Rewriting agency: Samuel Baker, Bunyoro-Kitara and the Egyptian slave trade

Abstract

This article combines colonial history/discourse analysis and postcolonial theory to explore how non-Western forces and agents can predetermine and even derail the discursive production of the narrative of the West. Drawing on the work of the Victorian explorer Samuel White Baker, I pursue two lines of analysis. First, I develop a genealogy of the key intercultural encounters documented by Baker during his 1863–5 travels in southern Sudan and Bunyoro. Second, by reading Baker's unpublished diary alongside his published narratives, I trace the discursive impact of these encounters on Baker's texts. Ultimately, by using the example of Baker, I suggest that the influence of non-Western populations, cultures and political circumstances on Western discourse production can be considerable and that by reading the ‘raw’ records of exploration alongside both published accounts and African cultural history, critics can construct a more multilayered model of imperial narrative production than has previously been developed by scholars working just in colonial or postcolonial studies.