Africa the Dark Continent and India the Jewel of the Crown - both British colonies both home
to hundreds of different cultures and ethnicities yet both can be reduced to two distinct
catchphrases that trigger an avalanche of pictures and associations. But they never say no was
an exclamation of utter disbelief when the Mutiny of 1857 took the Indian Raj by complete
surprise. That the Zulus or Xosa started another raid or war on the other hand was somewhat
expected of the African subaltern. Why and how all these ethnicities were lumped together under
two such very different views can be explained by taking a closer look at the landscapes found
in the literature of colonial fiction. This work shows how novels and romances of colonial
fiction have shaped and perpetuated images and prejudices via the descriptions of landscapes
they contain.
