Foreign Office grants for strategic languages funded esoteric classical scholarship instead

Evidence

In order to improve British opportunities and problems in the postwar era, SOAS and other institutions were being given money to promote the teaching of exotic languages with the utilitarian aim of furthering Britain’s military, diplomatic and commercial presence in the world. However, the academic mindset being what it has always been, in practice the subventions from the Foreign Office were often used to fund the study of such recondite matters as the study of pre-Islamic poetry, the origins of Taoist philosophy, the philology of various dead languages of the Caucasus and so forth. — Robert Irwin, For Lust of Knowing, 430

Categorization

• CANDY: Delightful irony that government money aimed at spies and diplomats bankrolled dead Caucasus languages and Taoist origins.
• SEED: Essay angle: the recurring failure of strategic funding to bend academia to utilitarian purposes — money follows curiosity anyway.