Lighting the ‘dark’ continent: Metaphors of darkness and light in the writings of British and German explorers and missionaries 1865–1915

Portuguese Nyasaland is the name given to the most northern part of Portuguese East Africa, lying between Lake Nyasa and the Indian Ocean. It is separated from the Tanganyika territory in the north by the River Rovuma and from the Portuguese province of Mozambique in the south by the River Lurio. The territory measures about 400 miles from east to west and 200 miles from north to south and has an area of nearly 90,000 square miles. This territory is now perhaps the least known part of the once Dark Continent, but while the writer was actually engaged in the exploration of this country in 1920–1, the Naval Intelligence Division of the British Admiralty published two handbooks, the Manual of Portuguese East Africa and the Handbook of Portuguese Nyasaland, which with their extensive bibliographies contained practically everything that was known of that country up to that date (1920). These handbooks make it unnecessary in this paper to give detailed accounts of the work of previous explorers.

Download Full-text

Light on the Dark Continent: The Photography of Alice Seely Harris and the Congo Atrocities of the Early Twentieth Century

International Bulletin of Missionary Research ◽

10.1177/239693930202600401 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 26 (4) ◽

pp. 146-149 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

T. Jack Thompson

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Early Twentieth Century ◽

Dark Continent

Download Full-text

Habsburgs 'Dark Continent'. Postkoloniale LektÃ¼ren zur Ã¶sterreichischen Literatur und Kultur im langen 19. Jahrhundert by Clemens Ruthner

Austrian Studies ◽

10.1353/aus.2019.0020 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 27 (1) ◽

pp. 258-260

Author(s):

Gilbert Carr

Keyword(s):

Dark Continent

Download Full-text

An Afrocentric Re-storying of Africa’s Struggle for Emancipation in Ngugi’s Selected Novels

Journal of African Languages and Literary Studies ◽

10.31920/2633-2116/2021/v2n1a6 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 117-130

Author(s):

M. Mogoboya

Keyword(s):

Research Design ◽

Textual Analysis ◽

Primary Data ◽

Exploratory Research ◽

Correct Version ◽

Purposive Sampling ◽

African Identity ◽

Dark Continent ◽

Liberation Struggle

The story of African liberation struggle has, over many years, been related in a colonial and neo-colonial manner by the imperial powers, with Africa delineated as a dark continent and Europe as a civilised one. This article, therefore, strives to disrupt this oppressive narrative by painting the correct version through Ngugi's A Grain of Wheat (1967) (AGW) and Matigari (1987). Kenya is used as a microcosm of the entire Africa in these novels. Furthermore, the study is a qualitative recounting of the African liberation struggle which is underpinned by Afrocentricity as an emancipatory theoretical strand. Purposive sampling, guided by exploratory research design, was employed to select the two texts by Ngugi because of their appositeness to the study. Narrative textual analysis was used to interpret the two novels as primary data. Ngugi conscientises Africans about their African liberation history in order for them to cultivate a true African identity (Biko,1978).

Download Full-text

Reimagining the colonial wilderness: ‘Africa’, imperialism and the geographical legerdemain of the Vorrh

Cultural Geographies ◽

10.1177/1474474018811669 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 26 (2) ◽

pp. 177-194 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Robert A. Saunders

Keyword(s):

Popular Culture ◽

Joseph Conrad ◽

Speculative Fiction ◽

African Continent ◽

Empirical Examination ◽

Garden Of Eden ◽

Dark Continent ◽

Western Imagination ◽

Popular Geopolitics ◽

And Performance

Novelists and other cultural producers have long employed the African continent as a palimpsest to construct fantastical tales. From Sir John Mandeville to Joseph Conrad, Africa’s blank spaces on the map have been filled with monstrous creatures that fuel the western imagination. As a consequence, this constant othering of the so-called ‘Dark Continent’ has had a deleterious impact for African states and their citizenries, as spectacularly evidenced in U.S. President Donald Trump’s now-infamous labelling of the entire continent as a host of ‘shithole countries’. This article wrestles with the continuation of this trend in popular culture via an empirical examination of the speculative fiction of the British novelist and performance artist, B. Catling. Publishing in 2015, The Vorrh is the first of the three novels set in a parallel Africa, specifically a former German colony that is home to remnants of the Garden of Eden. Focusing on the enchanted forest known as the Vorrh and the colony’s (fictional) capital, Essenwald, this article employs methods drawn from geocriticism and popular geopolitics to interrogate Catling’s built-world. This is done with the aim of connecting structures of iteration in the representation of fictional ‘Africas’ to the West’s imperially inflected geopolitical codes towards the actual physical and human geographies that constitute the world’s second largest and most populous continent.

Download Full-text