Fieldwork of Empire 1840-1900

<p>Fieldwork of Empire 1840-1900: Intercultural Dynamics in the Production of British Expeditionary Literature examines the impact of non-western cultural political and social forces and agencies on the production of British expeditionary literature; it is a project of recovery. The book argues that such non-western impact was considerable that it shaped the discursive and material dimensions of expeditionary literature and that the impact extends to diverse materials from the expeditionary archive at a scale and depth that critics have previously not acknowledged. The focus of the study falls on Victorian expeditionary literature related to Africa a continent of accelerating British imperial interest in the nineteenth century but the study’s findings have the potential to inform scholarship on European expeditionary imperial and colonial literature from a wide variety of periods and locations. The book’s analysis is illustrative not comprehensive. Each chapter targets intercultural encounters and expeditionary literature associated with a specific time period and African region or location. The book suggests that future scholarship – especially in areas such as expeditionary history geography cartography travel writing studies and book history – needs to adopt much more of a localized non-western focus if it is to offer a full account of the production of expeditionary discourse and literature. </p>