ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the political economy of global English from 1850 to the outbreak of World War I. The main theme is the extraordinary scale and reach of British capital expansion and colonial acquisition, which had inevitable consequences for the global dispersion of English. The discussion includes accounts of capital expansion and what is referred to as the structuration of English in diverse regions of the world, including Japan, Latin America, India, China and Africa. The chapter considers the port of Shanghai as an exemplar of this kind of structuration process, which was widely replicated elsewhere. There is a specific focus on India as the ‘hinge’ of Britain’s world-economy and also as a resource, in labour and in soldiery, for the vehicular projection of English across the world. The chapter then turns its attention to the expansion of English in Africa and to railway imperialism and the global transportation of English by this means. The chapter concludes with a particular focus on the structuring of English in China as driven by railway development loans and the centrality of Britain to this process.
