The South Pacific Narratives of Robert Louis Stevenson and Jack London : Race, Class, Imperialism

From 1888 to 1915 Robert Louis and Jack London were uniquely placed to witness and record the struggle for the South Pacific. Engaging the major European colonial empires and the USA, the political, cultural and ideological fight for the region not only questioned ideas of liberty, racial identity, and class like few other arenas of the time but anticipates the major conflicts of the twentieth century. By exploring this unique moment in South Pacific and Western history, this study assesses the impact of Stevenson and London's national identities on their work; it discusses their attitudes towards colonialism, race and class; shows how they negotiated different cultures and peoples in their writing and works out where both writers are placed in the Western tradition of writing about the Pacific.By contextualizing Stevenson's and London's South Pacific work, Phillips reveal two critical voices of late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century colonialism that deserve to stand beside their contemporary Joseph Conrad in shaping contemporary attitudes towards imperialism, race, and class.