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Postcards, Translators and Esperanto Pioneers
Claire Taylor and Guilherme Moreira Fians
2025
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The early twentieth century was a time when steamships, international postal services and the telephone were setting the pace of an early wave of globalisation in Europe. In this increasingly international scenario, what role did language play? To address the geopolitical problem of cross-border linguistic (mis)understanding, international auxiliary languages like Esperanto were created. But what happened to a constructed language when it travelled to different places? This book tackles these questions by exploring the letters, postcards and activities of John Beveridge (1857–1943) and his family. This Scottish clergyman was a proficient Esperanto speaker, translator and co-founder of several Esperanto organisations. His long-standing engagement with the language left a unique archive that reveals how many Esperanto speakers exchanged letters across borders, produced literature for an international readership, organised congresses and used this language as an entry point into modernity and globalisation from their ‘marginal’ positions in the world. By tracing this language-based form of grassroots internationalism, the book uncovers wide-reaching networks connecting a corner of Scotland with rural settings and villages in Finland, Bulgaria and Brazil. Ultimately, it asks: what do we learn about international communication and globalisation through the lens of Esperanto and postcards? Focusing on a constructed language and communication technologies that preceded the dominance of global English and social media, this book offers an alternative vantage point on the history of international communication.
This book is included in DOAB.
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Keywords
- Community-building
- constructed languages
- Correspondence
- Esperanto
- European
- Exchange
- globalisation
- History
- Internationalism
- Modern
- networks
- Scotland
- thema EDItEUR::2 Language qualifiers::2Z Other languages::2ZX Artificial languages::2ZXP Esperanto
- thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day::3MN 19th century, c 1800 to c 1899
- thema EDItEUR::3 Time period qualifiers::3M c 1500 onwards to present day::3MP 20th century, c 1900 to c 1999
- thema EDItEUR::C Language and Linguistics::CB Language: reference and general::CBX Language: history and general works
- thema EDItEUR::G Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary subjects::GT Interdisciplinary studies::GTC Communication studies
- thema EDItEUR::J Society and Social Sciences::JB Society and culture: general::JBS Social groups, communities and identities::JBSF Gender studies, gender groups::JBSF1 Gender studies: women and girls
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHT History: specific events and topics::NHTB Social and cultural history
- transnational
Links
DOI: 10.63674/wujq4585Editions