Shattering the cliché 'our world is more multilingual than ever before', this book offers the first comprehensive history of our multilingual past.

This volume gives an up-to-date account of various situations of language contact and multilingualism in Europe especially from a historical point of view. Its

Texts of the past were often not monolingual but were produced by and for people with bi- or multilingual repertoires; the communicative practices witnessed in

Explores the roots of Europe's struggle with multilingualism. This book argues that, over the centuries, the pursuit of linguistic homogeneity has become a cent

John C. Maher explains why societies everywhere have become more multilingual, despite the disappearance of hundreds of the world languages. He considers our no