Abstract
This chapter analyzes language education in Anglo-French relations in Africa from the late-colonial era to the 1960s. First, I posit “linguistic containment”—the desire to contain the spread of Western languages—as a shared objective of interwar British and French policymakers, who wished to forestall political mobilizations by educated colonial subjects. Contact and collaboration helped to produce this intercolonial convergence. Second, I discuss growing British and French interest after 1945 in promoting English and French, respectively, in Africa. While support for Western-language education was initially a means of reforming colonial education, it was reinforced by decolonization, which spurred metropolitan elites to pursue new cultural and economic ties to their former colonies. Finally, the chapter discusses how this turn generated competition between the ex-colonial powers, with Britain riding the wave, only partly of its own making, of global English, while France looked to la francophonie to counterbalance Anglo-American influence in the decolonizing world.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | British and French Colonialism in Africa, Asia and the Middle East: Connected Empires across the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Centuries |
Editors | James R. FICHTER |
Place of Publication | Basingstoke |
Publisher | Palgrave Macmillan |
Chapter | 13 |
Pages | 297-321 |
Number of pages | 25 |
ISBN (Print) | 9783319979632, 9783319979649 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Aug 2019 |
Publication series
Name | Cambridge Imperial and Post-Colonial Studies |
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Volume | Part F159 |
ISSN (Print) | 2635-1633 |
ISSN (Electronic) | 2635-1641 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2019, The Author(s).