How English Became the Global Language

by Northrup, David

• ISBN13: 9781137303059
• ISBN10: 1137303050
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2013-03-20
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

While there have been many books on the history of globalization to date, most have stressed economics and politics. Cultural globalization, of which the emergence of English as the world's first global language is a prime example, has been comparatively neglected. In this book, the first written about the globalization of the English language by a professional historian, the exploration of English's global ascendancy receives its proper historical due. Historians have traditionally left the history of language to linguists and other language specialists, and this brief, accessible volume breaks new ground in its organization, emphasis on causation, and conclusions.

Author Biography

David Northrup was a professor of history at Boston College for four decades and has published widely in African, Atlantic, and world history. He is the co-author of The Diary of Antera Duke: An Eighteenth-Century African Slave Trader (2010), author of Africa's Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850, Third Edition (2013), The Atlantic Slave Trade, Third Edition (2011), and Crosscurrents in the Black Atlantic, 1770-1965 (2007), and a contributor to the Oxford Handbook on the Atlantic World, c. 1450-1820 (2009) and the Oxford History of the British Empire (1988, 2004). He is past president of the World History Association.

Table of Contents

to come