Solomon's Mines Research Articles

Imperial Cartography and Victorian Literature: Charting the Wishes and Anguish of an Island-Empire

This essay is inspired by Benedict Anderson's theorisation that communities are products of collective imagination. Literature and cartography, as Anderson points out, exert considerable influence in marking the imaginary contour of a specific community. To Anderson's theorisation, this essay will add a few notes, suggesting that literary mapping and cartographic writing convey dialectic messages and thereby chart contending communities. Through an examination of Victorian adventure stories (The Coral Island, King Solomon's Mines and Kim), domestic novels (Wuthering Heights, The Way We Live Now and The Sign of Four), an imperial map and a fictional treasure map, this essay will unfold the ideological underpinnings of writing and charting, analyse the rhetoric of wish and anguish in both acts, and interrogate Britain's conflicting doctrines of global imperialism and insular nationalism. The ultimate aim is to argue that literary mapping, analogous to cartographic writing, captures a Britain that is at once an invincible empire flexing its muscle worldwide and a vulnerable island besieged by the Atlantic Ocean, Irish Sea, English Channel, and North Sea. Between Britain's wishes and anguish, Victorian writers sketch in their contemporaries' imagination a contour of the British Empire in which the centre itself is decentred.

Rereading the Imperial Romance: British Imperialism and South African Resistance in Haggard, Schreiner, and Plaatje

Introduction Manufacturing mystery from mining: King Solomon's Mines Trading on Africa: King Solomon's Mines The British conquest of Zululand: Haggard's politics and ideology The fictions of Zulu history: Nada the Lily Colonialism demystified: Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland Alternative empires? Englishness and Christianity in Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland Transforming Haggardian romance: pastoralism and sexual politics in Mhudi Complex relations: African nationalism, imperialism, and form in Mhudi

J.R.R. Tolkien and his literary resonances: views of Middle-earth

Introduction by Daniel Timmons Tolkien the Bard: His Tale Grew in the Telling by C. W. Sullivan III The Dragon-Lore of Middle-earth: Tolkien and Old English and Old Norse Tradition by Jonathan Evans J.R.R. Tolkien and the True Hero by George Clark Tolkien's Versecraft in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings by Geoffrey Russom The Monsters Are Talismans and Transgressions: Tolkien and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Roger C. Schlobin The Sins of the Middle-earth: Tolkien's Use of Medieval Allegory by Charles W. Nelson Is Tolkien a Renaissance Man? Sir Phillips Sidney's Defense of Poetry and J.R.R. Tolkien's On Fairy Stories by Tanya Caroline Wood Weaving Nets of Gloom: Darkness Profound in Tolkien and Milton by Debbie Sly Gagool and Gollum: Exemplars of Degeneration in King Solomon's Mines and The Hobbit by William N. Rogers II and Michael R. Underwood Joy Beyond the Walls of the World: The Secondary World-Making of J.R.R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis by David Sandner Taking the Part of Trees: Eco-Conflict in Middle-earth by Verlyn Flieger Women Fantasists: In the Shadow of the Ring by Faye Ringel Loss Eternal in J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle-earth by W.A. Senior Orcs, Wraiths, Wights: Tolkien's Images of Evil by Tom Shippey Bibliography Index

The (Mis)uses of Cannibalism in Contemporary Cultural Critique

At least since 1979, when W. Arens demystified what he termed "the man-eating myth," cannibalism, once a fundamental feature of the anthropological imagination and a primary trope for interpreting cultural difference, has become subject to serious debate and lingering doubt [see Osborne]. Even as some anthropologists have sought to recuperate anthropophagy as a tangible symbolic, ideological, and ritual complex [Brown and Tuzin; Conklin, "'Thus are our Bodies'"; Forsyth; Harris, Good to Eat 199-234; Sanday], a constellation of scholarly projects and popular works has complicated cannibalism by relocating it in the West. Perhaps most visibly, Hollywood cinema has reclaimed cannibalism. Although a handful of films have revived well-worn clichés of dark-skinned savages preparing to consume Westerners, as in King Solomon's Mines and Crocodile Dundee, others have cast the Western subject as cannibal to grapple with the horrors of reluctant cannibalism, as in Alive! [see Fiddes 121-31], to work through the transgressive and terrifying desires associated with psychopathic cannibalism, as in The Silence of the Lambs [Fuss; Halberstam], and importantly to parody the normative beliefs and behaviors of white, middle-class, heterosexual EuroAmericans, as in Eating Raoul and Parents. At the same time, an array of scholars, artists, and activists have invoked cannibalism to fashion critical perspectives on Western cultural practices. In his film Cannibal Tours (1987), Dennis O'Rourke encourages his audiences to think critically about tourists who travel to the Sepik River Valley to encounter reformed cannibals, asking implicitly who the cannibals are, the Melanesians who formerly (were thought to/claim to have) practiced anthropophagy or the tourists who travel to New Guinea to consume them [see Bruner]. Others have pushed the metaphor. Michael Ames, borrowing explicitly from O'Rourke, uses the cannibal to reframe ethnographic museums and their practices. Similarly, Jane Tompkins asserts that "Museums are a form of cannibalism made safe for polite society" [533]. More generally, Crystal Bartolovich playfully glosses consumerism as the cultural logic of the late cannibalism; bell hooks speaks of the EuroAmerican desires for and incorporation of things ethnic as "eating the other"; and Rosalind Morris suggests that cannibalism is the essential metaphor for late capitalism. More telling, however, are a set of overlapping critical projects that offer detailed theorizations [End Page 106] [Begin Page 108] of contemporary anthropophagy. Here, I will examine three that have had an important impact on discussions of tourism, museums, cultural appropriation, and consumption. Dean MacCannell, in an exciting exploratory review of the documentary Cannibal Tours, makes explicit what O'Rourke left unsaid: we are cannibals, and contemporary capitalism is neocannibalism. Perhaps more radically, Jack Forbes argues that Western civilization fosters cannibalism as an embodied, psychosocial condition or psychosis rooted in exploitation and consumption. Inspired at least in part by Forbes, Deborah Root rethinks Western civilization as cannibal culture.

BEYOND THE COLONIAL NOVEL: THE LAST NOVELS OF LAURENS VAN DER POST

BEYOND THE COLONIAL NOVEL: THE LAST NOVELS OF LAURENS VAN DER POST

Writing the Colonial Adventure: Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875-1914

Introduction 1. The romance of property: Rolf Boldrewood and Walter Scott 2. Outlaws and lawmakers: Boldrewood, Praed and the ethics of adventure 3. Israel in Egypt: the significance of Australian captivity narratives 4. Imperial romance: King Solomon's Mines and Australian romance 5. The new woman and the coming man: gender and genre in the 'lost-race' romance 6. The other world: Rosa Praed's occult novels 7. The boundaries of civility: Australia, Asia and the Pacific 8. Imagined invasions: The Lone Hand and narratives of Asiatic invasion 9. The colonial city: crime fiction and empire 10. Beyond adventure: Louis Becke Conclusion.

Lights...Camera...Africa: Images of Africa and Africans in Western Popular Films of the 1930s

The steady beating of the war-drums grows stronger. An exotically painted black face peers out behind a bush. The African porters drop their packs and cower in fear, but the tall, courageous white hunter forces them on. Suddenly a spear flies out of the bush and hits a porter in the chest. The rest of the porters, screaming, disperse into the jungle, only to be cut down by the savages. With his trusty gun, the white man fends off the brutes and retreats to a nearby cliff. As the tension mounts, the audience sits spellbound. Such images became the staple for “jungle” movies in the early part of this century. During the Depression era, the economic importance of the West's African colonies greatly increased. What these celluloid images suggest is that, consciously or not, the filmmakers were acting as cultural colonialists by reinforcing and legitimizing Western political practices in Africa. These images contributed to the viewing audiences' misperception of Africa and Africans and helped to perpetuate and strengthen racist and colonialist modes of thinking. For this study, I have chosen nine films from the United States and Great Britain that can be considered “popular” films based on their box office success and wide distribution: Trader Horn (1931), Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Sanders of the River (1935), Tarzan and his Mate (1934), King Solomon's Mines (1937), Tarzan Escapes (1936), Tarzan Finds a Son! (1939), Four Feathers (1939) and Stanley and Livingstone (1939).

Apartheid's contras: an inquiry into the roots of war in Angola and Mozambique

Minter argues that the conflicts in Angola and Mozambique since independence represent a new kind of non-conventional warfare characteristic of the contra period - neither classic guerilla warfare nor straightforward external aggression, but comprising elements of civil war dominated by regional and global external powers. He examines the structures and strategies of Unita and Renamo and the responses of the Angolan and Mozambique states. William Minter is a leading US specialist on Southern Africa. His books include: Portuguese and the West, King Solomon's Mines Revisited - Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa and Operation Timber - Pages from the Savimbi Dossier.

King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa

King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa

King Solomon's mines revisited: Western interests and the burdened history of southern Africa

King Solomon's mines revisited: Western interests and the burdened history of southern Africa

King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa, by William Minter

King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa, <i>by William Minter</i>

Feature reviews

Perspectives on the Philippines Crisis in the Philippines: The Marcos Era and Beyond. John Bresnan, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1986. 284pp. n/p The Philippines Reader: A History of Colonialism, Neocolonialism, Dictatorship and Resistance. Daniel B Schirmer and Stephen Rosskam Shalom, Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press. 1987. 425pp. $11.00hb The Philippines After Marcos. R J May and Francisco Nemenzo, London: Croom Helm. 1985. 239pp. £19.95hb Touching Ground, Taking Root: Theological and Political Reflections on the Philippine Struggle. London: Catholic Institute for International Relations. 1986. 214pp. £5.75pb Winds of change in Moscow The Sixth Continent: Russia and Mikhail Gorbachev. Mary Frankland, London: Hamish Hamilton. 1987. 292pp. £12.95hb The Waking Giant. The Soviet Union under Gorbachev. Martin Walker, London: Michael Joseph. 1986. 282pp. £14.95hb The Soviet Paradox: External Expansion, Internal Decline. Seweryn Bialer, London: I B Tauris. 1986. 391pp. £19.50hb The Soviet Union under Gorbachev. Edited by Martin McCauley, London: Macmillan. 1987. 247pp. £29.50hb/£9.95pb The future of China China—Politics, Economics and Society: Iconoclasm and Innovation in a Revolutionary Socialist Country. Marc Blecher, London: Frances Pinter, Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Riener. 1986. 232pp. £22.50hb/£6.95pb The China Challenge: Adjustment and Reform. David S G Goodman, Martin Lockett and Gerald Segal, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul (for Royal Institute of International Affairs). 1986. 86pp. £5.95pb The Political Economy of Reform in Post‐Mao China. Edited by Elizabeth J Perry and Christine Wong, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 1985. 331pp. £11.95pb Apartheid observed Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White. Joseph Lelyveld, London: Sphere Books. 1987. 390pp. £3.95pb Black and Gold: Tycoons, Revolutionaries and Apartheid. Anthony Sampson, London: Hodder and Stoughton. 1987. 280pp. £12.95hb The Sanctions Handbook. Joseph Hanlon and Roger Omond, Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1987. 389pp. £4.95pb South Africa: No Easy Path to Peace. Graham Leach, London: Methuen. 1986. 312pp. £2.95pb King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa. William Minter, New York: Basic Books. 1986. 401pp. n/p Environmental warfare Herbicides in War: The Long‐Term Ecological and Human Consequences. Edited by Arthur H Westing, London: Taylor and Francis. 1984. 210pp. £15.00hb Environmental Warfare: A Technical, Legal and Policy Appraisal. Edited by Arthur H Westing, London: Taylor and Francis. 1984. 107pp. £12.00hb

King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa

King Solomon's Mines Revisited: Western Interests and the Burdened History of Southern Africa

Miranda's Story: Nadine Gordimer and the Literature of Empire

In his study of the connections between adventure tales and imperialism in the modern world, Martin Green briefly turns his attention to group of writers whose hour has just struck, the women born in the empire, who rebelled against its male ethos as well as against its imperialism and made their fiction out of that rebellion. 1 Although he does not mention Nadine Gordimer, she belongs in the company of those who make up his list: Doris Lessing, Olive Schreiner, Elspeth Huxley, Jean Rhys and Katherine Mansfield. Gordimer, in fact, is the only one of these writers who did not eventually return to the metropolitan culture which gave birth to the literature of empire. She remains in South Africa, determined to invent an identity for herself as an African writer. Gordimer certainly would not see herself as the descendent of Haggard and Henty, nor as the inheritor of the tradition of Conrad and Joyce Cary. But the politics of South Africa make her an outsider to the experience of the majority of her countrymen, and the literature of empire still haunts her fiction. In the literature of empire white men enter Africa to serve their own desires, whether for political power, adventure, or a journey into the recesses of their own psyche played out in an exotic setting.2 Africans are merely part of the background, like the fantastic figures on the shore whom Marlow, in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, observes as he makes his way upriver to Kurtz. In Conrad, just as in Rider Haggard, the agenda of outsiders sets the story in motion. From an African perspective the distinction between the search for King Solomon's mines and Marlow's subtle, honorable attempt to probe the moral depths of imperialism is beside the point. The dominant motif of the genre remains the quest of white for black. Another characteristic of adventure tales set in Africa is the marginality of white women, who serve, like the Victorian angel in the house, as tokens of patriarchal power and emblems of virtue in an evil world. This is particularly

The romance as rhetorical dissociation: The purification of imperialism inking Solomon's mines

That the romance can be employed for rhetorical purposes other than reaffirming a culture's values is illustrated by H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines, a romance that purifies imperialism by dissociating its “appearance” as exploitation from its “reality” as the establishment of justice and the resulting transformation of identity.

Solomon's Mines: End of the Search?

Solomon's Mines: End of the Search?

Were these King Solomon's Mines? Excavations in the Timna Valley. By Beno Rothenberg.

<i>Were these King Solomon's Mines? Excavations in the Timna Valley</i>. By Beno Rothenberg.

More on King Solomon's Mines

Previous articleNext article No AccessMore on King Solomon's MinesG. Ernest WrightG. Ernest Wright Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Volume 24, Number 2May 1961 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/3209304 Views: 2Total views on this site Journal History This article was published in The Biblical Archaeologist (1938-1997), which is continued by Near Eastern Archaeology (1998-present). Copyright 1961 American Schools of Oriental ResearchPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Looking Back on Books

At the beginning of the century children were put to reading and writing rather earlier than they are now. So I remember that at the age of nine I was engaged with Stanley Weyman and listening to the swish of silks and clash of swords in A Gentleman of France and Under the Red Robe. I had already been immensely excited by the glint of diamonds in King Solomon's Mines. I can remember now the hour and the place in which I first encountered that piece of cake.

Wâdī Sirḥân in North Arabia

Albright, W. F AASOR Vol. XXI-XXII, 2 copies.... ASOR Glueck, Nelson On the Trail of King Solomon's Mines, Nat. Geograph. Mag. Feb. 1944 author Glueck, Nelson The Excavation of Solomon's Seaport of Ezion-geber, Annual Report Smithsonian Inst Goitein, S. D. F The Origin of the Vizirate Melamed, E. Z The Onomastikon of Eusebius, (Hebrew), Tarbiz, III-IV Stephan, St. H An Endowment Deed of Khasseki Sultan, QDAP, X