Jan 3, 2010

Lord Jim | Historical Context

Conrad wrote his novel at the dawn of the twentieth century, when the world was rapidly changing in many ways. One of the biggest changes was the massive and widespread colonization of islands and other remote lands by European countries and by the United States—in many cases to establish trade or military posts. These colonization efforts, which in many places had begun centuries earlier, came to a head in several conflicts and events at the end of the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century.

In 1892, France, eager to gain more control over West Africa's...