No Petticoats Here — Early Colonial Cannibals

Abstract

Colonial adventure fiction was a genre popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The stories were usually set in the colonies, typically India or Africa. These locations were sites for adventures involving treasure, rebellious slaves, wild animals, and inhospitable lands. Andrea White notes how the adventure fiction served various ‘utilitarian purposes’, such as ‘dispensing practical historical information and … promoting an officially endorsed ideology of patriotic heroism and Christian dutifulness compatible with imperialistic aims … besides having great popular appeal, the works were also educational and inspirational’ (Joseph 81). Indeed, adventure fiction achieved a certain authority for being inspirational and educational, and for demanding credibility. The romance writing of the mid- and late nineteenth century played an important part in British culture as a narrative depiction of theories of social change (Daly 5). The novels of Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson, and H. Rider Haggard provided readers with ‘knowledge’ of the far-flung territories of a burgeoning empire. This was a profitable exercise as armchair adventurers proved to be avid consumers of colonial fiction. Importantly, though, these novels provided information not only about the colonies but also about England and the notion of Englishness.