Macaulay and English in India

This book traces how the English language emerged from the nineteenth century as not only an imperial and bureaucratic language but also as a global one.

Michael Hancher is Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota. He has published research about Victorian writers and artists (R. Browning, Macaulay, Dickens, Carroll, Tenniel, Hunt, Millais); about intention and interpretation, speech-act theory, pragmatics, and the law; and about the history and rationale of pictorial illustration in dictionaries. Recent publications include The Tenniel Illustrations to the "Alice" Books (2nd ed., 2019); "Seeing and Tagging Things in Pictures" (2021); and "Illustrations in Dictionaries" (2024).

Figures viii Preface and Acknowledgments ix 1 After Latin: Seeking a universal language 1 2 1813, 1833 14 3 Texts and contexts of "Government of India" 25 4 Constructing Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education 59 5 Apocrypha 83 6 Macaulay's Minute on Indian Education, annotated 85 7 Bentinck's Resolution and vernacular education 112 8 Reading and writing the law 122 9 "Downward filtration" 145 10 College English in India: The first textbook 156 11 Examining English 181 12 The first competition wallahs 203 13 Macaulay and meritocracy 226 14 Global language 271 Works cited (except most newspapers) 279 Index 312