Victorian Literature and Postcolonial Studies, by Patrick Brantlinger

Victorian Literature and Postcolonial Studies, by Patrick Brantlinger.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. xxi + 180 pp. ISBN (hardback)
9780748633036, £60, ISBN (paperback) 9780748633043, £19.99.
Few people would seem to be more qualified to write this book than Patrick
Brantlinger. His Rule of Darkness of 1988, a study of imperial literature, is well
established as one of the pioneering works in the field. He has also written,
among other things, on nineteenth-century discourses of vanishing races and
on missionaries and anthropology. All of this work is well represented here. It
is a short book, part of a series clearly designed to offer students insights into
the relationship between various literary periods and postcolonial studies,
hence into the manner in which critical analyses need to be re-considered in
the light of this more recent movement. That raises the question what
consfitutes postcolonial studies? Brantlinger seems to offer two definitions.
One is purely chronological, that they relate to studies that follow upon
decolonisafion. The other is ideological, that the postcolonialists seek to re-
valuate the history and literature of the period using the standpoint of
indigenous peoples, that they set out to overturn historical convenfions, and
also aim to cast all this material in a much more moralising light, in which
imperialism and imperialists become automafically evil, imposing a wholly
illegifimate rule upon others.
The book is divided into three secfions. In the first, 'Exploring the terrain', the
author lays out the range and scale of imperial literature. It is an impressive
survey, parficularly taking into account the extent to which the format
demands that he be as concise as possible. He rightly explores by-ways as well
as highways and there are only a few notable omissions. It is gratifying that he
deals with the work of Charlotte M. Yonge, who is too often ignored in this
kind of work. The third lays out some case studies: 'Homecomings',
considering the influence of characters returning from the empire upon Jane
Eyre, Great Expectations and other works; 'Tennyson, Yeats, and Celficism',
including an analysis of The Idylls of the King; 'Oriental Desire and Imperial
Boys: Romancing India', including (among other things) a considerafion of
Kipling's Kim; 'Imperial Boys: Romancing Africa', which includes both
popular writers for a largely juvenile audience and also the works of David
Livingstone and H.M. Stanley; a final coda considers US imperialism, but
deals with it as though it is a relafively recent phenomenon, which is
transparently wrong. While this selection is clearly a personal one, still it
works reasonably well. This reviewer found most of these two secfions
impressive and unexcepfionable, apart from when Brantlinger deals with
Livingstone and Stanley when he betrays poor knowledge of the detail and an
over-reliance on the works of Tim Jeal.
That leaves the middle secfion: 'Debates'. This is where the main meat of the
postcolonial re-valuation is located. It was inevitably the most difficult to
write and, in many ways, the most problemafic for the reviewer. On the one
African Research &• Documentation No. Ul 2009 75

hand, Brantlinger shows considerable sympathy for postcolonial positions. On
the other, he is critical. For example, he rightly seems to be very little
convinced by the arguments of Gayatri Spivak that the 'subaltern' is never
able to speak. But there are also some confusing moments. He considers the
writers who seemed to consider that all good things in religion and
philosophy come from the East, but a few pages later provides a very positive
view of the work of Edward Said who would never have conceded such a
contention (in fairness, it must also be said that he is at times critical of Said,
but in relatively peripheral ways). At this point he becomes highly
disputatious, as do many postcolonial scholars. He uses the phrase 'imperial
historian' almost as a term of abuse, and creates a wholly unrealistic
dichotomy between 'empiricism' (which historians supposedly pursue) and
'theory' (which is the preserve of the postcolonialists).
This is clearly ludicrous. In the serious business of historical scholarship (one
excepts some popular writers), empiricism is used only as a foundation, the
evidence upon which critical analysis and interpretive engagement can be
built. The objections of some historians to some theory (and the qualifier is
important) are with respect to the type of theory which floats free of any
evidential base, which is wholly innocent of so-called empirical
understanding, which in short flies in the face of known historical facts. Of
course the extreme relativists deny even the possibility of 'facts', but most
sensible scholars would accept that 'theory' or penetrating analysis (what
ultimately is the difference between them?) must be based on certain known
historical or literary situations. I have spent some considerable time pointing
to theoretical positions that really bear no relationship at all to such a
necessary underpinning (for example Viswanathan's total misunderstanding
of missionaries, economic affairs, and the Scottish Enlightenment or Said's
ignorance of the facts of Verdi's life and ideology in his wilful mis-reading of
the opera Aida in Culture and Imperialism, in which he also betrays no
comprehension of the key points of the libretto of that opera). Brantlinger
never jumps free of these difficulties and merely adds to the confusions that so
many postcolonialists trail in their wake. For this reviewer, it came as a
startling moment to find myself bracketed in a footnote with Bernard Porter
(as historian villains) when the scholarly world knows that he and I inhabit
opposite positions on the major area of popular imperialism!
The cover of the book carries the iconic image (from an LMS slide) of David
Livingstone being attacked by the lion early in his career (the injury from
which permitted the identification of his body after it was returned to Britain
in 1873-4). This led me to wonder what this is supposed to denote. Does
Livingstone stand in for imperialism with the lion the postcolonialists biting
its shoulder? Does Livingstone represent historians under attack from the
postcolonialists? Either way, it is a poorly chosen illustration. First it speaks of
a host of modern studies which BrantUnger ignores, for example relating to the
76 African Research & Documentation No. Ul 2009

environment, to animals and diseases. Second, it should be remembered that
the incident ended when one of Livingstone's associates shot the lion!
John M. MacKenzie
University of Edinburgh.
Greatest Emancipations: how the West abolished Slavery, by Jim Powell.

Basingstoke, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008. 284 pp. ISBN 978-0-230-
60592-3. £17.99.
For thousands of years slavery went largely unchallenged in principle. Then,
in imder two centuries, it came under attack, and, as a result of the abolitionist
movements in Europe and the Americas, more than seven million slaves were
freed, mostly in the Western hemisphere. In this very readable book, Jim
Powell takes this extraordinary shift in opinion as his starting point, from
where he goes on to chronicle the processes and battles of the abolitionist
movement leading to the 'final victory' of emancipation.
At one level this book thus presents a general history of the anti-slavery
movement, written for a predominantly American audience who may be
unaware of the role played by the British abolitionists in the late 18* and early
19* centuries, or by the campaigners in Brazil in the late 19* century.
However, as early as the introduction, Powell shows that his main aim is to
draw a distinction between the process of emancipation followed in the
United States, described by him as a "military strategy", and that employed
elsewhere, where, he says, "abolitionists had a greater impact". This leads him
to characterise the American Civil War as an unnecessary war which was
neither the only nor the best way of a achieving the emancipation of slaves in
the American South. Drawing on the examples of the British West Indies,
Haiti, Cuba and Brazu, he argues that a "peaceful, persistent, multi-strategy
process", employing not just moral but economic pressure and offering
compensation to slave owners, as the British did in the West Indies, was far
more effective in the long run than the military option employed by the North
in the Civil War. The war, he writes,
wasn't a shortcut. Wartime massacres inevitably provoked hatred

and a lust for revenge that made a bad situation worse, delaying by
decades the day when the hearts and minds of the people might be
changed for the better. This was crucial since nobody could be
counted on to protect the former slaves and their descendants, (p.245)
The backlash, Powell, argues, subverted the progress of civil rights for
decades.
In contrast, he describes the British abolition of slavery in 1833 as "a peaceful
transition to a free society [which] was an outstanding success". He lays much
African Research b Documentation No. Ul 2009 77

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Victorian Literature and Postcolonial Studies, by Patrick Brantlinger.

African Research &• Documentation No. Ul 2009 75

76 African Research & Documentation No. Ul 2009

Greatest Emancipations: how the West abolished Slavery, by Jim Powell.

wasn't a shortcut. Wartime massacres inevitably provoked hatred

African Research b Documentation No. Ul 2009 77

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