A Language for the World
The Standardization of Swahili

“Morgan Robinson’s A Language for the World is original, thoroughly researched, and accessible. Robinson complicates our understanding of the development of Swahili, using fascinating microhistories of diverse actors drawn from extensive archival research to challenge longstanding assumptions. This profoundly innovative book is essential reading for anyone interested in the history, languages, and cultures of East Africa.”

Matthew S. Hopper, author of Slaves of One Master: Globalization and Slavery in Arabia in the Age of Empire

“This wonderful book offers a new and original account of the history of Standard Swahili. Drawing on rich archival research and a close reading of Swahili-language texts such as the magazine Msimulizi and the publications of the East African Literature Bureau, Morgan Robinson argues that the development of Standard Swahili from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century should be understood as the outcome of multiple and competing projects united by a shared goal of communication. This book is an important contribution to histories of the Swahili language and to the intellectual and cultural history of East Africa more broadly.”

Emma Hunter, author of Political Thought and the Public Sphere in Tanzania: Freedom, Democracy and Citizenship in the Era of Decolonization

“Morgan Robinson’s history of the standardization of Swahili is not your standard history. Her skill in showing the level of influence that African interlocutors wielded, as well as their affective investment, in interpreting, defining, and shaping this African lingua franca throughout the colonial period and beyond is an achievement. Robinson’s novel approach embraces the amorphous nature of this linguistic development, yet guides the reader comfortably through its neither-here-nor-there process while remaining clear and coherent. This is an enlightening read.”

Steven Fabian, author of Making Identity on the Swahili Coast: Urban Life, Community, and Belonging in Bagamoyo

This intellectual history of Standard Swahili explores the long-term, intertwined processes of standard making and community creation in the historical, political, and cultural contexts of East Africa and beyond.

Morgan J. Robinson argues that the portability of Standard Swahili has contributed to its wide use not only across the African continent but also around the globe. The book pivots on the question of whether standardized versions of African languages have empowered or oppressed. It is inevitable that the selection and promotion of one version of a language as standard—a move typically associated with missionaries and colonial regimes—negatively affected those whose language was suddenly deemed nonstandard. Before reconciling the consequences of codification, however, Robinson argues that one must seek to understand the process itself. The history of Standard Swahili demonstrates how events, people, and ideas move rapidly and sometimes surprisingly between linguistic, political, social, or temporal categories.

Robinson conducted her research in Zanzibar, mainland Tanzania, and the United Kingdom. Organized around periods of conversation, translation, and codification from 1864 to 1964, the book focuses on the intellectual history of Swahili’s standardization. The story begins in mid-nineteenth-century Zanzibar, home of missionaries, formerly enslaved students, and a printing press, and concludes on the mainland in the mid-twentieth century, as nationalist movements added Standard Swahili to their anticolonial and nation-building toolkits. This outcome was not predetermined, however, and Robinson offers a new context for the strong emotions that the language continues to evoke in East Africa.

The history of Standard Swahili is not one story, but rather the connected stories of multiple communities contributing to the production of knowledge. The book reflects this multiplicity by including the narratives of colonial officials and anticolonial nationalists; East African clerks, students, newspaper editors, editorialists, and their readers; and library patrons, academic linguists, formerly enslaved children, and missionary preachers. The book reconstructs these stories on their own terms and reintegrates them into a new composite that demonstrates the central place of language in the history of East Africa and beyond.

Morgan J. Robinson is an assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University and a 2021–2022 recipient of a postdoctoral Humboldt Research Fellowship at the Institute for Asian and African Studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Her research and publishing interests include East Africa, language, standardization, time, creativity, and learning.   More info →