The EETS, the OED, and the late 19th century

Some of the information from today's lecture is delightfully presented in a couple of non-fiction books by Simon Winchester:
The Professor and the Madman discusses the contributor who was working while incarcerated in an asylum. I've read this and recommend it.
The Meaning of Everything marked Winchester's return to the OED, this time discussing its creators more generally. I haven't read this, but intend to.

Today's lecture notes:

I. In Late Victorian period, again notions of progress surged in the wake of industrialism.
* Universal education became public (but only in English) in 1870
* English education was used as a way of preventing non-speaking groups from having access to power or from developing a sense of community other than that of their conquerors (British or American)
* Children were taken from parents and forced to attend English-only schools, where they were beaten if they spoke their native language

II. EETS
* Founded mid-century by scholars so that texts would be available to middle-class readers, and to women (who would emotionally connect to the history but were not expected to study it professionally)
* “We are banded together to trace out the springs, and note the course, of the language that shall one day be the ruling tongue of the world, which is now the speech of most of its free men” (EETS report 1869; qtd. in Biddick 93). The EETS tied its activities to an imperialist agenda and the learning of English language history to the projection of the English language future.
* Medieval material, now widely available, was used as a claim that English culture (and the English language) was superior to native cultures in America and India, and therefore served as a justification for the conquest and subjugation of the natives. The editing of medieval English and of Sanskrit laws took place with some of the same people involved as organizers.

III. The OED (I am deeply indebted to Charlotte Brewer's terrific study of the OED for this portion of the lecture)
*The Philological Society began explorations of new discoveries in linguistics in the 1850s, and rapidly realized that they needed a new dictionary that would reflect the new theories.
*They began assembling words and citations, and in 1879, J.H. Murray had taken over as editor in chief.
*The OED meant to include all words, and provide etymologies and examples that would show how the word had changed through time.
*Its view was shaped by theories of science, which had fine-tuned the experimental method of starting with data then forming assumptions. As one of the period’s best-known literary characters states, “It is a cardinal mistake to theorize ahead of the facts.” The editors tried to adopt this approach to lexicography.
*The "scientific" associations of the philological method somewhat obscured the project's ideological underpinnings. The OED was founded on assumptions that English could demonstrate the superiority of England. The notions proceeded that there was an inherent superiority of European and/or Germanic.