Language and colonial power : the appropriation of Swahili in the former Belgian Congo, 1880-1938

Among the preconditions for establishing colonial authority was communication with the colonised. Verbal exchanges depended on a shared communicative praxis providing common ground on which unilateral claims could be imposed. Use of, and control over, verbal means of communication were needed to maintain regimes - military, religious-ideological, economic - in power. In the Belgian Congo brutal physical force never ceased to be exercised. In this study Professor Fabian examines the more subtle uses of power through controls on communication, by looking at the history of Swahili as it spread from the East Coast to Central Africa and demonstrating connections between -changing forms of colonial power and the development of policies towards Swahili. Using a wide range of sources, including numerous and sometimes obscure vocabularies, he combines concepts derived from literary theory and sociolinguistics to uncover, through the flaws and failures of these texts, deep-seated attitudes to language and communication. Cover......Page 1 Title......Page 3 Contents......Page 5 Foreword......Page 7 Acknowledgements......Page 8 A ntoe on names and orthography......Page 9 Introduction......Page 11 1. Prelude: expeditions and campaigns......Page 23 Polyglotta Africana......Page 25 Swahili guides for the road......Page 29 On the road: language and travel......Page 34 End of the road......Page 43 2. Questions and queries......Page 52 A question of law and rights: language and the Colonial Charter......Page 54 A question of facts: language in an early government survey......Page 59 Responses from businessmen and administrators......Page 63 Responses from missionaries and educators......Page 68 A question of power: warnings from Katanga......Page 73 Some general conclusions......Page 75 3. Settling in: colonization and language......Page 80 Missions, education and the oeuvre civilisatrice......Page 81 Missionary linguistics......Page 85 Religious and secular colonization: common ground......Page 88 Language guides and teaching aids......Page 94 Colonial language training in Belgium......Page 98 Labor in Katanga: a complicated story......Page 102 Swahili as a symbol of 'reorientation': consolidation of Belgian rule in Katanga......Page 110 Swahili as a work-language: some structural detenninants......Page 116 Missionaries teaching colonists......Page 122 Colonists teaching colonists: a guide for farmers in Katanga......Page 124 The most common words in Katanga: a curious early manual......Page 134 Conclusion: no missing link......Page 143 6. The end: illusions of colonial power......Page 145 Swahili and symbolic power......Page 146 Codified Swahili in the eastern Congo: an inventory 1918-38......Page 152 'Improved Swahili': Union Miniere and A. Verbeken......Page 158 A voice not heard: A. Mclignon and the 'rehabilitation' of Swahili in Katanga......Page 167 Notes......Page 173 Bibliography......Page 198 Index......Page 211 "..a work of very high scholarship and of a particularly valuable cultural critique...Fabian shows that European scholars, missionaries, soldiers, travellers, and administrators in Central Africa during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century used Swahili as a mode of extending their domination over African territories and people. The language was first studied and characterized, then streamlined for use among laboring people, then regulated as such fields as education and finance were also regulated. Any student of what has been called Africanist discourse, or of imperialism will find Language and Colonial Power an invaluable and path-breaking work (from Foreword) In this study, inquiry will be directed to the past, and it will, for many reasons, have to reach into a past which is rather remote from present-day Shaba Swahili. The author's principal concern remains with a contemporary situation, namely the role of Swahili in the context of work, industrial, artisanal, and artistic. When it was first formulated, the aim of my project was to describe what might be called the workers' culture of Shaba, through analyses of communicative (sociolinguistic) and cognitive (ethnosemantic) aspects of language use. Describes what might be called the workers' culture of Shaba, through analyses of communicative (sociolinguistic) and cognitive (ethnosemantic) aspects of language use. In this study, inquiry will be directed to the past, and it will, for many reasons, have to reach into a past which is rather remote from present-day Shaba Swahili.