Shakespeare’s late play The Tempest is thought by many contemporary literary scholars to be a meditation on England’s early imperialist activities, particularly in the relationships among Caliban, Miranda, and Prospero.

Modernist author Henry James wrote during the same years as Conrad but with a different focus. From an American perspective, James wrote novels that critiqued what he saw as the failing aristocracy of Europe, a subject closely related to the rise and fall of imperialism. James had strong sympathies with England, however, and became a British subject in 1914 in order to fight in World War I. Among James’s major novels is The Wings of the Dove, an aristocratic tragedy set in London and Venice.

One of the more important figures to emerge from the Indian colonial era is Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, later known as Mahatma (meaning “Great Soul”) Gandhi. His nonviolent efforts to persuade the British to leave India drew the attention of the rest of the world; he was Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1930, and the Christian Century proposed his name for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1934—all before his crusade for Indian independence showed a hope of success. Gandhi published his views on nonviolence in several books, including An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth and Nonviolent Resistance. The well-known monk Thomas Merton published a study of Gandhi’s beliefs in Gandhi on Nonviolence.

Chinua Achebe was born in colonial Nigeria and in the postcolonial era became one of its most important writers. Achebe has also become an important novelist and postcolonial critic. Though Achebe has adopted a European form, his works represent an African aesthetic. Among his most widely read works are Things Fall Apart and Anthills of the Savannah.

Another writer of postcolonial significance is Salman Rushdie, who was born in Bombay, India, in the first year of India’s independence. Among his classic novels is Midnight’s Children, which tells the story of India from 1910 through 1976, through the eyes of its young hero Saleem, born like Rushdie in 1947. Rushdie’s fiction explores the power of memory as well as history and the lingering impact of colonization.