Abstract

Multilingualism was a distinguishing feature of the Republic of the United Provinces. In addition to Dutch, the rising national language in the course of unification, French imposed itself as the language of international commerce, the everyday tongue of a considerable part of the numerous refugees and immigrants, and above all as the cultural means of expression of the political and intellectual elites, in rivalry with academic Latin and, of course, Dutch itself. French became the gateway to the acquisition of civic values and modern skills and sciences, such as commerce, history, geography, literature, etc., but also an important instrument of cosmopolitanism. Therefore, during the eighteenth century, the so-called ‘francization’ of the elites was denounced by liberal intellectuals as a harmful routine, detrimental to the development of national culture and national consciousness, and a major cause of the national decline. Simultaneously, a profound innovation of linguistic education was proposed, both in matters of method and in the choice of foreign languages, such as German or English. However, in the years 1795-1813, the French presence in the Batavian Republic and the Kingdom of Holland and its incorporation into the Napoleonic Empire implied a revival of French as the language of Revolution and Empire in Dutch society. Based on some late eighteenth-century surveys this article sketches a measure of the penetration of foreign languages in Dutch society, next to the analysis of the discourse on foreign language teaching advanced by the influential treatises on the reform of the educational system by Schomaker and Vatebender.

Keywords: bilingualism, multilingualism, cosmopolitanism, Frenchification, language teaching, education, Dutch Republic, Schomaker, Vatebender