On the East India Company vocabulary of St Helena in the late 17th and early 18th century

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article considers vocabulary occurring in the St Helena Consultations, which record court proceedings from St Helena, South Atlantic, from the late 1600s onwards, administrated by the British East India Company. As the island was settled ab initio by East India Company settlers, soldiers and their slaves, the input languages are, to some extent, recoverable. The purpose of the East India Company was trade, resulting in much of the vocabulary recorded in the early years being to do with global commerce. Along with settler's idiolectal Englishes, administrative practices developed elsewhere in the East India Company's domain transferred non‐English vocabulary to St Helena, resulting in an early world English lexicon.