Race and Empire (2023 Victorian Reading Project)

The year isn’t quite done, but I’m stuck in the middle of a few different books from my TBR pile so there won’t be many reviews before the end of the year. So, instead, I thought I’d reflect a little on the reading project I started at the beginning of this year, in part to help me get through a TBR long-list from the various Victorian archives!

Race and Empire was the first theme on my reading list, and I started strong in January and got through everything on the list. My top recommendations would be:

• An African Millionaire, Grant Allen (1897), and
• Sultana’s Dream, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905).

But general reflections on the 19 texts (some grouped) below.

Sidebar

This is not my area of expertise, and I was reading for interest while conscious that I would be under-qualified to speak in great depth about the importance, meaning, and history of many of the texts. I read (and organised the reading) chronologically because I wasn’t hugely familiar with most of the texts and it wasn’t possible to organise them any other way with reasonable accuracy. This wasn’t an area that I studied in depth when I was a student doing my undergrad and master’s study, and when I did it was in a Stephen Greenblatt class about sixteenth- and seventeenth-century colonisation of the “New World”, and not a significant part of my Victorian literature study.

So, for actual syllabi on this theme that organise the texts with greater insight into the relevant themes and geographical contexts, I strongly recommend the resources compiled by the Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom team. I’ve found these useful in trying to pare down what I might read to an achievable number for the wider reading project while still having some breadth across geographical regions. There are an increasing number of options for accessing these sorts of texts, which are still not widely anthologised or republished. For example, COVE has now completed Krupabai Satthianadhan’s Kamala: A Story of Hindu Life, thanks to the work of COVE RA Kaylah Morgan. If you are interested in Victorian India, there are a number of texts available now at COVE Studio for inclusion in a course anthology, including:

• Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s sonnets (assorted);
• Dinah Craik’s “The Half-Caste”;
• Rudyard Kipling’s “The Story of Muhammed Din” and “The White Man’s Burden”;
• Henry LaBouchère’s “The Brown Man’s Burden”;
• Mary Kirby’s “Going to School in India” and “A Little About Caste”;
• Thomas Macaulay’s “Minute on Indian Education”;
• Henry Mayhew’s “Hindoo Beggar”;
• T.N. Mukharji, A Visit to Europe (excerpts);
• Cornelia Sorabji’s Love and Life Behind the Purdah; and
• Priti Joshi’s BRANCH article, “Can the Indian ‘Mutiny’ Be Fixed?” (with geolocation).

The reading plan

1. Poems and The Fakeer of Jungheera, Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1827 and 1828)
2. Indian Woman’s Death Song and The Indian City, Felicia Hemans (1828)
3. The History of Mary Prince, Mary Prince (1831)
4. The Aboriginal Mother, Eliza Hamilton Dunlop (1838)
5. Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1848)
6. Poems on Miscellaneous Subjects, Frances E.W. Harper (1854)
7. What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile, John Hanning Speke (1864)
8. María, Jorge Isaacs (1864-7)
9. How I Found Livingstone, Henry Morton Stanley (1872)
10. Savitri, Toru Dutt (1882)
11. The Story of an African Farm, Olive Schreiner (1883)
12. A Cry from an Indian Wife, Emily Pauline Johnson (1885)
13. King Solomon’s Mines, H. Rider Haggard (1885)
14. An African Millionaire, Grant Allen (1897)
15. Onondaga Madonna, Duncan Campbell Scott (1898)
16. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1899)
17. Sultana’s Dream, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain (1905)

Reflections

I found each text interesting for the new insight it gave me into different local, national, and regional contexts, none of which are my own. Both the Derozio and the Hemans speak to Hindu/Muslim tensions, and I found Fakeer to have echoes of Byron, particularly sections of Don Juan, which I’d love to re-read at some point (thus adding to my TBR). The Hemans spoke to the lot of women in similar ways to the Derozio poems, as well as many of the other poems that focus explicitly on the experience of women, as slaves (Mary Prince, Poems, Runaway), as persecuted (indigenous) wives and mothers (Mother, Madonna), as lovers (Savitri, Marìa), or as women forging their own paths (African Farm, Sultana’s Dream). This was, unintentionally, a really significant theme across a majority of the readings.

In the non-fiction travel literature, Nile and Livingstone, there’s a fascinating snapshot of the history, and having read the fascinating King Leopold’s Ghost (Adam Hochschild) a few years ago, it was instructive to read some of these primary sources (taking them of course with a pinch of salt!). The associated fictional account in Heart of Darkness is probably familiar to many, through Apocalypse Now if not through the original, but it was interesting to read after having ploughed through Speke’s testimonial.

In some ways, King Solomon’s Mines and An African Millionaire stand alongside the non-fiction work in their enthusiasm for colonial activity, and in particular the exploitation of the hunt for/mining of diamonds. Grant Allen’s novel/story collection (I think there is an interesting question about its genre!) was by far my favourite read because it combined lots of what I love about Allen generally, including his detective fiction. The titular South African diamond millionaire (and British MP) Sir Charles repeatedly gets his comeuppance, courtesy of a skilled conman. It combines detective tropes (from the victim’s side) with an anticapitalist undertone that made it great fun to read.

Sultana’s Dream was a great way to end this reading block. Although we’re well into the Edwardian period by the time of its publication, I wanted to include it because it is such a fun piece. It’s short but is resonant with so much other utopian fiction, particularly socialist and feminist utopian fiction, incorporating ideas like . (Mizora (1880-1) by Mary E. Bradley Lane is on the reading list under a different theme.)

Other possible readings

Other suggestions welcome in the comments, but some of mine include:

• Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë and Wide Sargasso Sea, Jean Rhys
• Her Father’s Name, Florence Marryat
• The Light That Failed, Rudyard Kipling
• The Ragged Edge. Anna Comtesse de Brémont
• Hide and Seek, Wilkie Collins (which I’m including in another section of the reading project)