Brandenstein, Claudia. "Imperial Positions in Charles
Kingsley's At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies,” Span: Journal
of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language
Studies Vol. 46 (April 1998): 4-18.
Brandenstein examines Kingsley’s At Last, his account of his
1869 trip to the West Indies, and what he considered to be his role in
the imperial mission. She considers the wide range of other accounts
of the West Indies drawn upon by Kingsley. She argues that among
a number of imperialist positions presented in the text is an anxious,
ambivalent one, namely imperialism in peril. “At Last casts
doubt on and indeed problematizes the imperial narrative, thereby calling
into question the parameters of Kingsley’s own fictional adventure story"
(13). Moreover, “At Last is not the type of bedtime story
that Britain wants to tell itself, since in this text Britain is not fully
figured as triumphant victor; its author is much too ambivalent towards
the stock representations of colonialism popular at the time” (15).
At
Last;
Imperialism;
Colonialism;
Travel
Writing; West
Indies; Natural
History.
Gikandi, Simon. “Englishness, Travel, and Theory:
Writing the West Indies in the Nineteenth Century,” Nineteenth-Century
Contexts Vol. 18, No. 1 (1994): 49-70.
Gikandi considers Kingsley's At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies
(1885) in his study of imperialist thought in English nineteenth century
writers' accounts of travel to the West Indies. He regards At
Last as a "startling example" of "inherent circularity of imperial
discourse" (67). Though Kingsley went to the West Indies with liberal
and Christian sympathies, he found it difficult to be objective about what
he witnessed due to his theological background and intellectual tradition.
For example, he supported the strict control and supervision of the indentured
Coolies, even though in England he was a strong advocate of emancipation
and the creation of a '"moral bond"' between employee and employer.
Gikandi argues that Kingsley reached this conclusion about the West Indian
context not because of what he saw there or because of his understanding
of the Coolies' own views and perspectives. "Rather the traveler
reaches his conclusions from three mutually informing sources: official
reports (both oral and written), intellectual Orientalism, and evolutionary
doctrines" (67). In common with other Victorian travel writers Kingsley
was "already animated by existing themes and delimited by discursive regulations"
(67).
At
Last;
Travel
Writing; West
Indies; Imperialism;
Colonialism;
Froude.
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