Slavery, indentured work, and language

This chapter deals with the slave trade and its consequences for language maintenance and new language formation. It examines slavery in the light of migration and summarizes current linguistic thinking about the origins and development of pidgins and creoles. The chapter surveys the semi-forced movements of indentured laborers from South Asia into European colonies in different parts of the world, often into the very terrains from which slaves had been freed in the early 19th century. It focuses on the linguistic outcomes of two high-profile forced and semi-forced labor migration patterns. Migrations under the British system of indenture to new colonies took place in very large numbers out of the British “presidencies” of the time between the 1830s and 1940s. The chapter concludes with a reflection on lessons for applied linguistic research and practice.