Download destruction of sociopolitical structures found in Africa

GREAT BRITAIN and the EMPIRE
 imperialism and colonialism
 the ‘Scramble for Africa”: the territorial conquest of the unchartered, uncivilized and impenetrable
continent (scientific, commercial and ideological reasons)
 to improve and civilize Africa in the name of the Queen and the Empire
 Africa for Victorians: cannibalistic, sexually promiscuous, stricken with diseases
 destruction of sociopolitical structures found in Africa
 Dr. David Livingstone (1813-1873)
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he traveled all over southern Africa
Victoria Falls was one of the many names he could put on the map
the only hope for Africa was development and "civilization" in European-style
shocked to see the horrors of the slave trade
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died in Zambia without solving the mystery of the Nile
 Henry Morton Stanley (1841 - 1904)
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he was commissioned by the paper to go to Africa and search for Scottish missionary and explorer
David Livingstone (proceeded to Lake Tanganyika; greeting him with the famous words 'Dr
Livingstone, I presume?')
described in 'Through the Dark Continent' (1878)
success with King Leopold II of Belgium, who was eager to tap Africa's wealth
worked to open the lower Congo to commerce by the construction of roads (forced and brutal labour of
the natives).
knighted in 1899
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clearly despised the black Africans
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 Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936):
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the British pride vs responsibility for the uncivilized
"Take up the White Man's burden"
"your new-caught sullen peoples, half devil and half child"
"the silent sullen peoples shall weigh your God and you"
Joseph Conrad (Korzeniowski (1857 – 1924)
- he left Poland as a seventeen-year-old
- learnt seamanship
- naturalised as British citizen in 1886 (MA in London)
- he travels to the Far East and Congo
other fiction:
- about: Malayan islands
- Lord Jim (1900); guilt complex; sea moral code
- problems connected to the British imperialism
Heart of Darkness:
“All Europe contributed to the making of Kurtz”
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the structure: novella with the 'story-within-the story' pattern (narrators)
ideology of the colonial Empire:
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 emissaries of light, apostles
“Each station should be like a beacon on the road towards better things, a centre for trade of course, but also
for humanizing, improving, instructing.”
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 the perfect white man who keeps up his appearance in the “great demoralization”
 enlightenment: the sketch by Kurtz
the truth behind words:
 ruthless exploitation
 corruption and disintegration
 the conquerors from the past vs colonists
the images:
 darkness and the heart of Darkness:
 evil, primitive
 the unknown, the unconquered (blank spaces on earth/maps)
 immense darkness within humans
 heart of darkness – self-knowledge
 the report begins with the need for enlightenment, but finishes with
“Exterminate all brutes”
 whiteness:
 ivory, luxury (the source of evil)
 white man
 the supposed enlightenment the white man brings
 Africa and its influence on the Europeans:
 wilderness taking the natives into its bosom;
 the jungle has eyes: Africa as a living organism
 diseases and madness for the white man
 living like in a dream, outside reality, a state of trance
 moral choices when there are no moral restraints
 rivers: Congo vs the Thames (literal Congo journey and a journey within)
 Thames and Congo lead to “the heart of an immense darkness";
 Thames: the link between the past and present)
“But the darkness was here yesterday”
 natives / savages (white pilgrims vs native cannibals)
 admiration of the natives vitality and bodies
 cannibalism
 fine fellows though cannibals
“the thought of their humanity – like yours – the thought of your remote kinship with this wild and passionate
uproar”
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improved specimen when educated
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