Late Victorian Imperial Adventure Novel

British imperialism was formulated during the period from the late sixteenth century to the late nineteenth through the use of various discourses such as colonialism, racism, overseas commercialism and pro-imperial militarism. During the period, literary production was always used as a functional tool in the formulation and dissemination of the discourses of British imperialism. Therefore, after the 1870s, when the age of New Imperialism began with the emergence of new European imperial powers, popular adventure novels also began to emerge and then be appropriated as propaganda tools for the reinforcement of the imperial ideology in British society. Imperial adventure novels of George Alfred Henty represent this propagandist attitude in late Victorian popular fiction. However, another response to New Imperialism in Britain was the emergence of an anti-imperialistic approach. Although most critics, heavily influenced by postcolonial theory, have interpreted the imperial romances of Henry Rider Haggard as representing the pro-imperialist attitude, Ak¿ll¿ argues and illustrates in this book that Haggard¿s novels reflect a worldview which was sharply critical of British imperialism.