Melville and Conrad’s (Post)Colonial Sights of South America: “The Encantadas” and Nostromo

Abstract

"Both “The Encantadas” and Nostromo are (post)colonial texts in the sense that they both portray the evil effects of the ‘colonizing project’ in both the colonizer and the colonized. Melville and Conrad’s colonial and imperial enterprises, however, differ in several ways. Melville depicts settler colonies formed by immigrants; Conrad’s Costaguana presents a different panorama: no foreign rulers are installed to govern the new nation of Sulaco; no land is seized for settling immigrants. This is the imperialism of free trade, or ‘business imperialism’: control over loans and the monopolization of infrastructural development such as the railway and underscored by the role of the foreign mine engineers."