Colonial Gaze of Mungo Park and George Forster: A Study of Their Travel Narratives

Abstract

This dissertation on two travel narratives of George Forster and Mungo Park draws on the discourse of orientalism formulated by Edward Said. Orientalism has been a global discourse marked by pliable, multiple rhetoric in analyzing and studying the shifting cultural, geopolitical and social forms of power. Mungo Park, in his travel narrative orientalises Africa through different images such as uncivilized, dangerous, and primitive. Hetries to justify the need of European presence to civilize the Africans. His vested interest is to find out the resources of Africa particularly the course or direction of the Nigerso that in future the navigation for commerce can be exploited as per the British interest. In the same way, George Forster’s travelogue yieldsa wealth of new geographic, scientific, and ethnographic knowledge of the other so that European imperialism could be substantiated. The above narratives shed more light on knowledge of humanity and diverse geographical explorations. Since the process of knowing, gaining knowledge about the unfamiliar and unknown is culturally shaped, the two travellers produce a distinct versions of orientalism in their respective accounts of the interior districts of Africa and the South Pacific islands. Their travelogues seek to justify the white man’s burden so that their nefarious designs can be camouflaged.