Lighting the ‘dark’ continent: Metaphors of darkness and light in the writings of British and German explorers and missionaries 1865–1915

Abstract

This chapter describes how metaphors of darkness, light and enlightenment served as discourse metaphors during the late 19th and early 20th century. From the 1870s, Henry Morton Stanley famously presented ‘darkest Africa’ as holding many types of darkness for travellers, missionaries and settlers. Its uncharted territories, ‘terra nullius’ or ‘nobody’s country’, were deemed open to be occupied and improved by the first Europeans to get there. From a European perspective these regions also contained dangerous landscapes and people, equally in need of control and improvement. Not only was Africa not empty, but it had its own diverse civilizations beyond the comprehension of those who sought to exploit its people and natural resources. Stanley’s descriptions of a wild and dangerous continent were widely read by both British and German missionaries and prospective colonizers, as were David Livingstone’s earlier, more optimistic accounts. They took what was useful for their own purposes and ignored, if they chose, evidence that Africa could and should be left to its own devices to develop in its own way and time.