“The pen is mightier than the sword”. The term “Empire’ typically evokes images of war, armies, conquest and genocide. However, when we look back throughout history we see an even stronger trend of the massacre and replacement of local languages. Language was a stronger weapon than the gun.
Language is one of the most central parts to any culture and its way of life, without its language a culture is already doomed to extinction. A language always holds an immense amount of knowledge and tradition related to its culture. This knowledge may not even be necessarily related to the culture. For example the indigenous Kallawaya language of Bolivia holds the key to its cultures long history within medicinal plants. This knowledge is preserved within the Kallawaya language.
Colonial empires knew that without language, native cultures would eventually die and become assimilated by the greater empire. One example of this assimilation through language were boarding schools. The Russian empire was highly prolific at this. Children were stripped from the families and placed into purely Russian boarding schools. In addition this has caused many native tongues, such as the Siberian “Chulym” to be called “gutter-languages”. Meaning it was heavily frowned upon to continue using native tongues.
Today in the 21st century this oppression of language is no longer as institutionalized as it once was. However the damage has been done. Young people are no longer forced by their local governments to leave their old ways of life behind. Instead it is their need for education and and making a living. The rise of the 21st century’s global economy is leading people to abandon their ancestor’s traditional ways of living in pursuit of a better future. So even today’s modern nation states language is still a powerful tool of oppression, regardless of government policy.
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