The Seven Years War and English as the Lingua Franca
When I was working at the European Space Agency the working language is English. This made sense as English is taught in every European country and is the international language of commerce. In addition most articles in technical journals are in English and most of the communications in the Agency is naturally about science and technology. As the Agency is headquartered in Paris the French had other ideas. After much discourse they succeeded in mandating French as one of the two languages for the Agency. Despite my studies in French and my affinity for it I still thought it was an asinine move. Overnight we incurred huge costs just to translate all documents back and forth. The other two member countries who have French as official languages — Belgium and Switzerland — even opposed this move. The superiority complex of the French speakers can be found in many places. Canadians are required to learn it and include French translations in all documents from the government despite having only one province which speaks it. But few of us realize that French did come very close to be the international language.
The status of English as the international language is largely due to two factors: The extent of the British Empire which covered a quarter of the globe from the 18th till the 20th century; and America’s role as a superpower and its dominance in commerce, media and entertainment. We do know that the British Empire began its expansion just when the Dutch, the Portuguese and the Spanish began to weaken in early 19th century. But few textbooks emphasize the significance of the Seven Years War fought between the British and the French. The term Seven Years War is a bit misleading as it extended beyond the core 7 years of 1756–1763. It was also a global conflict as the two sides fought in North America, the Caribbean, West Africa and India. Of course there were battles across the Channel as well. The year 1759 was consequential for the British in America. They fought the French in Louisiana (which actually included modern-day states such as Kansas, Illinois etc). In the Plains of Abraham the British defeated General Montcalm and took Québec (which is why it is reluctantly a province of Canada). Had the French won they may have prevented the American revolution. Instead they played a supporting role in helping George Washington defeat the red coats and allowed the thirteen colonies to declare independence.
In India the French first took the city known today as Pondicherry and had eyes on the entire Indian subcontinent. Unfortunately they lost crucial battles in Europe and had to cede India to Britain. It is important to point out that the British Empire in India at that time encompassed today’s Pakistan, parts of Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar and India, five large regions in a subcontinent. From the 18th century onwards English became the language of the civil service and commerce for British India.
In the Caribbean the French and then the Spanish lost to the might of the British Navy. This included Florida (which joined the U.S.) and Belize (which was British Honduras). The French fared slightly better in West Africa but still lost parts of Cameroon (which has an English region eager to secede) and Senegal (where the narrow strip of land became the Gambia). The Seven Years War was about colonial expansion and the British prevailed. Naturally English became the language of administration everywhere from Jamaica to Malaya. It would have been so different if the French prevailed. The irony is that the monarch ruling England at the time was from Hanover in Germany. Both George I and George II were Germans who spoke English with heavy accents. It was only after George II died in 1760 did the first native English speaker George III ascend to the throne. Another point to note was that George III was also the first to care about running the empire. His great-grandfather and grandfather were more concerned about dining and hunting. George III’s father Frederick died young and very little was known about him. Despite losing the American colonies the British Empire reached its peak with footprints in every corner of the Earth. The English language was then spread to all the colonies as the French suffered. With the storming of the Bastille and the execution of the monarch France went into political and economic decline which further undermined its position to influence world politics or for that matter, the world language. The Académie Française, the institution which is the authority for the French language and the promoter was underfunded during those years.
The other irony was that the French assistance rendered to the colonies helped created the United States, the superpower. With the ascent of the U.S. the role of the French language further diminished. The formation of Canada and despite incorporating French-speaking Québec further strengthened the status of the English language.
Despite attempts such as Esperanto to be the international language, English will remain as the international lingua franca for the foreseeable future. It is probably unexpected 300 years ago how one war would have a butterfly effect on the spread of the language.
