Heart of Darkness: The novel as entry-point of Revision History PART 1

The next few entries will attempt to shed light on how Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novel, Heart of Darkness, pushed the boundaries of Western thinking and scholarship regarding Western imperialism, in that it allowed for its consideration from something other than a Providential perspective.

Prior to the late twentieth century much of the historical accounts of Western conquest and colonization were written from a predominantly Western- as well as Christian-centric perspective, that is, from a Providential point of view in which it was God’s will that the Western European Christians export their religion and culture to the so-called “noble savage” in places such as North and South America, Asia, and Africa.

Up until the writing and release of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, it was relatively unheard of to speak of Western colonialism from anything other than a Providential perspective.  To convey historical accounts from the viewpoint of the colonized and exploited, or even that of a conflicted and regretful conqueror, was for the most part nonexistent, in history books, or any other form of academic and artistic expression for that matter.  It was something still outside the confines of what was considered acceptable scholarship in most Western academic circles.

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness offered up one of the first alternative perspectives of Western imperialism and its effects on both the oppressed and the oppressor.  He was one of the first Westerners to dialogue about Western atrocities committed in the name of Race, God and Progress, and was a building block to the eventual revision of Western expansion, conquest and colonialism.  By way of the novel, and inter-personal dialogue between Kurtz and Charles Marlowe, Joseph Conrad brought to the Western world one of the first analysis of Western imperialism from a perspective that did not flatter Western sensibilities, and in effect flung open the doors to future dialogue and study of Western imperialism from a non Western-centric point of view.