Language and Salvation in the Empire

Abstract

This chapter explores the East India Company's (VOC) language policy, the translation of religious texts by predikanten and native linguists, and the conflicts over culture and communication that ensued. It illustrates the marks the Dutch left in the linguistic fields of the early modern world that were vernacular footprints put down by ministers and native linguists. As a language of empire and missions, Dutch never really got off the ground in any VOC or West India Company (WIC) holdings, except at the Cape of Good Hope in the late eighteenth century. The chapter mentions the Afrikaans in Drakenstein, and Stellenbosch, who began to emerge as a distinct language from the pidgin Dutch spoken among a growing population of European settlers. The territories of the Dutch empire in the period of company rule were kept deliberately small, spatially diffuse, and sparsely populated with Dutch settlers.