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UNIT 49

DEVELOPMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE BRITISH COLONIAL EMPIRE

IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES. JOSEPH CONRAD AND RUDYARD KIPLING.

OUTLINE 1. INTRODUCTION.

1.1. Aims of the unit. 1.2. Notes on bibliography.

2. A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE BRITISH COLONIAL EMPIRE IN THE EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES. 2.1. The policy of colonial expansion.

2.1.1. Imperialism vs. colonialism. 2.1.2. The two British empires.

2.2. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the first British empire. 2.2.1. Political background in Great Britain. 2.2.2. The Industrial Revolution: main consequences. 2.2.2.1. The sixteenth century: main sources. 2.2.2.2. The seventeenth century: great developments. 2.2.2.3. The eighteenth century: main consequences. 2.2.3. The main British colonies. 2.2.3.1. In America: the first British colonies. 2.2.3.2. In the rest of the world.

2.3. The nineteenth century: the second British empire. 2.3.1. Political background in Great Britain. 2.3.2. Social and economic background in Great Britain. 2.3.3. The nineteenth-century British colonies.

2.4. The twentieth century: the dismantling of the British empire. 3. A LITERARY BACKGROUND: JOSEPH CONRAD AND RUDYARD KIPLING.

3.1. The Victorian literary background. 3.1.1. Drama. 3.1.2. Poetry. 3.1.3. Prose.

3.2. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924). 3.2.1. Life. 3.2.2. Style. 3.2.3. Main works.

3.3. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936). 3.2.4. Life. 3.2.5. Style. 3.2.6. Main works.

4. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING. 5. CONCLUSION. 6. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

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1. INTRODUCTION.

1.1. Aims of the unit.

The present unit, Unit 49, aims to provide a useful introduction to the development and

administration of the British colonial empire, namely in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries

since it is considered to be a turning point in the history of Great Britain. We shall also deal with

how this situation was reflected in the literature of the time through the writing of relevant

figures such as Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. In general, the literature of the time was

both shaped by and reflected the prevailing ideologies of the day which, following Speck

(1998), means that this is an account of literary activity in which social, economic, cultural and

political allegiances are placed very much to the fore.

This is reflected in the organization of the unit, which is divided into two chapters which

correspond to the two main tenets of this unit: (1) a historical background of the development

and administration of the British colonial empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and

(2) the literary background of the time, namely focused on the works of J. Conrad and R.

Kipling. Therefore, we shall present our study in five main chapters.

Chapter 2 namely provides a historical background for the development and administration of

the British colonial empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In doing so, it is

convenient to analyse first some conceptions related to the imperial expansion and also, the

situation in Great Britain before and during the eighteenth and nineteenth century so as to better

understand the deep changes which gave way to this colonial expansion, and analyse the reasons

why Great Britain was determined to take control of great areas far from the Continent.

Therefore, we shall provide a general overview of (1) the policy of the colonial expansion in

general terms, where we shall analyse first the difference between the concepts (a) imperialism

vs. colonialism and second, what historians call (b) the two British empires. Then, we shall trace

back in time to analyse (2) the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and therefore, review the

main reasons for the establishment of the first British empire regarding (a) the political

background in Great Britain at that time; (b) the Industrial Revolution and its consequences on

the imperial expansion in (i) the sixteenth century in terms of main sources, (ii) the seventeeth

century in terms of great developments, and (iii) in the eighteenth century in terms of main

consequences; and (c) the main British colonies by then, thus the British expansion (i) in

America with the establishment of the first American colonies, (ii) in the rest of the world

(India, Africa, Australia, etc). Next, we shall analyse how imperial expansion developed (3) in

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the nineteenth century regarding the development of the second British empire in terms of (a)

political, (b) social and economic background, and an account of the main (c) nineteenth-

century British colonies; and finally, we shall reach (4) the twentieth century by examining the

dismantling of the British empire.

Chapter 3 shall provide a literary background for the Victorian Literature and, in particular, to

the Post-colonial or imperalist literature, namely reflected through the figures of the Victorian

novelists Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. In this chapter, we shall namely deal with the

nineteenth-century literature in the Victorian period, that is, from 1837 to 1901 so as to frame

Conrad and Kipling’s literary works in an appropriate social and political context to make him

coincide with the late consequences of the British imperialism. So, we shall start by reviewing

the (1) Victorian literary background regarding the main literary forms (a) drama, (b) poetry,

and (c) prose, so as to approach the novel and non-fiction works. Then, we shall provide the

reader with the biographies of (2) Joseph Conrad and (3) Rudyard Kipling in terms of (i) life,

(ii) style and (iii) main works.

Chapter 4 will be devoted to the main educational implications in language teaching regarding

the introduction of this issue in the classroom setting. Chapter 5 will offer a conclusion to

broadly overview our present study, and Chapter 6 will include all the bibliographical

references used to develop this account of the Industrial Revolution.

1.2. Notes on bibliography.

An influential introduction to the historical background of the Victorian period, Imperialism and

the Industrial Revolution is based on Thoorens, Panorama de las literaturas Daimon:

Inglaterra y América del Norte. Gran Bretaña y Estados Unidos de América (1969); Escudero,

La Revolución Industrial (1988); Overton, Agricultural Revolution in England: The

Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500-1850 (1996); and Alexander, A History of

English Literature (2000).

The literary background includes the works of Karl, A Reader's Guide to Joseph Conrad (1960);

Magnusson & Goring, Cambridge Biographical Dictionary (1990); Sullivan, Narratives of

empire: the fictions of Rudyard Kipling (1993); Azim, The colonial rise of the novel (1993);

and Sanders, The Short Oxford History of English Literature (1996); Speck, Literature and

Society in Eighteenth-Century England: Ideology Politics and Culture (1998).

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Other general sources are taken from the Encyclopedia Encarta (1997) and The Columbia

Electronic Encyclopedia (2003); and two outstanding webpages www.bbc.com and

www.wwnorton.com. The background for educational implications is based on the theory of

communicative competence and communicative approaches to language teaching are provided

by the most complete record of current publications within the educational framework is

provided by the guidelines in B.O.E. (2004) for both E.S.O. and Bachillerato; and the Council

of Europe, Modern Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. A Common European

Framework of reference (1998).

2. A HISTORICAL BACKGROUND FOR THE DEVELOPMENT AND

ADMINISTRATION OF THE BRITISH COLONIAL EMPIRE IN THE EIGHTEENTH

AND NINETEENTH CENTURIES.

Chapter 2 namely provides a historical background for the development and administration of

the British colonial empire in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In doing so, it is

convenient to analyse first some conceptions related to the imperial expansion and also, the

situation in Great Britain before and during the eighteenth and nineteenth century so as to better

understand the deep changes which gave way to this colonial expansion, and analyse the reasons

why Great Britain was determined to take control of great areas far from the Continent.

Actually, our research traces back to the fifteenth century when, in general, the policy of

colonial expansion was popular among the most popular empires of the time, and for our

purposes, to the seventeenth century under the domain of the Stuart Age up to the eighteenth

century where the main causes that led to the imperial expansion are to be found in the

establishment of the first British colonies in North America and the emergence of the Industrial

Revolution. The nineteenth century witnessed the highest peak of imperialism and the twentieth

century its final consequences and the decline of its powerful expansion.

Therefore, we shall provide a general overview of (1) the policy of the colonial expansion in

general terms, where we shall analyse first the difference between the concepts (a) imperialism

vs. colonialism and second, what historians call (b) the two British empires. Then, we shall trace

back in time to analyse (2) the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and therefore, review the

main reasons for the establishment of the first British empire regarding (a) the political

background in Great Britain at that time; (b) the Industrial Revolution and its consequences on

the imperial expansion in (i) the sixteenth century in terms of main sources, (ii) the seventeeth

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century in terms of great developments, and (iii) in the eighteenth century in terms of main

consequences; and (c) the main British colonies by then, thus the British expansion (i) in

America with the establishment of the first American colonies, (ii) in the rest of the world

(India, Africa, Australia, etc).

Next, we shall analyse how imperial expansion developed (3) in the nineteenth century

regarding the development of the second British empire in terms of (a) political, (b) social and

economic background, and an account of the main (c) nineteenth-century British colonies; and

finally, we shall reach (4) the twentieth century by examining the dismantling of the British

empire.

2.1. The policy of colonial expansion.

There is no doubt that the political, social and economic background of the seventeenth-century

Great Britain established the main basis for the policy of colonial expansion in the following

centuries, thus the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Yet, previous events, which trace back to

the fifteenth century and take place within the field of exploration, mark the beginning of this

colonial adventure on the part of the most powerful empires at that time, thus Scandinavia,

Spain, Portugal, France and Great Britain.

Before British colonists reached the Atlantic Coast of North America, other non-British colonies

did it much earlier. For instance, the Viking Leif Eriksson discovered North America

accidentally on October 9, 1000; then nearly five hundred years later, Portugal, which was a

leading country in the European exploration of the world, began charting the far shores of the

Atlantic Ocean before Spain began.

Yet, in 1492, Cristobal Columbus brought this land to Europe’s attention on behalf of Spain , the

main colonial power of the day, which focused its efforts on the exploitation of the gold-rich

empires of southern Mexico (the Aztec) and of the Andes (the Inca). Portuguese explorers

(Pedro Alvares Cabral) landed in American coasts (Porto Seguro, Brazil) on April 22, 1500,

eight years later than Spain did.

Yet, after them no serious colonization efforts were made for decades, until England, France,

and Spain began to claim and expand their territory in the New World. In fact, the first French

attempt at colonization was in 1598 on Sable Island (southeast of present Nova Scotia). Next,

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during the 17th century, Dutch traders established trade posts and plantations throughout the

Americas. However, Dutch settling in North America was not as common as other European

nations’ settlements. Many of the Dutch settlements had been abandoned or lost by the end of

the century, with the exception of the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba , which remain Dutch

territory until this day, and Suriname, which became independent in 1975.

Also, Denmark started a colony on St Thomas in 1671, and St John in 1718, and founded

colonies in Greenland in 1721, which is now a self-governing part of the Kingdom of Denmark.

During the 18th century, the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea were divided into two

territorial units, one English and the other Danish, which were also used as a base for pirates.

Finally, other countries followed such as Russia, whose explorers discovered Alaska in 1732.

2.1.1. Imperialism vs. Colonialism.

Within this section, it is quite relevant to differenciate between the concepts ‘imperialism’ and

‘colonialism’ so as to better understand the imperial expansion of the Great Britain. Although

they may look similar, they establish different concepts. For instance, whereas the term

‘imperialism’ refers to the principle, spirit, or system of empire, and is driven by ideology, the

term ‘colonialism’ refers to the principle, spirit, or system of establishing colonies, which is

driven by commerce. Yet, they have no clear cut limits and, often, it is difficult to say where one

ends and the other begins.

2.1.2. The two British empires.

In general terms, within this policy of imperial expansion and the establishment of new colonies

all over the world, historians make a distinction between two British empires which follows a

temporal classification within different centuries. Thus, according to www.wwnorton.com

(2004), the first British empire is to be set up in the seventeenth century, “when the European

demand for sugar and tobacco led to the development of plantations on the islands of the

Caribbean and in southeast North America. These colonies, and those settled by religious

dissenters in northeast North America, attracted increasing numbers of British and European

colonists”.

Hence, “the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries saw the first British Empire

expanding into areas formerly controlled by the Dutch and Spanish Empires (then in decline)

and coming into conflict with French colonial aspirations in Africa, Canada, and India. With the

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Treaty of Paris in 1763, the British effectively took control of Canada and India, but the

American Revolution (1776) brought their first empire to an end”.

On the other hand, a further phase of territorial expansion that led to the second British Empire

was initiated by the exploratory voyages of Captain James Cook to Australia and New Zealand

in the 1770s. “This reached its widest point during the reign of Queen Victoria (1837–1901). At

no time in the first half of her reign was empire a central preoccupation of her or her

governments, but this was to change in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871),

which altered the balance of power in Europe”.

During the next decades, the British empire was compared to the Roman empire because of its

extension, but the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were just about to see the development in

the dismantling of the British Empire with the declaration of independence of the British

colonies in India (1947) and Hong Kong (1997). So, one by one, the subject peoples of the

British Empire have entered a postcolonial era, in which they must reassess their national

identity, their history and literature, and their relationship with the land and language of their

former masters (www.wwnorton.com).

2.2. The seventeenth and eighteenth centurie s: the first British empire.

2.2.1. The political background in Great Britain.

The seventeenth century has its starting point in the death of Elizabeth I (1603) and the

accession of James I to the crown. This period, known as the Stuart Age (1603-1713) and also

called the Jacobean Era, the age of Cromwell and the Restoration, is characterized by crisis,

civil wars, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, and establishes the immediate background

to the Industrial Revolution and the establishment of the first American colonies.

Therefore, the political background is to be framed upon the Stuart succession line, thus under

the rule of James I (1603-1625). Under his rule, he achieved the unification of the crowns of

England and Scotland, and brought the long war with Spain to an end. Although this greatly

helped the English treasury and also James’s reputation (as rex pacificus), the policy was, in

part, unpopular because peace meant that both the English and the Dutch had to acknowledge

the Spanish claim to a monopoly of trade between their own South American colonies and the

rest of the world.

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His son, Charles I (1625-1642), ruled until civil war broke out in 1642. He became King of

Great Britain and Ireland on his father’s death from 1625 to 1642, but soon friction between the

throne and Parliament began almost at once. For eleven years, Charles ruled without parliament,

a period described as ‘the Eleven Years’ Tyranny’, which led to civil war and his eventual

judicial execution in 1649 (called a ‘regicide’). This is the reason why we may note that in the

succession line, there is an eighteen-year interval between reigns (1642-1660), called

Interregnum, when first Parliament and Oliver Cromwell established themselves as rulers of

England.

Next, Cromwell (1642-1660) controlled the political affairs until monarchy was restored by

Charles II (1660-1685); this was followed by his brother, James II (1685-1689) who, in 1668,

fled before his invading son-in-law, the Dutchman William of Orange became William III. Then

William and Mary II (1689-1707) were succeeded by Mary’s sister, Queen Anne (1702-1713).

Each of their contributions were crucial for the development and administration of the British

empire all over the world.

These events contributed to the most influential change of the seventeenth and early eighteenth

century, that of population. Whereas for the first half of the century the population continued to

grow and, as a result, there was pressure on food resources, land and jobs, and increased price

inflation, the late seventeenth century saw the easing, if not the disappearance of these

problems. Family-planning habits started to change and new methods of farming increased

dramatically. From the 1670s, England became an exporter as opposed to a net importer of

grain. The seventeenth century is also probably the first in English history in which more people

emigrated than immigrated, hence the period of American colonization.

Once in the early eighteenth-century, its political background is to be framed upon the Georgian

succession line, thus under the rule of Queen Anne (1701-1714); her German cousin, which

became George I (1714-1727); George II (1727-1760), and George III (1760-1820), king of

Great Britain and Ireland (followed by his son, George IV (1820-1830), who was succeeded by

his brother, William IV). This century witnessed the starting point of the British colonial

empire, reaching the highest point in the following century.

As stated before, the Georgian period was one of change since the very infrastructure of Britain

was changing and Britain became the world’s first modern society, not only in agricultural

developments which were followed by industrial innovation, but also in urbanisation and the

need for better communications. In fact, the main changes are to be noticed in agriculture,

industry and commerce.

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Following the Encyclopedia Encarta (1997), “the social, economic and political situation in

Great Britain was just about to change with the death of Queen Anne in 1714. Since she had no

children, she was succeeded by her German cousin George, and the monarchy moved from the

House of Stuart to the House of Hannover. When George came to England in 1714, the

Jacobites attempted to replace him with James II’s son James Edward Stuart, or The Great

Pretender, but were unsuccessful. Politically, George favored Whigs arguing that Tories were

loyal to the Stuart cause. His head for foreign affairs led to the formation of the Triple

Alliance”.

Eventually, “George I was succeeded by his son George II. George II’s interest concerned

Hannover rather than Great Britain and during the war of the Austrian Succession, he

subordinated the interests of England to those of Germany. With the advice of his wife and

ministers, Britain was able to progress materially. The final years of his reign were considerably

marked by the suppression of the last major Jacobite rebellion, and his prosecution of the Seven

Years’ War” between England and France (Encarta, 1997). This opposition between the two

countries continued and was to be present in the fight for imperial expansion all over the world.

The political field had a great effect on the policy of colonial expansion, in particular, in various

regions, namely in connections between industrialization, labor unions, and movements for

political and social reform in England, Western Europe, and the United States. The following

factors combined dictated the making of British history in the eighteenth century. Thus,

• Each passing of the crown introduced new ideals concerning such issues as the Church,

Parliament, and foreign policy. Each monarch also had their own personality that

determined how the British Common would interact with their monarch. Following

George III’s accession in 1760, there was a subtle change in policy and, in 1762, peace

negotiations were opened in secret. On the continent, although the Seven Years’ War

(1756-1763) was extremely costly in terms of lives and finance, Britain was seen as a

world power. Yet, across the ocean the only real problem by 1770 was America and the

revolution that started to take place since the British government attempted to cover its

losses by several acts.

• As a result, colonial tensions increased and in 1776 an independent state came into

existence since American colonies declared their independence as the United States of

America. War began in 1775 and was prolonged in 1783, at the King’s insistence, to

prevent copycat protests elsewhere. Nearly one century later, many labourers were

wanted there after the abolition of slavery somewhat after 1833.

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• The French revolution in 1789, opened an era of liberal revolution, which slowly

established the right of every citizen to move whenever and wherever he liked. As a

result, religious tolerance grew. The idea of one nationality in one country started to

develop and caused nationalism. Because of this and other ideologies a new group of

political refugees grew and hence, government policy had a large influence on people in

Europe now.

• Next, for much of the late eighteenth century and early 1800s, the British fleet was

involved in actions against the French and Spanish in the Mediterranean, Atlantic and

Caribbean under the guidance of Horatio Nelson, who secured British naval dominance

in the imperial expansion.

2.2.2. The Industrial Revolution: main consequences.

The Industrial Revolution is often located in the period between 1750 and 1850, which

coincides to a great extent with the Augustean Age (1714-1790); with the Georgian Age or the

age of the Romantics (1790-1837), and reaching the end of the century (1901) with the

Victorian Age (1837-1900) or Realism movement. Together with this political background, the

emergence of the Industrial revolution, and therefore, its consequences on society, brought

about important economic, social, technological and cultural changes which framed the two

phases of development of the British imperial expansion.

Generally speaking, the industrial revolution is said to have been the trigger for the imperial

expansion since the new industrial economy in its earliest stages was acquired to serve a

mercantile system. For a long time, the colonial market was small and unimportant, but soon,

the British government desired to take the American continent and islands as a whole to serve as

a market for their manufacturers and a source for products which could not be found at home.

So, let us examine the effects of the industrial revolution in the sixteenth, seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries in terms of main sources, development and main consequences on the

imperial expansion.

2.2.2.1. The sixteenth century: main sources.

The source of this important revolution has its roots in the sixteenth century, and in particular, in

the British agrarian system where the workers were the members of the same family, and the

working tools were simple tools and animals. Actually, from the 16th century onwards, an

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essentially organic agriculture was gradually replaced by a farming system that depended on

energy-intensive inputs. According to Overton (1996), the impact of this agrarian revolution

was to be felt in the agriculture’s demand for more land and therefore, the pressure on Britain’s

depleted woodlands.

Moreover, the rising price of wood as an industrial fuel made coal was an increasingly attractive

option, with which Britain was plentifully supplied. When its use was extended into industry,

however, England necessitated the containment of harmful fumes that contaminated the raw

materials. Hence, the salt, sugar and soap industries found their technical solutions quickly, and

in the early 17th century glass makers, and non-ferrous metal refiners modified their equipment

to burn coal, but iron makers suffered repeated disappointment.

2.2.2.2. The seventeenth century: great developments.

In the seventeenth century great developments took place namely in the technological field, for

instance, the invention of the steam engine which was prompted by the expanding mining sector

and the development of new forms of transport, which were to mark the beginning of the

industrial revolution and its development in the eighteenth century.

Also, scientific discoveries helped this development since Charles II was a patron of the arts and

science. Actually, the Royal Society was founded under his royal patronage by a group of

Oxford men, among whom Robert Boyle (1627-1691) demonstrated that the volume of gases

varied in precisely inverse proportion to the pressure upon them. Other scientists of this century

included Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who made many discoveries (including the law of gravity)

and laid the foundations of physics as a modern discipline, and Edmund Halley, the Astronomer

Royal, (1656-1742), hence the foundation of the Royal Observatory of Greenwich in 1675.

Yet, undoubtely, the most important step which favoured the imperial expans ion was made in

the economic field: the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694. As mentioned above, the

continental wars of James II (1685-1689) and William of Orange, known as William III (1689-

1707), were really expensive, and as a result, England was forced to raise a considerable

national debt. In 1694, the Scotsman William Paterson founded the Bank of England to assist

the crown by managing the public debt, and eventually it became the national reserve for the

British Isles. Yet, in 1697, any further joint-stock banks were forbidden just to secure its

position of prominence in England.

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It was this debt that forced the British government to use the colonies as a source of economic

income. In fact, the Secretary of state for the South was established in London so as to deal

with colonial business. Other government departments, such as the treasury, the customs, the

admiralty, and the war office also had representatives in the colonies, where the chief

representative of the Imperial government was the governor, appointed by the king or by the

proprietors with his approval.

The general desire in this century was for the American continent and islands serve as a source

for products and as a market for their manufacturers. Till the end of this century the pressure of

France expansion on almost all sides of the American colonies, except the sea, was a constant

remainder to them of their ultimate dependence on England’s military support and their main

aim was to develop a naval supremacy over France.

As seen above, the industrial revolution meant an increasing demand of industrial goods (textile,

iron, machines, trains, ships, chemicals, houses, furniture, food, drinks, paper, etc) which

needed, in turn, people to work in industries, money to build factories and produce goods, and

raw materials to work with. The development of industrialisation was seen as a wide-ranging

phenomenon which involved every aspect of society, both in and out of the European continent.

2.2.2.3. The eighteenth century: main consequences.

The eighteenth century was to witness the most important consequences of the industrial

revolution within the British colonial expansion, both in America and overseas in combination

with the political events mentioned above. In fact, the Victorian period (1837-1901) is

characterized by the sense of dizzying change, in which perhaps the most important event was

the shift away from a way of life based on ownership of land to a modern urban economy based

on trade and manufacturing, that is, the Industrial Revolution. This shift created profound

economic and social changes, including a mass migration of workers to industrial towns, where

they lived in new urban centres.

However, the changes arising out of the eighteenth-century Industrial Revolution were just one

subset of the radical changes taking place in mid- and late-nineteenth-century Britain, among

which we may mention the democratization resulting from extension of the franchise;

challenges to religious faith, in part based on the advances of scientific knowledge, particularly

of evolution; and changes in the role of women.

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In fact, the essence of the industrial Revolution is said to be the substitution of competition for

the medieval regulations which had previously controlled the production and distribution of

wealth to the new industrial economy which favoured a mercantile system and brought about

important consequences for the policy of expansion at all levels, resulting then in a wider

distribution of wealth.

• First of all, in economic terms, the sudden acceleration of technical and economic

development that begun in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century changed

the lives of a large proportion of the population by the nineteenth century. Machinery

and manufacturing made possible by deep innovations in technology, such as the steam

engine came to dominate the traditional agrarian economy.

• In social terms, we can talk about a demographic revolution in this period as well as

migratory movements from the homeland Britain to colonial settlements. These fast

changes made people move from living and working on farms to working in factories

and living in cities, which had both positive and negative effects on people. The growth

of population was due to the improvement of food supplies, better hygiene conditions

and a reduction in the mortality rate of epidemics. People did not migrate to earn some

extra money, but to make their living. They needed money to buy a piece of land, to pay

their taxes and their debts.

• The eighteenth-century technological background is namely represented by the

scientific developments that took place under royal patronage of the Georgian

succession line. During the course of the eighteenth century, a variety of inventions

allowed for greater mechanisation to be applied to the industry and this led in turn to the

industrial structure changing to a factory-based system. These inventions were the basis

for the increased productivity of the textile industry throughout Britain and this century

was to witness the beginnings of an industrial revolution in Britain which was to change

the world from 1750 on.

Since new technologies were applied to the production of goods and services, there was

a change from hand-made work to manufactures, which is a prominent fact regarding

the substitution of the factory for the domestic system. As a result, we find changes in

the use of basic materials (iron, steel); the use of new energy sources to produce power

(coal, steam engines, electricity, petroleum, combustion engines); the mechanical

discoveries of the time, which altered the character of the cotton manufacture (i.e. the

spinning-jenny, the waterframe, the mule, the self-acting mule, and the power-loom);

and important developments in transport and communication means (steam locomotive,

steamship, cars, aeroplane, telegraph, radio).

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Therefore, this new production system was extended, in turn, to particular areas in

Britain and hence, to national and international markets. Also, work productivity

increased at a high rate, giving way to a new organization of work known as the ‘factory

system’, and hence, world trade and politics became more influential in the every-day

life of the villagers, and as a result, the group of proletarians grew quickly due to

downwards social mobility and the fact that proletarians had more children than

farmers.

• Finally, the most relevant event has to do with the period of overseas exploration and

the name of James Cook, who initiated the exploratory voyages in the Pacific to

Australia and New Zealand in the 1770s. It is important to remember that, as stated

above, his voyages were included in the further phase of territorial expansion known as

the second British Empire.

2.2.3. The main British colonies.

2.2.3.1. In America: the first British colonies.

In North America the establishment of American colonies meant the starting point of British

colonial activity in the Western hemisphere and also, a new place for immigrants to hide from

political and religious crisis in England. The political history of Colonial America will make us

comprehend the preparation of the whole people for the radical change of government they were

so soon to undergo in British colonies, and the strong spirit of democracy which led Britain to

the loss of the American colonies with the Declaration of Independence in 1776.

We distinguish two types of earlier colonies: non-British and British; whereas the first group

namely includes Viking, Portuguese, Spanish, French, Dutch and Danish colonists, the second

group is formed by Anglosaxons. Moreover, non-British colonies, namely French and Dutch,

were founded on aristocratic principles and strove vigorously to gain liberal institutions.

Following Daimon (1969), had their political circumstances been different in Europe, they could

have also gained the control of the continent. Yet, Holland was quite wealthy and had few

immigrants, and France had a great number of immigrants but was not interested in the snow

land. Yet, the struggle for control of this land would continue for more than a hundred years.

The thirteen British colonies of America were formed under a variety of differing conditions.

The settlement of Virginia was the work of a company of London merchants, that of New

England of a body of Puritan refugees from persecution. Most of the other colonies were formed

through the efforts of proprietors, to whom the king had made large grants of territory. None of

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them were of royal or parliamentary establishment and therefore, the government of the mother-

country took no part in the original formation of the government of the colonies, except in the

somewhat flexible requirements of the charters granted to the proprietors.

The colonies were classified into (1) New England colonies, made up by Rhode, Connecticut,

New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Among them, the most famous first colonies were

Plymouth colony (1620) and Massachusetts Bay Colony (1629), which were settled by two

groups of of religious dissenters who escaped religious persecution in England: the Pilgrims and

the Puritans; (2) the rest of British colonies in America followed after Plymouth and

Massachusetts Bay, consisting of Middle colonies, such as New York, Pennsylvania, the three

counites of Delaware, and Maryland, which were namely characterized by a wide diversity, both

religious, political, economic, and ethnic; (3) the southern colonies include Maryland, Virginia,

Georgia and the two Carolinas (north and south). Yet, the most important to mention is Virgina

colony, which is considered to be the first permanent settlement in North America under the

name of the English colony of Jamestown (1607), was the first English colony in America to

survive and become permanent and become la ter the capital of Virginia and the site of the

House of Burgesses.

The settlement was struck by severe droughts in centuries and as a result, only a third of the

colonists furvived the first winter, and even, source documents indicate that some turned to

cannibalism. Yet, the colony survived in large part to the efforts of John Smith, whose moto was

‘No work, no food’. He put the colonists to work, and befriended Pocahontas, daughter of Chief

Powhatan, who supplied the colony with food.

But the main causes of social decentralization were soon to be noticed. As the colony of

Virginia was so heavily influenced by the cultivation of tobacco and the ownership of slaves, in

1619 large numbers of Africans were brought to this colony into the slave trade. Thus,

individual workers on the plantation fields were usually without family and separated from their

nearest neighbors by miles. This meant that little social infrastructure developed for the

commoners of Virigina society, in contrast with the highly developed social infrastructure of

colonial New England.

By this time, the English colonies were thirteen: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut,

Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North

Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Although all these Brit ish colonies were strikingly

different, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries several events took place and

brought relevant changes in the colonies: whereas some of the them sprung from their common

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roots as part of the British Empire, others led up to the American Revolution, and to the final

separation from England.

Although there was general properity in the Middle and Southern colonies, as well as social and

political struggle, they had to face the arrival of loads of immigrants from Europe. Their

economy, based on the production of rice, indigo and naval stores, was booming in contrast to

the hostile attitude of Indians at the frontier. In the upper south, Virginia and Maryland’s

tobacco prices were falling and crop failures became very usual. Yet, in New England, the

social and political atmosphere was quite calm, but not the economy since the Sugar Act

imposed taxes and new commercial regulations on them. The main causes which led the thirteen

colonies to revolution are stated as follows.

• The first event relates to the French and Indian War (1754-1763), which meant the

American extension of the general European conflict known as the Seven Years’ War.

The war takes its name from the Iroquois confederacy, which had been playing the

British and the French against each other successfully for decades. Eventually, in the

Treaty of Paris (1763) , France surrendered its vast North American empire to Britain.

During the war the thirteen colonies’s identity as part of the British Empire was made

truly apparent, as British military and civilian officials took on an increased presence in

the lives of Americans.

The war also increased a sense of American unity in men who might normally have

never left their colonies to travel across the continent, and fighting alongside men from

decidedly different. However, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom at the time

(William Pitt), decided to wage the war in the colonies with the use of troops from the

colonies and tax funds from Britain itself, which was a successful wartime strategy. Yet,

this dispute was to set off the chain of events that brought about the American

Revolution.

• The Royal Proclamation (1763) was a prohibition against settlement west of the

Appalachian Mountains, on land which had been recently captured from France. In

issuing this decree, the government was no doubt influenced by disgruntled taxpayers

who did not wish to bankroll the subjugation of the native people of the area to make

room for colonists. Yet, for most Americans, it seemed unnecessary to accept an

unproductive piece of legislation stated by a far-away government that cared little for

their needs, although Parliament had generally been preoccupied with affairs in Europe,

and let the colonies govern themselves. The policy change would continue to arouse

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opposition in the colonies over the next thirteen years and through a series of measures,

which were to be named as acts.

• Thus, the Sugar Act (1764), which increased taxes on sugar, coffee, indigo, and certain

kinds of wine, and it banned importation of rum and French wines; the Stamp Act

(1765-1766), which was carried out by the British Parliament to tax activities in their

American colonies; as a result, the British Parliament passed at least two laws, known

as the Quartering Act. The first one became law on 24 March 1765, and provided that

Britain would house its soldiers in America first in barracks and public houses, and the

second (also called the Intolerable Acts, the Punitive Acts or the Coercive Acts) was one

of the measures that were designed to secure Britain’s jurisdiction over her American

dominions; the Declaratory Act (1766) was established to secure the dependency of his

Majesty’s dominions in America upon the crown and parliament of Great Britain. This

act states that American colonies and plantations are subordinated to, and dependent

upon the imperial crown and parliament of Great Britain; and that the King’ majesty as

full power and authority to make laws and statutes of sufficient force and validity to

bind the colonies and people of America, subjects of the crown of Great Britain.

The Townshend Revenue Act (1767) placed new taxes on glass, lead, paints, paper,

and tea. Therefore, colonial reaction to these taxes was the same as to the Sugar Act and

Stamp Act, and Britain eventually repealed all the taxes except the one on tea. In

response to the sometimes violent protests by the American colonists, Great Britain sent

more troops to the colonies; the Tea Act (1773) gave a monopoly on tea sales to the

East India Company. Since the East Indian Company wasn’t doing so well, the British

wanted to give it some more business. The price on this East India tea was lowered so

much that it was way below tea from other suppliers. But the American colonists saw

this law as yet another means of “taxation without representation” because it meant that

they could not buy tea from anyone else (including other colonial merchants) without

spending a lot more money.

Their response was to refuse to unload the tea from the ships in Boston, a situation that

led to the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Angry and frustrated at a new tax on tea,

American colonists (calling themselves the Sons of Liberty and disguised as Mohawk

Native Americans) boarded three British ships (the Dartmouth , the Eleanor, and the

Beaver) and dumped 342 whole crates of British tea into Boston harbor on December

16, 1773. Similar incidents occurred in Maryland, New York, and New Jersey in the

next few months, and tea was eventually boycotted throughout the colonies. The Boston

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Tea Party was an amusing and symbolic episode in American history, an example of

how far Americans were willing to go to speak out for their freedom.

As a result, this amusing and symbolic episode in the American Colonies of Boston and

Massachusetts was defined as Intolerable Acts (also called the Coercive Acts or

Punitive Acts) by the English. The Coercive Acts were a series of laws passed by the

British Parliament in 1774 in response for the growing unrest of the colonies which

included: the Quartering Act, the Quebec Act, Massachusetts Government Act, the

Administration of Justice Act, and the Boston Port Act.

The punitive effect of these laws generated a reaction in a great and growing sympathy

for the colonists of Massachusetts, encouraging the neighbouring colonies to band to

together which would help lead to the American Revolutionary War. Eventually, in

1775, under George III’s reign, the British North American colonies revolted in

Massachusetts due to the previous frustration with the British crown practices, and

namely to their opposition to British economic explotiation and also their unwillingness

to pay for a standing army. Anti-monarchist sentiment was strong, as the colonists

wanted to participate in the politics affecting them.

The next year, representatives of thirteen of the British colonies in North America met in

Philadelphia and declared their independence in a remarkable document, the Declaration of

Independence. The committee had intrusted that task to Thomas Jefferson, who, though at that

time only thirty-three years of age, was chosen for two main reasons: first, because he was held

to possess a singular felicity in the expression of popular ideas and, second, because he

represented the province of Virginia, the oldest of the Anglo-American colonies.

Jefferson, having produced the required document, reported it to the House on the 28th of June,

where it was read, and ordered to lie on the table. After the conclusion of the debate on the

resolution of independence on 2nd July, the Declaration was passed under review. During the

remainder of that day and the two next, this remarkable production was very closely considered

and shifted, and several alterations were made in it, namely the omission of those sentences

which reflected upon the English people, and the striking out of a clause which severely

reprobated the slave-trade.

The debate on the proposed Declaration came to a termination two days later, on the evening of

the 4th of July. The document was then reported by the committee, agreed to by the House, and

signed by every member present, except General Dickinson. The signature of New York was

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not given till several days later, and a New Hampshire member, Matthew Thornton, was

permitted to append his signature on November 4 (four months after the signing). With the help

of their French allies they were eventually able to win the American Revolutionary War against

Great Britain, settled by the Treaty of Paris (1783). So, we can say that the United States of

America was founded in 1776 from British colonies along the Atlantic Coast of North America

and was declared to be independent in 1778.

2.2.3.2. In the rest of the world.

Actually, interests in the wider world expanded through the eighteenth century to such extent

that in the early years of the 18th century the East India Company proves successful regarding

commercial interchanges in India and, in fact, a statutory monopoly of trade was established

between England and India (1708). The number and importance of factories made the English

Company have the control on the area (it had three presidencies at Bombay, Calcutta and

Madras) although Bombay was the only absolute possession in French or English hands.

Despite the fact that it was not a pure trading company, it found no rivalry from other European

states in India since the Portuguese and Dutch, which had established their position in India, left

with few and unimportant possessions or factories.

Overseas, during the earlier half of the century the British empire established more successful

trading companies not only in the West Indies but also in Africa (the Royal African Company)

and in the South Sea (the South Sea Company). On the American Continent, the Caribbean

islands not only provided Britain with sugar and slave trade but also with strategic possessions,

which was a crucial issue in the fight between England and France for colonial possessions. In

fact, as stated above, the British government established the Navigation Act (1773) so as to

monopolize the trade of its products (namely tobacco and sugar) and therefore, establish a close

economic system and guarantee a sheltered market in Britain, not subject to competition from

other colonies, such as those of France, Portugal and Spain.

In the second half of the century, some remaining British colonies were lost temporarily after

the treatise, for instance, the Caribbean islands were controlled by France and Tobago and

Minorca were no longer British. However, the rest of colonies were not economically strong

enough to think of independence even if they had wanted it, as it was the case of South Africa,

which was a military and trading port, a naval station and a port of call. Canada was of greater

economic importance in the sense that its citizens were free to manage their local affairs, so the

demand for self-government did not imply a wish for separation. The colonies were therefore

asking for something like municipal independence.

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In 1768, the first British empire reached the second phase of expansion with the exploratory

voyages of James Cook, who undertook the first of three voyages to the Pacific, surveying New

Zealand, modern Australia, Tahiti and Hawaii. His second voyage (1773) made him the first

Britain to reach Antarctica, and his third voyage (1778-1779) led him to discover and name

island groups in the South Pacific, such as the Sandwich Islands. Unfortunately, Cook was

killed on Hawai on 14 February 1779.

Eventually, the colonisation of the Antipodes, that is, Australia and New Zealand took place as

an attempt to find a place for penal settlement after the loss of the original American colonies.

The first shipload of British convicts landed in this largely unexplored continent in 1788, on the

site of the future city of Sydney. Most convicts were young men who had only committed petty

crimes. In the nineteenth century (1819) new settlers were allowed to set up in New South

Wales and by 1858 transportation of convicts was abolished.

2.3. The nineteenth century: the second British empire.

Following the information given in www.wwnorton.com, “During the next decades, two great

statesmen brought the issue of imperialism to the top of the nation’s political agenda: the

flamboyant Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881), who had a romantic vision of empire that the

sterner William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) distrusted and rejected. Disraeli’s expansionist

vision prevailed and was transmitted by newspapers and novels to a reading public dramatically

expanded by the Education Act of 1870.

Symbolically, the British Empire reached its highest point on June 22, 1897, the occasion of

Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, which the British celebrated as a festival of empire. It was a

great moment where the British Empire was compared to the Roman Empire1, comparison

which was endlessly invoked in further discussions and literary works, for instance, at the start

of Conrad’s novel Heart of Darkness (1902) and in Thomas Hardy’s Poems of Past and Present

(1901).

In 1897 the Empire seemed invincible, but only two years later British confidence was shaken

by the news of defeats at Magersfontein and Spion Kop in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902).

1 “The Roman Empire, at its height, comprised perhaps 120 million people in an area of 2.5 million square miles. The British Empire, in 1897, comprised some 372 million people in 11 million square miles. An interesting aspect of the analogy is that the Roman Empire was long held - by the descendants of the defeated and oppressed peoples of the British Isles - to be generally a good thing. Children in the United Kingdom are still taught that the Roman legions brought laws and roads, civilization rather than

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Those and other battles were lost, but eventually the war was won, and it took two world wars to

bring the British Empire to its end. Those wars also were won, with the loyal help of troops

from the overseas empire”.

2.3.1. Political background.

The political background is namely represented by the accession of Queen Victoria to the throne

when her uncle, William IV dies in 1837. So Victoria would reign from 1837 to 1901 and would

be the longest reigning British monarch. In general terms, during Victoria’s reign, the revolution

in industrial practices continued to change British life, bringing about urbanisation, a good

communications network and wealth. In addition, Britain became a champion of Free Trade

across her massive Empire, and industrialisation and trade were glorified in the Great

Exhibitions. Yet, by the turn of the century, Britain’s empire was being challenged successfully

by other nations such as France and Germany on the continent. We consider worth reviewing

the main political benchmarks under her rule since important changes took place in her colonies.

Thus:

• In 1846 the Corn Law Act was passed again (since it was set up in 1815 already as a

measure to protect the economic interests of landowners after the Napoleonic Wars).

Yet, this kept the price of not only corn but also bread artificially high. Although an

Anti-Corn Law League formed to oppose the legislation, it was not until the potato

famine in Ireland that repeal was enacted in a belated attempt to alleviate some of the

suffering. The repeal marked an end to protectionist policies and can be seen as a major

stepping stone in turning Britain into a free trading nation.

• From the 1850s, Britain was the leading industrial power in the world. Superseding the

early dominance of textiles, railway, construction, iron- and steel-working soon gave

new impetus to the British economy by expanding territories in Africa (namely

railways).

• Yet, the most outstanding event after 1837 was the Great Exhibition in 1851, in which

the British empire was compared to the Roman empire. It was an imperial and industrial

celebration which was held in Hyde Park in London in the specially constructed Crystal

Palace, whose profits allowed for the foundation of public works such as the Albert

Hall, the Science Museum, the National History Museum and the Victoria and Albert

Museum.

oppression, and in the second half of the nineteenth century, that was the precedent invoked to sanction

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• Other important events were the Crimean War between 1854 and 1856, which at first

was between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, and later Britain and France were

involved. During this war Britain maintained their colonial possessions.

• In 1855, Parliament launched the Limited Liabilities Act, by means of which companies

were allowed to limit the liability of their individual investors to the value of their

shares. As a result of the act the risk is credited with being the basis for the increased

investment in trade and industry, although most of the evidence for this is apocryphal.

• Between 1857 and 1858, there was an Indian Mutiny between Indian soldiers (Hindu

and Muslim) who opposed their British commanders following a series of insensitive

military demands which disrespected traditional beliefs. The mutiny led to the end of

East India Company rule in India and its replacement by direct British governmental

rule.

• In May 1868, thirty-four union representatives from the north and midlands of England

met in Manchester for the first Trades Union Congress. At their second annual meeting

a year later, also in Manchester, forty representatives attended - speaking for over a

quarter of a million workers.

• The Third Reform Act took place in 1884 and extended the 1867 concessions from the

boroughs to the countryside. Another act a year later redistributed constituencies, giving

more representation to urban areas, particularly in London.

• In 1893, Keir Hardie founded an Independent Labour Party with the intention of gaining

the election of members of the working class to parliament. The Labour Party replaced

the Liberal Party as the main party of opposition to the Conservatives over the

following decade.

• Following the death of Albert (Victoria’s husband) in 1861, she had increasingly

withdrawn from national affairs and criticism of the Queen lessened and she resumed

her interest in constitutional and imperial affairs (she was created Empress of India in

1877).

• Victoria’s death in January 1901 was an occasion of national mourning.

• Finally, to close the century we find the Boer War (1899-1902) which started as Britain

attempted to annex the Transvaal Republic in southern Africa. In December 1880, the

Boers of the Transvaal revolted against British rule, defeated an imperial force and

forced the British government to recognise their independence. Finally, the peace of

Vereeniging in May 1902 annexed the Boer Republics of Transvaal and the Orange

Free State to the British Empire (which, in 1910, became part of the Union of South

Africa).

the Pax Britannica” (www.wwnorton.com).

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2.3.2. Social and economic background.

The effect of the industrial revolution was also felt in the nineteenth-century Great Britain at

social and economic level, namely in connections between industrialization, labor unions, and

movements for social reform in England, Western Europe, and the United States. Also, it is

namely noticed in the pace and extent of industrialization in Great Britain and the United States

in the latter half of the 19th century, and the main changes brought about by the Great Reform

bill of 1832. The main economic events (which coincide namely with the political ones) are as

follows:

• the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act (1820).

• the legalisation of the first Trade Unions (1824), a movement favoured by workers

joined together to protect themselves against powerful capitalist employers and ask for

fair wages and reasonable conditions.

• the passage of the first Reform Bill (1832), which was secured by William IV, who

agreed to create new peers to overcome the hostile majority in the House of Lords and

to make Parliament a more democratic body. The Reform Act, also known as the

‘Representation of the People Act’, aimed to extend the voting rights and redistribute

Parliamentary seats, and therefore, more equitable basis in the counties.

• Up to 1836, there was a period of greater political confidence which led to an increasing

activity in the trade-unions. It must be borne in mind that the Industrial Revolution was

based on the economic doctrine of Free Trade which means that the government

should not interfere in the natural processes of trade and industry. This uncontrolled

capitalism led to vast social differences.

Actually, up to 1837 the main political consequences on social events are closely connected to

this move from the country to the towns and the division of labour in the industry market. Thus,

the most outstanding consequences are listed as follows:

• the emancipation of slaves in British colonies (1833);

• the organization of work, commonly known as the division of labour, in the industry

market, brought about several changes: a specialization of work with the aim of

speeding mass production; hence, we find the term ‘working classes’, which is divided

in turn depending on the salary the employee obtained (high-paid, regular, casual,

lowest, etc) and the kind of job they carried out. From the negotiation of workers’s

salary, trade unions were established to achieve better wages and conditions of work.

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These unions (also called Friendly Societies) make us aware of the wide variety of

organizations created by working-class peoples in England.

Finally, in economic terms, between 1815 and 1914, another industrial revolution took place.

The industries in the cities eventually won the competition with the rural industries. Because of

the industrial revolution that took place, urbanisation started in the 19th century. Cities still

needed many new people every now and again because of bad sanitary conditions and diseases.

We may find several types of cities: cities with textile industry, cities with heavy industry and

administrative or commercial cities. Meanwhile, in terms of industrial development, the iron

industry had been equally revolutionised by the invention of smelting by pit-coal brought into

use between 1740 and 1750, and by the application in 1788 of the steam-engine to blast

furnaces. In the eight years which followed this later date, the amount of iron manufactured

nearly doubled itself.

In addition, the industrial revolution also effected transportation and hence, trade. In the

nineteeth century bicycles, steamships and trains made it easier for people to move further

away. In the twentieth century, the explosion motor further accelerated this process. An ever-

growing part of world population became subdued to market economy. A further growth of the

factory system took place independent of machinery, and owed its origin to the expansion of

trade, an expansion which was itself due to the great advance made at this time in the means of

communication, for instance, between 1818 and 1829 more than a thousand additional miles of

turnpike road were constructed; and the next year, 1830, saw the opening of the first railroad.

These improved means of communication caused an extraordinary increase in commerce, and to

secure a sufficient supply of goods it became the interest of the merchants to collect weavers

around them in great numbers, to get looms together in a workshop, and to give out the warp

themselves to the workpeople. To these latter this system meant a change from independence to

dependence; at the beginning of the century the report of a committee asserts the essential role

of commerce and communication in the expansion of the Industrial Revolution all over Europe

and the rest of the world.

In the late 19th century, similar revolutionary transformations occurred in other European

nations, such as France (1790-1800 to 1860-1870), Germany (1830-40 to 1870-80), Belgium

(1820-30 to 1870-80) and the United States (1830-40 to 1870-80). Hence, the fight between

France, Germany and England in the construction of railways through the African continent

with the aim of controlling the largest part of the territory.

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2.3.3.The nineteenth-century British colonies.

Generally speaking, the nineteenth century development and administration of British colonies

was focused on the consolidation of existing colonies and the expansion into new areas,

especially in Africa, India and Canada. Actually, in the early nineteenth century new British

colonies were to be acquired or strengthened because of their strategic value, thus Malaca and

Singapore because of their trading ports of growing importance, and the settlements of Alberta,

Manitobba, and the British Columbia in Canada as potential areas of British migration. The

main causes for other new acquisitions were, among others, the Treaty of Amiens (1802) by

adding Trinidad and Ceylon; the Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) with the addition of the Cape of

Good Hope; the War with the United States (1812) brought about the Canadian unity; and the

first Treaty of Paris (1814) gained Tobago, Mauritius, St. Lucia and Malta.

Also, between the years 1857 and 1858 Britain acquired in India the cities of Agra, Bengal and

Assam after some local wars against French influence. Perhaps the Napoleonic Wars brought

about more new acquisitions to the British empire in this century than any other war, since the

Crimean War (1854-1856), the pacification programs in Africa, and some conflicts in New

Zealand (against the Maoris) made little or no difference to the British empire. Yet, the most

serious conflict was just about to come towards the end of the century with the War in Sudan

(1884) and the Boer War (1881, 1899-1902). So, as we can see, still in the nineteenth century,

Great Britain maintained her political and imperial sovereignty.

In order to control these colonies, the British government created a sophisticated system for

colonial administration: the Colonial Office and Board of Trade (1895-1900). Already in the

1850s, they were ruled by legislative bodies, since the colonies continuously asked for

independence. They were separate departments with an increasing staff and a continuing policy

of establishing discipline and pressure on the colonial goverments. Hence most colonial

governements were left to themselves.

However, these legislative bodies governing the new settlements were soon to be replaced by an

executive body which took over the financial control. This elected assembly would be

represented by the figure of the governor and would be responsible for the colonial government.

Therefore, these settlements became ‘crown colonies’, and were subject to direct rule, as we can

see in the African and Pacific expansion where the crown colony system was established. Let us

examine how this new colonial governing body was applied in the colonies of Australia, Asia

and Africa.

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• In the Antipodes, New Zealand and Oceania were systematically colonized in the 1840s

under the pressure of British missionaries. Yet, territorial disputes were brought up

between the new colonists and the homeland tribes, the Maoris. Hence the Maori Wars

(1840s-1860s) which eventually ended with the withdrawal of British troops and a

peaceful agreement of settlement for the newcomers. In the last quarter of the century,

the British empire took the control over other islands in the Pacific, again because of

missionary pressure and international naval rivalry and, eventually, the Fiji Island was

annexed in 1874. Three years later the governement established a British High

Commission for the Western Pacific Islands (1877) as well as a protectorate in Papua

(1884) and in Tonga (1900). These protectorates were soon to be governed by Australia

and New Zealand.

• In Asia, India was conquered and therefore, had an expansion policy. As stated

previously, the suppressed Indian ‘mutiny’ (1857) gave way to the abolishment of the

East India Company (1858) and, therefore, the local executive body was replaced by

that of the crown. Known as ‘the brightest jewel in the British crown’ (a Disraeli’s

phrase), India was a strategic settlement for the British empire and her conquest was

justified in terms of benefits and discipline. Further acquisitions (Burma, Punjab,

Baluchistan) provided new crucial settlements in the area in order to set up a new route

in India. Since the opening of the Suez Canal, new territories were under the influence

of Britain within this route: Aden, Somaliland, territories in southern Arabia and the

Persian Gulf. Moreover, further expansion took place with the development of the

Straits settlements and the federated Malay states; Borneo (1880s), Hong Kong (1841);

and adjacent territories in China, Shangai (1860, 1896), which had trading purposes.

• Finally, the greatest development of the British Empire took place in Africa in the last

quarter of the century. The reign of Queen Victoria brought about a great enthusiasm

for a ‘similar Roman empire’, whose power might extend from the Cape of Good Hope

to El Cairo. This idea fascinated the British citizens who, in Queen Victoria’s two

jubilees, offered colonial conferences, the search of new areas of opportunity, and the

discoveries and wars for mining wealth in South Africa. In fact, the spread of the British

empire comprised by the nineteenth century nearly a quarter of the land surface and

more than a quarter of the population of the world.

From 1882 onwards Britain controlled Egypt and Alexandria (by force), and a joint

administration half British-half Egyptian was established in the Sudan area in 1899.

Also, on the western coast the Royal Niger Company began the expansion over the area

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of Nigeria. By then there were two main British Companies: the Imperial British East

Africa Company, which operated in nowadays Kenya and Uganda, and the British

South Africa Company in the areas now called Rhodesia, Zambia, and Malawi. Hence

the missionary migrations to Africa in the eventual transfer of these territories to the

crown.

2.4. The twentieth century: the dismantling of the British empire.

Therefore, by 1897 the Empire seemed invincible, but only two years later British confidence

was shaken by the news of defeats at Magersfontein and Spion Kop in the Anglo-Boer War

(1899-1902). Hence, after the Boer War (1902), the countries of the overseas empire wanted a

greater measure of self-government, and those and other battles were lost. Yet, eventually the

war was won, and it took two world wars to bring the British Empire to its end. Those wars also

were won, with the loyal help of troops from the overseas empire (more than 200,000 of whom

were killed in World War I alone)”.

After a century of almost unchallenged political security, Britain perceived the aggressive

militarisation of the new German state and Hitler’s empire as a threat. Britain and, therefore, her

empire, lost a large part of a generation of young men in the First World War. Yet, after the

First World War the British Empire continued to grow and, in addition to the self-governing

territories of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, it annexed large tracts of

Africa, Asia and parts of the Caribbean. Also, following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire,

Britain included Iraq and Palestine.

Soon nationalist movements were to be strongly felt in India, Egypt and in the Arab mandated

territories. In 1922 Egypt was granted a degree of independence by Britain and full

independence in 1936. Similarly, Iraq gained full independence in 1932. On the other hand,

India achieved its independence in 1947 after the movement of Indian nationalism, boosted by

the 1919 Amritsar Massacre. In 1931, the British Parliament, by means of the Statue of

Westminster, recognized the legislative independence and equal status under the Crown of its

former dominions and the Irish Free State within a British Commonwealth of Nations. The

resultant relationship is sometimes thought to have been a precursor to the post-war British

Commonwealth.

During the Second World War, Britain’s civilian population found themselves under severe

domestic restrictions, and occasionally bombing. Also, conflict accelerated many social and

political developments and growing nationalist movements impacted both on the British rule of

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Empire and on the individual nations of the British Isles. Hence, most of the remaining imperial

possessions were granted independence, for instance, fifty years after Queen Victoria’s

Diamond Jubilee, India was cut in two to become the Commonwealth countries of India and

Pakistan.

The most recent development in the dismantling of the British Empire was the restoration to

Chinese rule, under a declaration signed in 1984, of the former British crown colony of Hong

Kong, on the southeastern coast of China, where the Union Jack was finally and symbolically

lowered on July 1, 1997. So, one by one, the subject peoples of the British Empire have entered

a postcolonial era, in which they must reassess their national identity, their history and

literature, and their relationship with the land and language of their former masters.

3. A LITERARY BACKGROUND: JOSEPH CONRAD AND RUDYARD KIPLING.

With this historical background in mind, Chapter 3 shall provide a literary background for the

Victorian Literature and, in particular, to the Post-colonial or imperalist literature, namely

reflected through the figures of the Victorian novelists Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. In

this chapter, we shall namely deal with the nineteenth-century literature in the Victorian period,

that is, from 1837 to 1901 so as to frame Conrad and Kipling’s literary works in an appropriate

social and political context to make him coincide with the late consequences of the British

imperialism. So, we shall start by reviewing the (1) Victorian literary background regarding the

main literary forms (a) drama, (b) poetry, and (c) prose, so as to approach the novel and non-

fiction works. Then, we shall provide the reader with the biographies of (2) Joseph Conrad and

(3) Rudyard Kipling in terms of (i) life, (ii) style and (iii) main works.

3.1. The Victorian literary background.

The Victorian Age includes, as stated before, several changes different in nature and, in this

respect, the literary background presents a great variety of aspects. Thus, the literary period is

characterized by its morality, which to a great extent is a natural revolt against the grossness of

the earlier Regency, the influence of the Victorian Court and the enthusiasm for the great British

empire under Victorian rule. In addition, literary productions are affected by all these events,

namely in science, religion, and politics.

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Also, the new education acts of the period made education compulsory, which rapidly produced

an enormous reading public. Actually, the cheapening of printing and paper increased the

demand for books among which the most popular form was the novel. Finally, we also observe

a strong literary interaction between American and European writers (specially in political and

philosopical writings). In Britain, the influence of the great German writers was continuous

(Carlyle, Arnold).

The Victorian literature is characterized by the telling of every detail, as in photography so as to

get a real image of the object or person described. The fact may suggest concepts of clarity,

precision, and certainty. On the contrary, the disadvantages of being close to the object, and of

possessing masses of information about it is the production of copious works. So we notice that

this aspect of clarity is reflected in the main literary productions of the period, which are namely

divided into three groups: political, philosophical and social so as to reflect the events of the

time. But before examining prose in this aspect, let us briefly examine first the other two literary

forms: poetry and drama.

3.1.1. Drama.

Following Albert (1990), “from the dramatic point of view the first half of the nineteenth

century was almost completely barren” since the professional theatre of the period was in a low

state and the greater part of the dramatists work never saw the stage. “The popular pieces of the

day were melodrama, farces and sentimental comedies, which had no literary qualities

whatever, were poor in dialogue and negligible in characterization, and relied for their success

upon sensation, rapid action, and spectacle”.

Among the most prominent dramatists of the period we may mention George Bernard Shaw

(1856-1950), whose first works were received with hostility, and the need to create his own

audience led him to publish som of them before they were produced. Some of his works were

Widower’s Houses (1892), Pleasant and Unpleasant (1898) and The Philanderer (1893:1905);

John Millington Synge (1871-1909), who was the greatest dramatist in the rebirth of the Irish

Theatre and had a unique style since his plays were written in prose, by had the rhythms and

cadences of poetry. Thus, The Shadow of the Glen (1903) and The Tinker’s Wedding (1907);

other lesser dramatist are Henry Arthur Jones (1851-1929), Sir Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-

1934), and John Galsworthy (1867-1933).

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3.1.2. Poetry.

The Victorian Age produced literary works of a high quality, but, except in the novel, the

amount of actual innovation is by no means great since there were many attempts at purely

narrative poetry. Despite the efforts to revive the epic, the impulse was not sufficiently strong.

In the early nineteenth century we may higlight some preeminent poets of the Victorian Age,

such as:

• Alfred, Lord Tennyson whose poetry, although romantic in subject matter, was

tempered by personal melancholy; in its mixture of social certitude and religious doubt

it reflected the age.

• The poetry of Robert Browning and his wife, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who was

immensely popular, though Elizabeth’s was more venerated during their lifetimes.

Browning is best remembered for his superb dramatic monologues.

• Rudyard Kipling was the poet of the triumphant empire, who would capture the quality

of the life of the soldiers of British expansion, and would reflect the Indian atmosphere.

He also wrote in prose, among which his most popular work was The Jungle Book

(1984).

• In the middle of the 19th century we find the so-called Pre-Raphaelites who, led by the

painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti, sought to revive what they judged to be the

simple, natural values and techniques of medieval life and art.

• Other Victorian figures, such as A. E. Housman and Thomas Hardy, who lived on into

the 20th century, shared a pessimistic view in their poetry.

• Yet, the great innovator among the late Victorian poets was the Jesuit priest Gerard

Manley Hopkins, whose concentration and originality of imagery had a profound effect

on the twentieth-century poetry.

• In the last decade of the century, we find the so-called decadents, who pointed out the

hypocrisies in Victorian values and institutions. among them in both notoriety and

talent. Among them, we find the notorious figure of Oscar Wilde.

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3.1.3. Prose: the novel.

There is no doubt that the Victorian era was the great age of the English novel, namely realistic,

thickly plotted, crowded with characters, and long.. By the end of the period, the novel was

considered not only the premier form of entertainment but also a primary means of analyzing

and offering solutions to social and political problems. This king style is presented with a

political, philosophical or social overtone (Thackeray, Dickens, Brontë) since was the ideal

form to describe contemporary life and to entertain the middle class.

Another variety of prose is the short story (namely developed in the next century); the essays, in

the treatise-style (Carlyle, Symonds, Pater); the lecture, which became prominent both in

England and in America; historical novel, strongly represented by William Stubbs, Edward A.

Freeman and Samuel R. Gardiner; and finally, we find the scientific treatise so as to account of

the scientific developments of the period (Browne, Burton, Berkeley).

• Political writing reflects the political consequences of the industrial revolution in

eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain. Therefore, writers such as Benjamin Disraeli

(1804-1881), Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1803-1873), Anthony Trollope (1815-1882), who

was famous for sequences of related novels that explore social, ecclesiastical, and

political life in England, and Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) among others, show,

denunciate and value the moral and political affairs which deeply affected society in

Britain at that period. Thus, some of their works are respectively, Coningsby: or the

New Generation (1844), Sybil: or The Two Nations (1845), dealing with the politics of

his day; Richelieu, or the Conspiracy (1839), A Strange Story (1862) and The Coming

Race (1871); Phineas Finn (1869) and Phineas Redux (1874), where Trollope makes a

satire of the political period; and finally, Carlyle’s The French Revolution (1837) and

Oliver Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches (1845), in an attempt to criticize Cromwells’

methods.

• Philosophical writing is represented by George Eliot (1819-1880), who is actually a

woman writing under a pen-name, George Meredith (1828-1909) and Thomas Henry

Huxley (1825-1895). His main works reflect the most outstanding philosophical and

moral problems of the period, thus respectively: Eliot’s Adam Bede (1859), an excellent

picture of English country life among the humbler classes, Felix Holt the Radical

(1866), a critical work on the Reform Bill, and Daniel Deronda (1876), which strongly

coloured preoccupation at that period with moral problems and and inexorable realism;

Meredith’s Vittoria (1867) which revindicates the spirited handling of the Italian

insurrectionary movement and The Egoist (1879), with a moral plot; finally, Huxley’s

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Man’s Place in Nature (1863), Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews (1870), and

American Addresses (1877).

• Finally, social writing is represented by:

o William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), whose works showed a biting

humour and the observation of human weaknesses, thus The Book of Snobs

(1849), The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon (1844), a picaresque novel, and Vanity

Fair (1847-1848), which tells about the fortunes of Becky Sharp to denounce

the mournful vision of the vanities of mankind, and wickedly satirizes

hypocrisy and greed; and The Virginians (1857-1859).

o The Brontë sisters, Charlotte (1816-1855), Emily (1818-1878) and Anne (1820-

1849) wrote melodramatic, terror and passionate novels addressing the features

of the period in which they lived. Thus, Charlotte’s Jane Eyre (1847), full of

countryside details, Shirley (1849) and Villette (1853); Emily’s unique

Wuthering Heights (1847) in a description of the wild, desolate moors where

the main characters conceive their passions in gigantic proportions, described

with a stark realism; finally, Anne’s Agnes Grey (1847) and The Tenant of

Wildfell Hall (1848).

o Wilkie Collins (1824-1889), who was considered to be the most successful of

the followers of Dickens, specialized in the mystery novel to which he

sometimes added a spice of the supernatural. Thus The Dead Secret (1857),

The Woman in White (1860) and The Moonstone (1868) as one of his earliest

detective stories.

o Thomas Hardy (1840-1928), who was strongly criticized by his stark pesimism

in his writing. Among his most famous works, we highlight Tess of the

D’Urbevilles (1891), Poems of the past and present (1901), The dynasts (1903-

1908), and Moments of Vision (1917). He is regarded as one of the first

modernists in content, attitude rather than form.

o Charles Dickens (1812-1870), who showed in all his novels a great interest in

Social Reform at his time. His novels, full to overflowing with drama, humor,

and an endless variety of vivid characters and plot complications, nonetheless

spare nothing in their portrayal of what urban life was like for all classes.

o Finally, among many others not mentioned, we find Joseph Conrad (1857-

1924) and Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), who were profoundly preoccupied

with the consequences of imperalism and the British empire expansion, namely

in Africa and India, respectively. Let us examine their life, style and main

works in detail.

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3.2. Joseph Conrad (1857-1924).

3.2.1. Life.

Jósef Teodor Konrad Naleçz Korzeniowski was born at Berdiczew, in the Ukraine, in a region

that had once been a part of Poland but was then under Russian rule. His father Apollo

Korzeniowski was an aristocrat without lands since the family estates had been sequestrated in

1839 following an anti-Russian rebellion. Also a poet and translator of English and French

literatures, Joseph read Polish and French versions of English novels with his father. When

Apollo Korzeniowski became embroiled in political activities, he was sent to exile with his

family to Volgoda, northern Russia, in 1861.

When he was seven, his mother died of tuberculosis and his father lived in exile until 1869,

when Czarist authorities permitted him to move south. Yet, after that remove, his father also

died when young Conrad was just eleven, He was then adopted by his mother’s uncle, the

indulgent Tadeusz Bobrowski. Educated at Cracow, he was intended for the university, but at

the age of seventeen he was determined to go to sea (1874). Actually, he went to Marseilles in

he began a long period of adventure at sea where he joined the French merchant marine. Young

Conrad was implicated in a Carlist conspiracy to place the Duke of Madrid on the Spanish

throne. After a suicide attempt, Conrad joined the British merchant service in 1878 and by 1885

he had his master mariner’s cerfificate, commanding his own ship, Otago.

In 1886 he was given British citizenship and he changed officially his name to Joseph Conrad.

In the ten years that followed, before ill-health caused him to leave the sea in 1894, he had spent

twenty years roaming the world in said and steam ships. Conrad sailed to many parts of the

world, including Australia, various ports of the Indian Ocean, Borneo, the Malay states, South

America, and the South Pacific Island.

Since Conrad did not find shore-life easy, he travelled to the Belgian Congo in 1890. He sailed

in Africa up the Congo River, and the journey provided much material for his novel Heart of

Darkness. His expedition had left him with malarial gout, which afflicted his wrist so much that

he often found writing painful. However, he felt attracted again by the fabled East Indies which

became the setting of many of his stories. He sailed between Singapore and Borneo, voyages

that gave him an unrivaled background of mysterious creeks and jungle for the tales that he

would write after 1896, when he retired from the sea to settle in Ashford, Kent, with his new

wife, Jessie Chambers. By 1894 Conrad’s sea life was over. During the long journeys he had

started to write and Conrad decided to devote himself entirely to literature. At the age of 36

Conrad settled down in England.

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Conrad sold the American screen rights to his fiction in 1919 and hence, the most famous

adaptations made by Alfred Hitchcock’s The Sabotage (1936), based on The Secret Agent

(1097), Richard Brooks’s Lord Jim (1964) and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979),

based on Heart of Darkness. Yet, he did not like to work for the film business, and did not know

about screenwritings since the studios rejected his scripts. Last years of his life were shadowed

by rheumatism. He refused an offer of knighthood in 1924 as he had earlier declined honorary

degrees from five universities. Conrad died of a heart attack on August 3, 1924 and was buried

in Canterbury.

3.2.2. Style.

Although Conrad is known as a novelist, he tried his hand also as a playwright. His first one-act

play was not success and the audience rejected it. But after finishing the text he learned the

existence of the Censor of the Plays, which inspired his satirical essay about the obscure civil

servant. Conrad was an Anglophile who regarded Britain as a land which respected individual

liberties. As a writer he accepted the verdict of a free and independent public, but associated this

official figure of censorship to the atmosphere of the Far East and the ‘mustiness of the Middle

Ages’, which shouldn’t be part of the twentieth-century England (Magnusson & Goring, 1990).

Following Alfred (1990:444), “Conrad’s prose style is one of the most indiv idual and readily

recognizable in English, not, as might be expected in a Pole, for its eccentricities, but for its full

use of the musical potentialities of the language. His careful attention to grouping and rhythm

and to such technical devices as alliteration enables him, at his best, to achieve a prose that is

akin to poetry. When he writes below his best he can become over-ornamental, self-conscious,

and artificially stylized”.

Among other features of this writing style, we may mention his subjects, namely about

adventure in an unusual or exotic setting due to his experiences in the sea and the exploration of

Africa and East Indies; his characters, both men and women, are presented in brief, illuminating

flashes and who are vital individuals. They are rarely commonplace and some of his best are

villains as Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness; his view of life, out of which Conrad had a profound

sense of the tragedy of life and the man’s struggle agains hostile forces; finally, he had a

traditional direct narrative method, and the oblique method, by means of which he presents his

material in an easy, conversational manner through the medium of a spectator, and gradually he

builds up a picture of the situation by brief sense impressions (Albert, 1990).

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3.2.3. Main works.

Primarily seen in his own time as a writer of sea stories, Conrad is now highly regarded as a

novelist whose work displays a deep moral consciousness and masterful narrative technique.

Among his early novels, we find that the two first works were based on his experiences of

Malaya, thus Almayer’s Folly (1895); An Outcast of the Islands (1896), where he presents a

vivid tropical background and a study of a white man whose moral stamina was sapped by the

insidious influence of the tropics; his third early work was The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1897),

a moving story oflife on board ship, remarkable for a full of romantic description in a powerful

atmosphere of mystery and brooding.

His next work was Tales of Unrest (1898), which contains five storie s, and was followed by

Lord Jim: a Tale (1900). This is one of the best of Conrad’s studies of men whose strength fails

them in a moment of crisis, and is again a story of the sea. It is in this work that Conrad

introduces for the first time his technique of oblique narrative, the story being told through the

ironical Marlow, a character who frequently appears in later novels. Then he wrote Youth: A

Narrative; and two other Stories (1902) and Typhoon, and Other Stories (1903), which contain

seven tales which include some of Conrad’s most powerful work. In the former collection it is

remarkable The Heart of Darkness (1899) for an overwhelming sense of evil and corruption and

for its excellent tropical background.

Influenced by Henry James, another Conrad’s finest work is Nostromo – A Tale of the Seaboard

(1904), which shifts the scene to the coastline of Central America. It is a story of revolution and

has many well-drawn portraits. Throughout his fiction Conrad is concerned with moral

dilemmas, the isolation of the individual to be tested by experience, and the psychology of inner

urges in both groups and individuals. This is reflected in his semi-autobiographical The Mirror

of The Sea (1906), which is a series of essays based on his experiences in the oceans of the

world and contains excellent pictures.

This work was followed by the popular detective story The Secret Agent – A Simple Tale

(1907), “which, though it contains some one or two well-drawn figurs and suggests quite

powerfully the atmosphere of the Underworld, is not one of his best” (Albert, 1990:442). The

same may be said of the stories in A Set of Six (1908) and his tale of Russian revolutionaries,

Under Western Eyes (1911), of which the best features are the character of Razumov and the

atmosphere of fear. Next work, Twixt Land and Sea - Tales (1912) which contains three

outstanding short stories: “Typhoon” and “The Shadow-Line” that describe the testing of human

character under conditions of extreme danger and difficulty, and “Some Reminiscences” which

testifies his high artistic aims.

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Conrad uses fiction to analyze the macrocosm (world at large) by presenting objectively and

scientifically a microcosm. His remoteness from the British reading public, and his consequent

his lack of knowledge about what makes a popular novel, makes his stories all the more real.

Conrad often maneuvers to keep the reader at a distance from the characters in order to view

them objectively. For example, in writing “The Inn of the Two Witches” in the winter of 1912

for the London Pall Mall (1913) and New York Metropolitan (May, 1913) magazines he

resorted to another “Chinese box” narrative technique, presumably written in the first person.

Then came Chance- A Tale in Two Parts (1914), written in the oblique method of story-telling.

Here Marlow appears again as a narrator, but the story is also told from several other points of

view. After Victory- An Island Tale (1915) and a further collection of four short stories, Within

the Tides – Tales (1915), Conrad wrote The Shadow line- A Confession (1917), a short novel in

which the suggestion of the supernatural is present. Other novels followed, such as The Rescue

– A Romance of the Shallows (1920), which is long but with moments of high excitement, and

shows and excellent picture of primitive men. The Arrow of Gold – A Story between Two Notes

(1919) and The Rover (1923) are both set in a background of European history, and were not

very successful.

In his late years, he wrote Suspense- A Napoleonic Novel (1925), which was unfinished at his

death. Other works were published posthumously, such as Tales of Hearsay (1925), four stories,

and Last Essays (1926). We shall finally mention in this group his autobiographical novels since

they show the real Conrad and his own experiences. Thus, A Personal Record (1912) and Notes

on Life and Letters (1921), relevant for Conrad’s views on his own art, and of two novels, The

Inheritors- An Extravagant Story (1901) and Romance- A Novel (1903), in which he

collaborated with Ford Maddox Hueffer.

3.3. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936).

3.3.1. Life.

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, India, on December 30, 1865, and made a significant

contribution to English Literature in various genres including poetry, short story and novel. His

birth took place in an affluent family with his father holding the post of Professor of

Architectural Sculpture at the Bombay School of Art and his mother coming from a family of

accomplished women. He spent his early childhood in India where an “aya” took care of him

and where under her influence he came in direct contact with the Indian culture and traditions.

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Following Sullivan (1993), his parents decided to send him to England for education and so at

the young age of five he started living in England with Madam Rosa, the landlady of the lodge

he lived in, where for the next six years he lived a life of misery due to the mistreatment since

he faced beatings and general victimization. Due to this sudden change in environment and the

evil treatment he received, he suffered from insomnia for the rest of his life. This played an

important part in his literary imagination (Sandison A.G.). His parents removed him from the

rigidly Calvinistic foster home and placed him in a private school at the age of twelve. The

English schoolboy code of honor and duty deeply affected his views in later life, especially

when it involved loyalty to a group or a team.

Returning to India in 1882 he worked as a newspaper reporter for the Lahore Civil and Military

Gazette and the Allahabad Pioneer (1882-1887), and a part-time writer and this helped him to

gain a rich experience of colonial life which he later presented in his stories and poems. Later

on, in 1907 Kipling won the Nobel prize in literature in consideration of the power of

observation, originality of imagination, virility of ideas and remarkable talent for narration

which characterized his writings. The death of both his children, Josephine and John, deeply

affected his life.

Therefore, both these incidents left a profound impression on his life, which his works published

in the subsequent years after their deaths displays. Between 1919 and 1932 he travelled

intermittently, and continued to publish stories, poems, sketches and historical works though his

output dwindled. As he grew older his works display his preoccupation with physical and

psychological strain, breakdown, and recovery. In 1936, plagued by illness, he passed away into

the world beyond, leaving behind a legacy that will live for centuries to come (Sullivan, 1993).

3.3.2. Style.

Since Kipling wrote during the period known as the Victorian Age, his writings show the main

topics of the English and Western Literature of the time, thus conservatism, optimism and self-

assurance both in prose and poetry. Though Kipling’s works achieved literary fame during his

early years, as he grew older his works faced enormous amount of literary criticism. His works

dealt with racial and imperialistic topics which attracted a lot of criticss, who condemned the

fact that unlike the popular model of poetry, Kipling’ works did not have an underlying meaning

to it and that interpreting it required no more than one reading.

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As Kipling grew older his works, his popularity among the masses persisted without change. In

fact due to his ability to relate to the layman as well as the literary elite through his works, he

joined a select group of authors who reached a worldwide audience of considerable diversity.

Kipling’s reputation started a revival course after T.S. Eliot’s essay on his works where Eliot

describes the most salient feature of Kipling style: the “great verse” that sometimes

unintentionally changes into poetry. In his lifetime Kipling went from the unofficial Poet

Laureate of Great Britan to one of the most denounced poet in English Literary History. In

contrast to the path his reputation took, Rudyard Kipling improved as a poet as his career

matured and by the time of his death Kipling had compiled one of the most diverse collection of

poetry in English Literature.

Since Kipling was an Imperialist, his main themes read about attitudes towards British rule in

India. Kipling believed it was right and proper for Britain to “own” India and rule its people,

and the possibility that this position might be questionable never seems to have crossed his

mind. At the time he was writing there was a considerable ferment of revolt among Indians

against British rule, and yet, he has shown, at points in Kim (1901) when in Chapter 3 he has an

old soldier comment on the Great Mutiny of 1857, dismissing it as “madness”.

He was a prolific and versatile writer whose journalistic experience served him to great extent

throughouthis career. His prose works, which include stories of Indian life, of children, and of

animals are told with great vitality. He had an inventive faculty, a romantic taste for the

adventurous and the supernatural, and an apparently careless, very colloquial style, which

ensured for his work a popular reception. He also dealt with the superiority of the white race, of

Britain’s undoubted mission to extend through her imperial policy the benefits of civilization to

the rest of the world. He believed in the progress and value of the machine, found and echo in

the hearts of many of his readers since they lived the late consequences of the industrial

revolution.

He presented a really good picture of Anglo-Indian and of native life. His portraits of soldiers,

natives and of children were vivid and real, with a soft characterization. His background is

clearly visualized and realistically presented since he had a great ability to create an atmosphere

of mystery. The apparent carelessness of his style was a deliberate and skilfully cultivated

technique.

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3.3.3. Main works.

Kipling’s works span over five decades both as poetry and prose. Regarding the former, in 1886

he published his first volume of poetry, Departmental Ditties and other poems followed, such as

Barrack-room Balladas (1892), The Seven Seas (1896), The Five Nations (1903), Inclusive

Verse 1885-1918 (1919) and Poems, 1886-1929 (1930). Over the immediately following years

he published some of his most exquisite works including his most acclaimed poem Recessional.

Regarding prose works, between 1887 and 1889 he published six volumes of short stories set in

and concerned with the India he had come to know and love so well. When he returned to

England he found himself already recognized and acclaimed as a brilliant writer. Earlier prose

works include Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), Soldiers Three (1888), The Phantom Rickshaw

(1888), Wee Willie Winkie (1888), Life’s Handicap (1891), Many Inventions (1893), The Jungle

Book (1894), Captains Courageous (1897), The Days’s Work (1898), and his most famed novel,

Kim (1901). Other works followed, thus Just-so Stories for Little Children (1910), Debits and

Credits (1926), and Limits and Renewals (1932).

4. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS IN LANGUAGE TEACHING.

Literature, and therefore, literary language is one of the most salient aspect of educational

activity. In classrooms all kinds of literary language (poetry, drama, novel, prose, periodicals –

newspapers, pamphlets-), either spoken or written, is going on for most of the time. Yet,

handling literary productions in the past makes relevant the analysis of ‘literature in the

Victorian period and, in particular, the rise of one of the most relevant literary forms for

students: the novel, as well as periodicals, poems, essays, and poetry, as reflected in the two

authors under study. Hence it makes sense to examine the historical background of the Victorian

period so as to provide a particular period of time with an appropriate context (imperialism,

post-colonial literature).

Currently, action research groups attempt to bring about change in classroom learning and

teaching through a focus on literary production under two premises. First, because they believe

learning is an integral aspect of any form of activity and second, because education at all levels

must be conceived in terms of literature and history. The basis for these assumptions is to be

found in an attempt, through the use of historical events, to develop understanding of students’

shared but diverse social and physical environment.

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Learning involves a process of transformation of participation itself which has far reaching

implications on the role of the teacher in the teaching-learning relationship. This means that

literary productions are an analytic tool and that teachers need to identify the potential

contributions and potential limitations of them before we can make good use of the historical

events which frame the literary period.

So, literature productions may be easily approached by means of the subjects of History,

Language and Literature by establishing a paralelism with the Spanish one (age, literature

forms, events). Since literature may be approached in linguistic terms, regarding form and

function (morphology, lexis, structure, form) and also from a cross-curricular perspective

(Sociology, History, English, French, Spanish Language and Literature), Spanish students are

expected to know about the history of Britain and its influence in the world.

In addition, one of the objectives of teaching the English language is to provide good models of

almost any kind of literary productions for future studies. Following van Ek & Trim (2001), ‘the

learners can perform, within the limits of the resources available to them, those writing (and

oral) tasks which adult citizens in general may wish, or be called upon, to carry out in their

private capacity or as members of the general public’ when dealing with the ir future regarding

personal and professional life.

Moreover, nowadays new technologies may provide a new direction to language teaching as

they set more appropriate context for students to experience the target culture. Present-day

approaches deal with a communicative competence model in which first, there is an emphasis

on significance over form, and secondly, motivation and involvement are enhanced by means of

new technologies. Hence literary productions and the history of the period may be approched in

terms of films and drama representations in class, among others, and in this case, by means of

books (novels: historical, terror, descriptive), paper (essays), among others.

Actually, Conrad’s influence upon 20th-century literature was wide since Ernest Hemingway

expressed special admiration for the author, and his impact is seen in among others in the work

of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Arthur Koestler, T.S. Eliot, Marcel Proust, André Malraux, Louis-

Ferdiand Céline, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Graham Greene. Moreover, several of Conrad’s stories

have been filmed. The most famous adaptations are Alfred Hitchcock’s The Sabotage (1936),

based on The Secret Agent (1097), Richard Brooks’s Lord Jim (1964) and Francis Ford

Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), based on Heart of Darkness; as well as two of Rudyard

Kipling’s works, The Jungle Book (1894) and Kim (1901).

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The success partly lies in the way literary works become real to the users. Some of this

motivational force is brought about by intervening in authentic communicative events.

Otherwise, we have to recreate as much as possible the whole cultural environment in the

classroom by means of documentaries, history books, or their family’s stories. This is to be

achieved within the framework of the European Council (1998) and, in particular, the Spanish

Educational System which establishes a common reference framework for the teaching of

foreign languages where students are intended to carry out several communication tasks with

specific communicative goals, for instance, how to locate a literary work within a particular

historical period.

Analytic interpretation of texts in all genres should become part of every literary student’s basic

competence (B.O.E., 2004). There are hidden influences at work beneath the textual surface:

these may be sociocultural, inter and intratextual. The literary student has to discover these, and

wherever necessary apply them in further examination. The main aims that our currently

educational system focuses on are mostly sociocultural, to facilitate the study of cultural themes,

as our students must be aware of their current social reality within the European framework.

5. CONCLUSION.

Since literature reflects the main concerns of a nation at all levels, it is extremely important for

students to be aware of the close relationship between History and Literature so as to understand

the main plot of a novel, short story, or any other form of literary work. In this unit, we have

particularly approached the period of the Victorian Age and Imperialism as a time of great

changes, colonial expansion and wars. For the better, or for the worse.

The aim of this unit was to provide a useful introduction to the development and administration

of the British colonial empire, namely in the eighteenth and ninete enth centuries since it is

considered to be a turning point in the history of Great Britain because of the consequences that

followed. Our main aim was to set in context the writing of relevant figures such as Joseph

Conrad and Rudyard Kipling so as to show how this situation was reflected in the literature of

the time.

In doing so, it was necessary to revise some conceptions related to the imperial expansion such

as the difference between the concepts imperialism vs. colonialism and also, the situation in

Great Britain before and during the eighteenth and nineteenth century so as to better understand

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the deep changes which gave way to this colonial expansion, and analyse the reasons why Great

Britain was determined to take control of great areas far from the Continent.

Therefore, we have examined the policy of the colonial expansion regarding the two British

empires. Then, we considered quite relevant to trace back in time to analyse the sixteenth,

seventeenth and eighteenth centuries since they have the answer for the establishment of the

first British empire regarding the political background in Great Britain at that time; the

Industrial Revolution and its consequences on the imperial expansion.

Moreover, we have examined the seventeeth-century great developments, their consequences in

the eighteenth century, and the main British colonies in America with the establishment of the

first American colonies and in the rest of the world (India, Africa, Australia, etc). Next, we have

analysed how imperial expansion developed in the nineteenth century regarding the

development of the second British empire at a political, social and economic background, and

we have offered an account of the main nineteenth-century British colonies; finally, on reaching

the twentie th century we have analysed the dismantling of the British empire.

With this background in mind, we were ready to provide a literary background for the Victorian

Literature and, in particular, to the Post-colonial or imperalist literature, namely reflected

through the figures of the Victorian novelists Joseph Conrad and Rudyard Kipling. In this

chapter, we have namely dealt with the nineteenth-century literature in the Victorian period, that

is, from 1837 to 1901 so as to frame Conrad and Kipling’s literary works in an appropriate

social and political context to make him coincide with the late consequences of the British

imperialism.

So far, we have attempted to provide the reader in this presentation with a historical background

on the vast amount of literature productions in the Victorian period, and its further

developments up to the nineteenth and twentieth century. This information is relevant for

language learners, even 2nd year Bachillerato students, who do not automatically establish

similiarities between British, Spanish and worldwide literary works. So, learners need to have

these associations brought to their attention in cross-curricular settings. As we have seen,

understanding how literature developed and is reflected in our world today is important to

students, who are expected to be aware of the richness of English literature, not only in Great

Britain but also in other English-speaking countries.

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6. BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Alexander, M. 2000. A History of English Literature. Macmillan Press. London. Azim, F. 1993. The colonial rise of the novel. London: Routledge. B.O.E. 2004. Consejería de Educación y Cultura. Decreto N.º 116/2004, de 23 de enero. Currículo de la Educación Secundaria Obligatoria en la Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia. B.O.E. 2004. Consejería de Educación y Cultura. Decreto N.º 117/2004, de 23 de enero. Currículo de Bachillerato en la Comunidad Autónoma de la Región de Murcia. Council of Europe (1998) Modern Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. A Common European Framework of reference. Escudero, A. 1988. La Revolución Industrial . Anaya.

Karl, F. 1960. A Reader's Guide to Joseph Conrad . New York: Noonday.

Magnusson, M., and Goring, R. (eds.). 1990. Cambridge Biographical Dictionary. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Overton, M. 1996. Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500-1850. Cambridge University Press.

Sanders, A. 1996. The Short Oxford History of English Literature. Oxford University Press.

Speck, W.A. 1998. Literature and Society in Eighteenth-Century England: Ideology Politics and Culture 1680-1820. Book Reviews.

Sullivan, Z.T. 1993. Narratives of empire: the fictions of Rudyard Kipling. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Thoorens, Léon. 1969. Panorama de las literaturas Daimon: Inglaterra y América del Norte. Gran Bretaña y Estados Unidos de América. Ediciones Daimon.

Other sources include: Microsoft (R). 1997. Encyclopedia Encarta. Microsoft Corporation. Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia (The). 2003. 6th ed. Columbia University Press. www.bbc.com www.wwnorton.com