This article is part of an ongoing research project on the battle of artificial languages (Volapük, Esperanto and Ido) that took place at the start of the twentieth century, when the absence of a lingua franca and the demands of a more globalized world made some people believe that an artificial language could be the solution to the world's communication problemas. The article sets out from the literature on standardization and path dependence, emphasizing the need to focus on leadership and entrepreneurial imprinting to gain a beteer understanding of path dependence processes and standardization outcomes. For space reasons, though, this article only concentrates on the first mover: Volapük.
Path dependence; Volapük; Lingua franca; Esperanto