cases, Spanish and Anglo–Saxon colonizers of America and Australasia by contrast preferred to try to exterminate the indigenous people rather than rule them, and this attitude was continued after independence, for example in the USA and Argentina. Natives, if not exterminated, were moved out of the land which they had previously occupied, a process that also occurred in settlement colonies in Africa, such as Algeria, Kenya, Rhodesia and South Africa. The appropriation of land and space meant that colonialism was therefore, as Said has emphasized, fundamentally an act of geographical violence, a geographical violence employed against indigenous peoples and their land rights (Said 1993: 1–15). At the same time, where plantations required labour and the indigenous natives were found unsuitable, others (largely from West Africa, India and China) were brought in as slaves or indentured labourers who were allowed almost no rights, whose forms of social and political organization were removed, and who were therefore comparatively easy to control and to keep separate.

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  Changing English

  • David Graddol, Dick Leith, Joan Swann, Martin Rhys, Julia Gillen, David Graddol, Dick Leith, Joan Swann, Martin Rhys, Julia Gillen(Authors)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  New British colonies were established in Africa after 1880. Between that date and the end of the century virtually the entire continent was seized and shared out among the European powers. In West Africa, however, there was no substantial settlement by people from the British Isles. Instead, the new colonies were administered by a small number of British officials. The population remained overwhelmingly African, with a small number receiving education in English from missionaries, and a larger number using English-based pidgins in addition to the languages they already spoke. During the nineteenth century, Britain came to see the role of colonies such as those in Africa as that of producing raw materials, while Britain remained the source of manufacturing. The precolonial populations were not given any rights as far as the vote and compulsory education were concerned, despite the fact that these had been granted to the working class in Britain. These economic and political arrangements were justified by appealing to contemporary theories of racial difference. The precolonial populations were classified as dark-skinned, and considered to be at a lower stage of cultural and intellectual development than white Europeans. Colonial service could therefore be conceived as a duty and as a way of demonstrating 'manliness', a key aspect of nineteenth century Englishness.

  The system described above is often referred to by the word colonialism . First used in the nineteenth century, it reflects changes in the relationship between Britain and its colonies as they were incorporated into what was called the British empire. The term is more loaded than 'colonisation', partly because it has been used most frequently by those who were opposed to it, on the grounds that it amounted to exploitation of the weak by the powerful. In one respect, it names the process from the point of view of the less powerful, and has often been used pejoratively. In fact, the Oxford English Dictionary

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  Britain and the American Revolution

  • H. T. Dickinson(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  JBS 25 (1986), pp. 467—99. The term 'Anglicization' originally comes from John M. Murrin, 'Anglicizing an American colony: the transformation of provincial Massachusetts', unpub. PhD diss. (Yale University, 1966).

  These bonds could not bind the colonies to Britain under all circumstances, however. The settlers' attachment to the metropolis, though strong, was hedged with conditions. Essentially Britain was not to violate the informal and, of course, unwritten colonial 'constitution'. Its most obvious and explicit element was the desire that the imperial government should not undermine the integrity of the elected lower houses of assembly and other institutions and symbols of self-government. Another was that the colonists would enjoy a degree of economic independence commensurate with the free pursuit of their own interests. Finally, the metropolitan authorities were not to undermine their personal autonomy by taking steps that would reduce them to virtual slavery. Other conditions also fed into the equation. The colonists wanted Britain to act as a virtuous yardstick by which they could measure their own achievements and they expected continued protection and encouragement.

  This cluster of settler expectations sat uneasily alongside the metropolitan authorities' conception of the imperial-colonial relationship. The gulf between them was, in Greene's words, the 'essential precondition that gave the British Empire a latent potential for revolution through the middle decades of the eighteenth century'.31 Still, these discrepancies required clearer definition and exploration before they actually became capable of causing the empire's disintegration. What began this process was the British authorities' decision to abandon the policy of accommodation characteristic of the era of 'salutary neglect' and bring the colonies under tighter control. This decision was taken, not suddenly in 1763, and not even in 1759, as Bernard Knollenberg has argued,32 but gradually in the decade beginning in 1748 as Greene has shown.33

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  Colonial and Revolutionary America

  • Alan Gallay(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  As England more actively engaged in overseas enterprise, so, too, did the Dutch and French. The 17th century witnessed the rise of the Dutch as one of the world’s great trading powers, particularly in Asia where they effectively competed against the Portuguese. France, preoccupied with affairs at home and in Europe, tentatively colonized in Canada (and the Dutch moved into New York) as the English settled at Jamestown. Both France and England soon turned their attention to other locales in North America, but also to the islands of the West Indies, where they could establish plantations to produce the most important New World crop of the 17th and 18th centuries: sugar. If the story of European overseas expansion in the 16th century was largely a story of Spain and Portugal, the 17th century saw the rise of the Dutch and English. The Protestant powers would not occupy the large expanses of territory that the Spanish did in the Americas (and Spain continued to extend its dominion in the 17th century), but the Dutch and English greatly expanded their commercial and manufacturing capabilities to make profits not only from their own colonies but also from the colonies of other European powers. Of course, none of this could be foreseen in 1622 when Jamestown seemed to be falling apart at the seams. English Colonization in the Americas was inconsiderable compared to Spain and Portugal. Yet the Jamestown colony was very important. The success of tobacco meant that the English could build profitable colonies without the land possessing precious metals. The prospect of free land proved incredibly attractive to English of all classes—the dispossessed and landless poor, the middle-class families, and the well-born hoping to increase their wealth and prospects. The English promotion of colonization as a way to rid the mother country of undesirables—political and religious dissidents, orphans, and criminals became a boon to the nation. In conjunction with relatively open emigration policies that permitted and promoted migration of non-English Europeans, the English colonies in North America rapidly increased their population, which provided them strength against hostile forces and a strong foundation for future development.

  DOCUMENTS

  3.1 Richard Hakluyt on the Usefulness of Colonies to Solve Employment Problems in England

  Richard Hakluyt’s “Discourse of Western Planting” was designed to rally support, political and financial, for Walter Ralegh’s Roanoke colony. The following short excerpt discusses one of the key aspects for English Colonization—to provide employment for poor Englishmen who otherwise would become a social problem in the mother country. The use of colonies as a solution to England’s social and economic problems remained a driving force through the centuries. Compare this document with the Parliamentary law of 1718 reproduced in chapter six

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  An Economic History of Europe

  • Antonio Di Vittorio(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The position of the Dutch on the Asian continent was weakened only in the following century; perhaps the English could not outdo them there, but in northern America things were very different. In 1610 tobacco cultivation was started in Virginia, which almost immediately became the main supplier of this important product for the mother country. Because of the success of the American plantations, no fewer than 80,000 English people reached the shores of the New World between 1620 and 1640. They were attracted by the enormous potential of this land, which produced not only tobacco and sugar, but also cotton, which was becoming increasingly important to the English economy. English colonialism in northern America was different from both Spanish and Dutch colonialism. The colonization of northern America was organized by the Virginia Company, which brought mainly farmers and traders overseas, and the transportation of the goods produced in the new colonies was what ultimately became the real cause of conflict with the other continental powers. However, the English monopoly of this trade was never seriously called into question, and it was one of the main strengths of the British economy.

  The English came up against greater difficulties and opposition when they tried to penetrate central and south America. Nevertheless they achieved important successes, especially in the Caribbean, where they occupied the Bermudas, Barbados and Jamaica. Smugglers operating with Spanish America, as well as privateers, used these places as their starting out bases, and smuggling and piracy became two very important items in the English economy. On the Atlantic, the English navy also succeeded in gaining the lead position in the sugar and slave trades, which of all the trades were the two most lucrative. In 1631 the first colony was founded in Africa. This was in Gambia, which acted as a departure point for the slaves being sent to the sugar plantations in the Caribbean and south America. London consequently became the ‘managing centre’ of an extensive trade network, and like Amsterdam the English capital specialized in the re-export trade. Tropical products from the colonies were exchanged in England for large quantities of economically important European goods such as iron, hemp, silk and wine. The population of London grew at a spectacular rate, and in the space of a century it tripled, rising from 200,000 inhabitants in 1600 to 600,000 in 1700.

  However, underlying English economic growth was also considerable progress in agriculture. One of the first important moves was to increase the surface area given over to cultivation. This process had begun in the second half of the sixteenth century, but went through a period of stagnation in the first decades of the seventeenth century owing to the population crisis. It steadily picked up again after 1630–1631 as the growing urban population brought about an increased and diversified demand for agricultural products. The more widespread use of fertilizers such as marl and ashes made it possible to develop the cultivation for the market of vegetables such as turnips, cabbages, cauliflowers and peas; potatoes were yet to become fully established. The gradual reduction of common land meant there could be further developments in producing for the market, and this question will be discussed in the following pages.

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  Colonial America

  • Jerome R Reich(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The word “plantation” to denote a settlement was first used in 1588 but it referred to Ireland, not America. Some have claimed that Ireland was a testing ground for American colonization, but immigration to both areas went on simultaneously and the distance, economic development, and political structures of the American colonies were very different from those of Ireland. They did share one problem, however: The English treated the native Irish almost as badly as they did Native Americans.

  The Beginnings of English Colonization

  The forerunner of active governmental support of colonization was the tacit approval given by the English government after 1560 to the depredations of the “Sea Dogs” John Hawkins, Francis Drake, and Richard Grenville against Spanish treasure ships. The fact that Queen Elizabeth responded to Spain’s demand that Drake be punished for plundering £600,000 worth of treasure from Spanish ships and towns by honoring him with a knighthood indicated clearly that England was readying itself to make a serious challenge of Spain’s (and France’s) domination of the New World.

  Obviously, this challenge was more likely to succeed in North America, where practically no Spanish colonization had yet taken place and where Cabot’s explorations had given England a valid claim. As Richard Hakluyt advised in his “A Discourse concerning Western Planting” (1584), the time was long overdue when England must settle “those lands which of equity and right appertain unto us.” Hakluyt’s advice was accepted by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, an English country gentleman, soldier and veteran of a failed colonization attempt in Ireland. Gilbert had two main goals in mind. One was to find a northwest passage to Asia. The other was to plant English colonies in North America which would serve as a source of raw materials for England, as a refuge for religious dissenters and the destitute, and as bases for attacks on the Spanish empire in America.

  In 1578 Gilbert received a charter from Queen Elizabeth which allowed him six years to form a colony or colonies in North America. Toward the end of the year, he set out with seven ships and about 400 men, but storms and an encounter with Spanish ships forced him to return to England. Gilbert spent the next several years raising money for a second expedition. Finally, in 1583 he reached Newfoundland with five ships and about 250 men. Gilbert claimed the territory for England, but the settlers refused to remain there, and on the voyage back to England, Gilbert was lost at sea.

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  English in the World

  History, Diversity, Change

  • Philip Seargeant, Joan Swann(Authors)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Pennycook suggests that in many colonies the desire to mould a compliant and docile population was best served by education in local languages, with English being reserved for the instruction of a small elite who would mostly fulfil key administrative roles for the governing of the colony. English was not seen as something for the masses – and indeed, in many quarters it was considered dangerous for the population at large to have access to it. At the same time, however, English was promoted in colonial language policies as a ‘superior language’, and one which embodied the civilised values of the colonising power.

  But the influence of the colonial period on English language practices did not flow in only one direction. Pennycook goes on to suggest that the discipline of ELT as it is practised today owes a great deal to the developments that occurred in colonial contexts. In other words, just as the English that is spoken in former colonies had and continues to have a profound influence on that spoken in the UK today (an issue we will return to in Chapter 5 ), so the language teaching practices that were developed in colonial times have also had an important influence on the practice and theories of the English language teaching industry.

  3.7 Conclusion

  In this chapter we have examined the spread of English from England, first to other parts of the British Isles and then to other areas of the world. The processes of colonisation, political incorporation and nationalist reaction suggest that these take different forms in different contexts and have different linguistic consequences. The varieties of English in all the case studies we have looked at have been shaped by contact: contact with other languages, other cultures and different political scenarios; as well as contact between different varieties of English used by settlers. And within the broad context of English as it exists in the world today, the ways it developed beyond England in the colonial period have had great import for its rise to its current global position, and for the diversity that it now exhibits. Ishtla Singh (2005) traces one motivating aspect for the diversity of English worldwide to an interesting paradox about language usage that dates from the beginning of the colonial period:

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