ABSTRACT
One consequence of the rise of British power outside Europe was increasing use of English (and English-based pidgin) as a lingua franca even outside territories under British or US control. Even in the mid-eighteenth century there is evidence of a shift from Dutch and Portuguese towards English (and French). For example, Denmark had a colony in the West Indies (since 1917 the American Virgin Islands). Its official language was never Danish, but until 1748 it was Dutch, and thereafter it was English (Liebst 1996). On the other hand, English did not have the self-evident status it occupies now. When Stamford Raffles, the British commander in South East Asia around 1800, wrote to local kings and princes he naturally did so in their languages: Javanese, Malay and so on. However, as world shipping came to be dominated by Britain in the nineteenth century, English became the lingua franca of traders and sailors all over the world outside Europe, and pidgin Englishes sprang from their interaction with local people. As the nineteenth century ran on, American traders and imperial expansion increased the presence of English in world trade. Scandinavian and German missionaries in Asia and Africa often used English as a lingua franca before they had learnt local languages.
