Context

• Joseph Conrad is originally minor aristocratic Polish. His father was a polish nationalist and supported the resistance against Russia, meaning he had first had experience of colonisation.
• Conrad and Marlow are very similar. Conrad was a sailor and an officer of a steam ship in the Congo, taking over from a officer that got killed by tribesmen. He also became ill in the Congo.
• King Leopold the 2nd rules from 1835 to 1909. He was the Belgian king and established the Congo free state, that was no Belgium's territory but King Leopold's private land.
• King Leopold's aim was to bring civilisation to the Congo, but it was very brutal, with one of the punishments to the locals being cutting off their feet and hands.
• King Leopold killed half of the Congo's population.
• “The white man's burden” is a phrase from a Rudyard Kipling poem. It refers to a Victorian idea that European, people had a responsibility to bring enlightenment to the darker races.
• The Scramble for Africa was a period of rapid European colonisation of Africa. It happened because the the vast resources of Ivory and Rubber. It also had very good trade links like ports. The materials were cheap with prospects of little competition.
• The Rhodes Colossus was a editorial cartoon which expressed the power and influence that Europe had over Africa. Cecil Rhode was a British Imperial player. It mimics Colossus of Rhodes (one of the 7 wonders of the world).
• Britain controlled 30% of Africa
• Heart of Darkness is a Victorian imperial adventure novel which reinforced stereotypes of Africa. They were very popular in the 19th century and shaped opinions of colonial activity in Africa.
• Joseph Conrad is one the brink of modernism. Some modernist features are the frame narrator, unreliable narrator, break in chronology and impressionism. Impressionism involved delayed interpretation like the arrows and skulls.
• There are ideas of social Darwinism with white races being more developed.
• The novella is a altruistic image of a civilising mission. Linking to Kipling's white mans burden.
• In a letter King Leopold sent to his missionaries he said that "the savages shall stay forever in the submission to the white colonialists".