Languages and Culture in History
About the Book Series
Co-founding editor: Willem Frijhoff, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands †
The series studies the role foreign languages have played in the creation of linguistic and cultural heritage, at the individual, communal, national and transnational level.
At the heart of this series is the historical evolution of linguistic and cultural policies, internal as well as external, and their relationship with linguistic and cultural identities.
The series takes an interdisciplinary approach to a variety of historical issues: the diffusion, the supply and the demand for foreign languages, the history of pedagogical practices, the historical relationship between languages in a given cultural context, the public and private use of foreign languages – in short, every way foreign languages intersect with local languages in the cultural realm.
Editorial Board: Alice Burrows, University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, Federico Gobbo, University of Amsterdam, Gerda Hassler, University of Potsdam, Aurélie Joubert, University of Groningen, Douglas A. Kibbee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Marie-Christine Kok Escalle, Utrecht University, Joep Leerssen, University of Amsterdam, Nicola McLelland, The University of Nottingham, Despina Provata, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Vladislav Rjéoutski, German Historical Institute, Paris, Valérie Spaëth, University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, Javier Suso López, University of Granada, Pierre Swiggers, KU Leuven
To submit proposals, please contact the Editor at Routledge, Dorothea Schaefter ([email protected]).
Rethinking the Mother Tongue in Contemporary Italy: From Gramsci to Postcolonial Literature
1st Edition
By Saskia Kroonenberg
August 05, 2026
Taking Italy’s linguistic landscape as an example of how a national language is multiple in and of itself, Rethinking the Mother Tongue in Contemporary Italy: From Gramsci to Postcolonial Literature offers an innovative postcolonial, non-monolingual approach to the notion of the mother tongue. ...
Colonial Vocabularies: Teaching and Learning Arabic, 1870-1970
1st Edition
Edited
By Sarah Irving, Karène Sanchez Summerer, Rachel Mairs, Lucia Admiraal
June 10, 2026
Language teaching and learning were crucial to Europeans’ colonial, national, and individual enterprises in the Levant, and in these processes, “Oriental language teachers” – as they were termed prior to the Second World War – were fundamental. European state nationalisms influenced and ...
The Early Modern Production of Missionary Books on Indigenous Languages in New Spain and Peru
1st Edition
By Zanna Van Loon
June 10, 2026
How do the social, material, and spatial processes underlying the making of early modern missionary grammars, vocabularies, and devotional translations deepen our understanding of their contents? The handwritten and printed missionary books produced in the Spanish viceroyalties of New Spain and ...
Languages of Diplomacy in the Early Modern World: Europe and the USA
1st Edition
Edited
By Gleb Kazakov, Vladislav Rjéoutski
May 13, 2026
This book outlines major trends in language use by early modern diplomats, mainly in the European context, through a series of case studies and overviews of regional diplomatic traditions. During the early modern period, linguistic practices in European diplomacy changed drastically, as the decline...
Women in the History of Language Learning and Teaching: Hidden Pioneers of Practice from Europe and Beyond (1400-2000)
1st Edition
Edited
By Sabine Doff, Giovanni Iamartino, Rachel Mairs
December 02, 2025
This volume addresses the historical neglect of women’s contributions to language learning and teaching. While the historiography of language education has often focused on male-dominated frameworks, overlooking the pivotal roles women have played, the case studies in this book highlight female ...
French as Language of Intimacy in the Modern Age: Le français, langue de l'intime à l'époque moderne et contemporaine
1st Edition
Edited
By Madeleine van Strien-Chardonneau, Marie-Christine Kok Escalle
December 01, 2025
For centuries, French was the language of international commercial and diplomatic relations, a near-dominant language in literature and poetry, and was widely used in teaching. It even became the fashionable language of choice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries for upper class Dutch, ...
Language Choice in Enlightenment Europe: Education, Sociability, and Governance
1st Edition
Edited
By Vladislav Rjéoutski, Willem Frijhoff
December 01, 2025
This multinational collection of essays challenges the traditional image of a monolingual Ancient Regime in Enlightenment Europe, both East and West. Its archival research explores the important role played by selective language use in social life and in the educational provisions in the early ...
Language Learning and Teaching in Missionary and Colonial Contexts: L'apprentissage et l'enseignement des langues en contextes missionnaire et colonial
1st Edition
Edited
By Dan Savatovsky, Mariangela Albano, Thi Kieu Ly Pham, Valérie Spaëth
December 01, 2025
This volume assembles texts dedicated to the linguistic and educational aspects of missionary and colonial enterprises, taking into account all continents and with an extended diachronic perspective (15th–20th centuries). Strictly speaking, this “linguistics” is contemporary to the colonial era, so...
Language, Literature and the Construction of a Dutch National Identity (1780-1830)
1st Edition
Edited
By Rick Honings, Ton van Kalmthout, Gijsbert Rutten
December 01, 2025
In exploring the birth of a Dutch identity between 1780 and 1830, this book integrates nationalism studies with literary and linguistic history by highlighting scholarly study of the Dutch language as a factor in the creation of the national identity. These early scholars promoted the Dutch ...
Languages, Identities and Cultural Transfers: Modern Greeks in the European Press (1850-1900)
1st Edition
Edited
By Georgia Gotsi, Despina Provata
December 01, 2025
What was the perception of Greece in Europe during the later nineteenth century, when the attraction of romantic philhellenism had waned? This volume focuses on the reception of medieval and modern Greece in the European press, rigorously analysing journals and newspapers published in England, ...
Linguistic and Cultural Foreign Policies of European States: 18th-20th Centuries
1st Edition
Edited
By Karène Sanchez Summerer, Willem Frijhoff
December 01, 2025
The policies relating to language pursued by European monarchies and states have been widely studied, but far less attention has been given to their linguistic and cultural policies in territories outside their own borders. This volume takes an interdisciplinary approach to filling that gap, ...
Multilingualism, Nationhood, and Cultural Identity: Northern Europe, 16th-19th Centuries
1st Edition
Edited
By Willem Frijhoff, Marie-Christine Kok Escalle, Karène Sanchez Summerer
December 01, 2025
Before the modern nation-state became a stable, widespread phenomenon throughout northern Europe, multilingualism-the use of multiple languages in one geographical area-was common throughout the region. This book brings together historians and linguists, who apply their respective analytic tools to...