Culture and Commerce in Conrad's Asian Fiction

Andrew Francis's Culture and Commerce in Conrad's Asian Fiction is the first book-length study of commerce in Conrad's work.

Andrew Francis (Author)

9781107093980, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 23 April 2015

248 pages, 3 b/w illus. 3 maps
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.5 kg

Andrew Francis' Culture and Commerce in Conrad's Asian Fiction is the first book-length critical study of commerce in Conrad's work. It reveals not only the complex connections between culture and commerce in Conrad's Asian fiction, but also how he employed commerce in characterization, moral contexts, and his depiction of relations at a point of advanced European imperialism. Conrad's treatment of commerce - Arab, Chinese and Malay, as well as European - is explored within a historically specific context as intricate and resistant to traditional readings of commerce as simple and homogeneous. Through the analysis of both literary and non-literary sources, this book examines capitalism, colonialism and globalization within the commercial, political and social contexts of colonial Southeast Asia.

1. Commerce and the edge of colonialism: Almayer's Folly
2. Competing for the prizes of commerce and overlordship: An Outcast of the Islands
3. Standing out against the irresistibility of progress: The Rescue
4. Negotiating the nets of commerce and duty: Lord Jim
5. Imperialism, commerce, and the individual: appetites and responsibilities in 'Falk'
6. Testing the West, testing the individual: The Shadow-Line
7. The 'irreducible minimum': the plantation and comprehensive commercialization in 'The End of the Tether'
8. The rise of the commodity: mining, pan-European financing, and commercial imagination in Victory.

Subject Areas: Consumerism [JFFT], Globalization [JFFS], Colonialism & imperialism [HBTQ], Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH], Literary studies: c 1800 to c 1900 [DSBF]