The process of European expansion brought voyagers, merchants, missionaries, scientists and settlers from Europe into contact with a multitude of language groups, most of which had been unknown before. Likewise, diplomatic missions coming to Europe, e.g. those sent by African rulers, had to cope with similar language problems. In initial contact situations between members of European and non-European societies, both sides relied on simple forms of gift exchange and communication through sign and body language. To engage in more complex negotiations, however, Europeans had to employ bilingual or multilingual brokers, or they had to train such intermediaries themselves. On the one hand, cultural brokers were part of local social, economic and political networks in the areas of contact. On the other hand, they were able to cross geographic and cultural borders and link local communities to larger regional or even international systems. To carry out their role, those intermediaries had to be able to use language in order to transmit knowledge about different rituals, political and social forms of organisation, and world views. Anglo-American colonial historians and students of the early modern Atlantic system and its trade networks have examined groups of ‘cultural brokers’ since the 1980s.
From early on, European missionaries also engaged in philological studies in order to systematise extra-European languages in grammars and dictionaries. In the course of the 19th century, in a process that partly paralleled the extension of colonial rule over the non-European world, colonial administrations sought to intensify their control over language use and linguistic exchanges at the expense of local intermediaries. Knowledge about languages and communication was an essential instrument of colonial rule. Recent historiography has explored the efforts to classify extra-European languages in the context of changing scholarly practice. Studies of those processes not only focus on specific scholarly endeavours, but analyse their contribution to the establishment and stabilisation of colonial rule. Moreover, the field includes aspects like the language policies of the European colonial powers and the extent and limits of linguistic persistence of migrant groups, minorities and diaspora communities.