Empires of the Mind

"Empires of the Mind is the first study to examine I.A. Richards's dissemination of "world" English in China. The leading literary critic of British Modernism, whose writings inspired the American New Criticism, Richards turned aside from literature in the Thirties to promote Basic English, an 850-word version of the language designed to foster international communication and world peace. This study traces the links between Richard's linguistic theories and his political ideals and charts the extraordinary fortunes of Basic English over a fifty-year span in China. It explores the cultural milieu of inter-war Britain, as well as that of a rapidly developing China, to explain the origins of Richards's vision and its initial successes among the Chinese. The First World War, the Japanese invasion of China, the Communist victory under Mao Tse Dong, the rise of the Cold War, and the Cultural Revolution all play a part in the history of Richards's internationalist hopes for China, which he came to see as an alternative to Europe's more violent path to modernity."--Jacket.