Imaginary Conquest and Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century

Adventure Literature: Africa in Jules Verne, Burmann, May,

and Twain

Florian Krobb

Children's Literature, Volume 44, 2016, pp. 1-20 (Article)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/chl.2016.0014

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/619574

No institutional affiliation (26 Aug 2018 08:13 GMT)

 Articles
Imaginary Conquest and Epistemology in Nineteenth-
Century Adventure Literature: Africa in Jules Verne,
Burmann, May, and Twain
Florian Krobb

The writing of travel and exploration, particularly to unfamiliar des-

tinations, occupies a central position in the complex of literature for
children and young adults. Mapped onto the history of colonialist
discourse between the mid-nineteenth century and the end of the
century—i.e., between the high Victorian mentality of optimism in the
“progress” of penetrating and opening up the supposedly Dark Conti-
nent (Brantlinger 28), through the period of conquest that spawned
fantasies of subjugation and feminization of Africa such as Henry
Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines (1888) (McClintock 1–4), to
nightmarish visions of the loss of self and the uncanny nature of engulf-
ment by Africa such as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899)—the
chosen examples reveal complicity in a common European project of
conquest, yet at the same time they highlight different approaches in
the imperial powers’ appropriation of colonial space, individual writ-
ers’ idiosyncrasies and preoccupations, and a certain dissynchronicity
between them in terms of engagement and ambition. Jules Verne, in
Cinq semaines en ballon (1863), is interested in surveying and thereby
making Africa accessible to penetration and integration into European
knowledge systems; Carl Burmann’s Im Herzen von Afrika (1880) and
Karl May’s Die Sklavenkarawane (1889) contribute to defining a specifi-
cally German mission in Africa; while Mark Twain, in Tom Sawyer Abroad
(1894) reveals a disinvestment in the colonization of Africa in that he
uses the continent, and the West’s obsessive preoccupation with its
mysteries, as a mere projective foil on which to set the negotiation of
quite different agendas.
Around 1850, the world became global. New global realities gener-
ated changes in education. Spatial knowledge became an economic

Children’s Literature 44, Hollins University © 2016. 1

2 Florian Krobb

and political necessity, and consequently geography entered school

curricula to provide orientation in this world of increasingly global
scope.1 Concurrently, as ever more Europeans ventured overseas and
increasingly more overseas knowledge streamed back to the metropole,
colonial space became mapped as adventurous space, a terrain that
held challenges and dangers, particularly because it was the home of
the unfamiliar, the unexpected, and the untested. While the American
frontier retained its status as the most adventure-filled location for
youth fiction, Africa offered a particular attraction for those keen to
combine thrilling entertainment, diffusion of knowledge, educational
instruction, and political agitation regarding European designs on this
quintessentially colonial space. Around the middle of the nineteenth
century, Africa became the last major challenge to travel and explora-
tion, the destination for the most daring expeditions, the terrain where
the most and most intriguing new knowledge in a variety of fields—
from geography (sources of the Nile), anthropology (missing link),
and ethnography (“primitive” cultures) to zoology, botany, geology,
and other natural sciences—was expected to be generated. As Africa
impressed itself mightily onto the European consciousness, the neces-
sity arose to provide not only information about this region, but also
to attach meaning to the unfamiliar phenomena encountered there,
to negotiate the European view of this frontier.
While travel writing in general had to cater to a wide variety of con-
stituencies (from general readers to experts in many fields, sponsors,
political opinion formers, etc.), adventure literature for young readers
could devote itself more directly to framing Africa in a way that suited
an overall European narrative of conquest. While participating in
seminal discourses, youth literature of adventure and exploration had
to appeal to the cognitive and aesthetic horizon of a less sophisticated
readership than that addressed by “scientific” travel writing; it can thus
be regarded as bringing out the tenets of contemporary attitudes and
views in a representative and exemplary way. Stories of daring and ad-
venture in challenging circumstances, which still purported to inform
comprehensively about the visited places, were designed to enable
young readers to understand themselves as inhabitants of a globalized
world divided into “us” and “them,” into a realm of the familiar and a
realm of the strange that awaited “familiarization.”
Imaginary Conquest & Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature 3

Jules Verne, Cinq semaines en ballon: Celebrating Discovery

Jules Verne’s first major novel Cinq semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Bal-
loon, 1863) was probably not primarily designated as a story for young
people, yet it displays many traits of youth fiction. “Verne’s gigantism
. . . as well as his atomic-clock precision are never quite gratuitous,”
writes Trevor Harris. “The brief to educate and entertain inevitably
brings an inveterate bookworm like Verne to include a solid pedagogic
apparatus in his novels. His calculations are . . . explained and converted
for the young French reader” (113). Indeed this story of a crossing of
the African continent from Zanzibar to the Senegal in a dirigible is
saturated with factual information not only about the workings of the
extraordinary vehicle the travelers use, but also about the regions over
which their journey takes them. Accordingly, the narrative occasionally
adopts the diaristic style of scientific travel notations: “About nine in
the morning on the 27th of March a change came over the country,”
begins chapter 41 (Verne 338).
The composition of the traveling party indicates how Verne at-
tempted to appeal to a younger readership. He created characters
whose combined functions cover the range from hard information
to light entertainment. The team of navigators consists of a scientific
mentor figure, Dr. Samuel Fergusson, inventor of the flying machine
able to cross the entire continent, and the character who is respon-
sible for explanations in many areas of knowledge; a Scottish hunter
named Dick Kennedy, a reluctant companion, grumbler and doubter,
whose role it is to provide some light relief in the narrative; and Joe,
the loyal, strong, and daring young manservant of the explorer, who
is responsible for some daredevil action and might thereby provide
the most obvious object of identification for young readers. The latter
two characters also assume the role of pupil, since it is to them that the
scholar and inventor dispenses his explanations.
At the very outset, the venture is designated as a scientific undertak-
ing, one aimed at consolidating, combining, and verifying knowledge
about the interior of Africa; but it is also represented as an enterprise
of bravery and daring certain to secure the travelers a national reputa-
tion: “This venture, if it succeeds . . . , will link together and complete
the present scattered knowledge of African cartography . . . and if it
fails . . . it will at least live as one of the most audacious conceptions
of the human mind” (165). In fiction, and with the help of a fantastic
contraption, the travelers achieve what so far had eluded explorers in
4 Florian Krobb

reality: traversing the entire continent and solving the geographical

mysteries of the central African watershed. Even in its implausibility, the
novel reflects real desires and efforts of the time, desires that united all
European nations. In subsequent years, both the settlement of questions
regarding the sources of the Nile and the exact hydrographic conditions
of the river systems of the Congo and the Nile became objects of vigor-
ous exploratory effort by all European nations. The aim of crossing the
continent, too, remained a venture charged with enormous prestige.2
The knowledge that is dispensed to young readers is almost exclu-
sively concerned with the European project of African exploration.
Verne places his fictitious adventure on a trajectory stretching from the
early days of coastal exploration to a vision of deep and comprehensive
further penetration of the continent, a trajectory of extraordinary
achievement accomplished by exceptional individuals. Annexation,
the establishment and economic exploitation of territorial colonies,
is not yet a concern here; Verne almost exclusively thinks of mapping,
surveying, recording and securing geographical knowledge about the
continent. The method pursued to achieve this objective is (very much
in keeping with the importance accorded to the scientific method of
autopsy) to simply be there, to witness and to record, and the bird’s-
eye perspective of the flying machine facilitates just that: it affords the
ability to survey land first hand, while also already assuming to some
degree the totalizing perspective of the cartographer. The explorers
from above can imagine themselves as “monarchs of all they survey,”
as maintaining possession of the entire territory in view.3 At the same
time, the elevation protects them from possible “engulfment” by the
unknown, a common fear of Victorian travelers (McClintock 27–28).
The European ideology that facilitated and legitimized exploration, the
teleology of knowledge acquisition, is omnipresent in the novel from
the very outset. For example, all conversations on board the ship that
brings the traveling party and their equipment to Zanzibar are devoted
to expressing the fundamental belief in the inevitability of the project
of conquest: “Fergusson told [the naval officers] of the explorations of
Barth, Speke, Burton and Grant. He described to them this mysterious
country which was entirely given up to scientific investigation. . . . The
nineteenth century would certainly not close before Africa had revealed
the secrets that had lain hidden in her breast for six thousand years”
(193). Sentiments such as this are echoed time and time again, for
example as they fly over territory not yet entered by European travel-
ers: “Before the end of the century all these great stretches of country
Imaginary Conquest & Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature 5

will be explored without a doubt” (291). And yet, all the enthusiasm
about the remotest corners of the continent cannot conceal the ram-
pant disinterest pervading the narrative as regards the actual object
of investigation: Africa, her natural environment, her inhabitants, her
potential in economic respect—and many other issues that fascinated
the epoch’s real explorers. Instead, Africa is reduced to clichés. Her
inhabitants display one of only two conceivable behaviors: they either
display complete hostility to the travelers, or they show the flying object
superstitious veneration. They are not acknowledged as fellow humans,
nor are they even framed as potential colonial subjects. After mistaking
an attack by monkeys for an attack by hostile inhabitants, the grumpy
Scotsman comments, “‘From the distance there’s little difference, old
man.’ ‘Nor near to, either,’ Joe replied” (218). Geology, vegetation,
geographical features are only noted when they have bearing on the
balloon’s progress or when they reveal their suitability to become the
Europeans’ playground: “What a hunting country!” (230).
Instead, Verne’s attention is almost exclusively focused on asserting
the veracity of earlier discoveries, on praising the deeds of predeces-
sors, on telling their stories and praising their bravery. As successors
to the pioneers of African exploration, the task of the present expe-
dition with its superior technical ability is to pursue and, indeed, to
complete the process of recording Africa (and thereby to pave the way
for subsequent expeditions to actually enter territory first charted by
the balloon crew). Hence the brief: “Thus what remained to be done
was to link up Burton and Speke’s exploration with that of Dr Barth”
(180). Tracing the routes of predecessors amounts to an acknowledge-
ment of their, and by extension all Europeans’ exploratory exploits. In
Fergusson’s explanation: “we are on the very road followed by Major
Denton” (294); or: “here we pick up Barth’s route” (333); or in the
narrator’s voice: “At two o’clock the queen of the desert, mysterious
Timbuktu . . . , was revealed to the explorers’ eyes. Fergusson followed
the slightest details on the plan made by Barth himself and confirmed
the explorer’s extreme accuracy” (333). The balloon journey widens
a path already trodden. Young readers are persuaded that this path
extends in the right direction, that the process is justified, inevitable,
and destined to bestow prestige on those who follow it.
For those spaces not yet exposed to European surveillance, Verne
retorts to clichéd, extreme and sensationalist tales. The unknown inte-
rior is filled with exaggerations of the vague and speculative informa-
tion already available: all autochthonous people observed from above
6 Florian Krobb

engage in brutal tribal warfare (in accordance with common views about
the instability of political conditions amongst indigenous polities), in
anthropophagy, or in both, for example when warriors in a battle are
observed devouring “the still warm flesh” of their enemies (252). Also
they discover that the interior holds untold riches, namely when they
discover gold mines in some barren uninhabited mountains. They
stumble upon these mines while they are looking for a place to bury
a young French missionary who has died from wounds received from
attacking natives. The juxtaposition of the missionary’s sacrifice and the
discovery of gold is an effective strategic device: it contrasts and com-
pares exploitation and idealism as two extreme forms of engagement
with the continent. The message contained in these episodes becomes
clear when the aeronauts are forced to discard much of the collected
gold to keep their vehicle airborne. The remaining legacy is thus
not the precious commodity but a Christian grave (the missionary’s)
which will serve as a monument to the European effort of “civilizing”
Africa. Materialistic motives for the exploration are downplayed and
young readers are instructed in an idealistic ethics of conquest which
encompasses geographical “science” and Christian civilization—though
this latter aspect is not developed outside the episode just described.
The patterns emerging here are repeated throughout the entire
book. The area of the Benue and Niger rivers, for example, and in-
deed the whole of West Africa, is framed almost exclusively in terms
of European exploration; the inhabitants feature only as faint shadows
of history (for example in the few lines devoted to the past glory of
Timbuktu, 334), or as random obstacles to the expedition’s progress.
The rivers themselves, subjects of so much effort to establish their
courses, are hardly worth a mention; wildlife, vegetation, geographi-
cal features are only noted for their impact on navigation: “The flat
land presented no obstacle to their progress” (332). Instead, the main
significance of the area is summarized thus by the expedition’s head:
“So you see, my friends, this country we are passing over has been the
scene of splendid sacrifices, only too often rewarded by death” (332).
The present travelers’ precursors’ sacrifices indeed bestow a legacy.
Thus Africa is incorporated into the European logic of penetration,
progress, and comprehensiveness—and thereby denied any signifi-
cance independent of European ascriptions. With reference to the
numerous deaths of explorers from Laing and Clapperton to, more
recently, Overweg and Vogel, and here in particular with regard to
their legendary ancestor, Mungo Park, Kennedy asks, “And that awful
Imaginary Conquest & Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature 7

death didn’t stop the explorations?”—to which the answer is, “Quite
the other way, Dick” (330).
The knowledge transmitted by this novel is thus essentially confir-
mative of the veracity of European exploratory efforts; the edification
provided for young readers derives from the fact that they are enabled to
locate themselves through identification in a continuum of “progress”
that strives for completion and totalization. Entertainment is generated
through the process of implementing this program and through the
interplay between the participants with their complementary qualities—
scientific and technical expertise, ingenuity, resolve and resilience,
prudence and daring in equal measure—and their response to diverse
challenges. Trevor Harris has noted that Verne’s fictitious journey is,
from the outset, “placed in a ludic context” (Harris 117)—the casting
of exploratory accomplishment as completion of a sporting challenge
is the method of inducing young readers into the European logic of
expansion and control, and of introducing them to the scientific ap-
proach of reciprocal verification and reinforcement. Consequently,
subsequent development is mapped out in accordance with the real
projects currently being pursued. Past success, present achievement,
and future tasks form an open-ended continuum:
The chief result of Dr Fergusson’s expedition was to confirm
in the most precise manner the geographical facts and surveys
reported by Barth, Burton, Speke and others. Thanks to the
expeditions at present being undertaken by Speke and Grant,
Heuglin and Munzinger, we may before long be able to check in
their turn the discoveries made by Dr Fergusson in the vast area
between the 14th and 33rd meridians. (Verne 354)
What Verne achieves is a snapshot of contemporary European thinking
on African exploration, a stock-taking of established knowledge and
open questions, and a call upon both technical and human ingenuity
to accomplish in reality what he laid out in fiction. There are elements
in the novel that betray a firm sense of European superiority—the very
fact that they succeed reveals that Africa can muster no resistance to
European domination, and several episodes in which the party over-
comes adversity convey the same message. The fictitious demonstration
of potency points to prospects in reality; it exerted, that is, a pull towards
the unknown, towards verifying on the ground what the bird’s-eye per-
spective of the balloonists could merely suggest. In particular, it appeals
to Verne’s French readers to overcome the perceived complacency of
8 Florian Krobb

a nation apparently content with its existing colonial achievements to

catch up with her neighbors and rivals. Indeed, increased exploratory
efforts were directed to that triangle between the river systems of the
Nile (and the great lakes region), the Congo basin, and the Niger and
its tributaries, on the northern side bordered by Lake Chad and the
elusive sultanate of Wadai. This is the area designated as the heart of
Africa, which is exactly the region through which German school princi-
pal Karl Burmann (b. 1844) sends his party of two adventurous cousins
in a novel entitled Im Herzen von Afrika (In the Heart of Africa, 1880),
and in which the big final showdown in Karl May’s Die Sklavenkarawane
(The Caravan of Slaves, 1889) also takes place.

German Adventure Fiction on Africa of the 1880s: Defining a Vocation

The aim of traversing the entire breadth of central Africa had been
elusive until Henry Morton Stanley’s and Hermann Wissmann’s ex-
peditions. They, however, crossed the continent at a narrower point
than Verne’s balloonists and did not reach the regions defined as
“innermost.” Achieving some sort of record remained a measure of
the success of a given exploratory venture well into the 1880s—either
penetrating more “deeply” than anyone before, or entering regions
inaccessible for political reasons (the feared hostility of local potentates
or the volatility of conditions) or because of natural obstacles (climate,
lack of supplies, difficult transport). In fiction, records could be tackled,
impossible journeys completed and, in the process, European mission
enacted. Germans, united only since January 1871, and only since then
able to pursue ambitions on the world stage as a nation, encountered
a challenge that differed somewhat from that faced by their European
competitors who had engaged in overseas exploration and conquest
for centuries. They had to convince themselves of their mission and
define a particular role for themselves in accordance with their emerg-
ing national self-image as a collective destined to join in the common
European project of mastering the world. African adventure writing
thus assumed the role of enticing young German readers towards their
new place in the world, of instructing them in their responsibilities and
of asserting their ability for the envisioned role. When, in Burmann’s
book, the traveling party is separated but manages to reunite, thus
defying Africa’s attempt to defeat the intruders, it behaves in a way
which mirrors, on a smaller scale, the impetus of Verne’s aircraft: it
connects, or unifies separate routes in the unknown space. Similarly,
Imaginary Conquest & Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature 9

Burmann’s traveling party completes an African crossing—from the

Nile to the Gulf of Guinea rather than from Zanzibar to the far West of
the continent as was the case in Verne—but also one that had not yet
been achieved in reality. Their fictitious itinerary crosses the quadrant
designated the most mysterious, the deepest and innermost Africa.
In Karl May’s story, the two brothers meet up in that very region, and
thus their combined routes also amount to a transcontinental crossing
from Nile to Zanzibar.4
Even after the German acquisition of protectorates in 1884 (South
West Africa, East Africa, Cameroon, and Togo), these remote parts
had not awoken concrete political desire; they were all the more suit-
able for playing out an imaginary conquest, for conducting in fantasy
an experiment in German interaction with the indigenous Other,
and for enacting nobler pursuits than chasing political and economic
gain. Indeed, two Germans who achieved considerable prominence in
interested circles explored the regions in question in the time between
the publication of Verne’s and that of Karl May’s books—namely Georg
Schweinfurth in 1869–71, and Wilhelm Junker almost continuously
for over a decade between 1875 and 1886.5 Burmann not only adopts
the title of Georg Schweinfurth’s report of his travels, Im Herzen von
Afrika, he also integrates much information collected by Schweinfurth
into his narrative, as well as reports by other famous German travelers,
like Gerhard Rohlfs, who laid claim to the pioneering achievement of
crossing the Sahara desert from north to south in 1865–67.6 In adven-
ture fiction, the knowledge collected by the likes of Schweinfurth is
transformed. It now assists the instruction of young readers regarding
their role in colonial space. Young readers are offered a blueprint for
an imaginary conquest of this territory which had only recently entered
the public German consciousness. By revealing Africa as a location for
future engagement, Burmann goes one step further than Verne: he
not only surveys Africa, he forges an Africa to be mastered by Europe,
in particular by Germans.
Karl Burmann’s novel Im Herzen von Afrika tells the story of two young
men who, bored with their domestic routine, travel through Africa in
search of adventure. Burmann inserts scenes celebrating (German)
kinship and mutual assistance so as to facilitate his young readers’
identification with the protagonists and thereby create role models
of bravery, endurance, resourcefulness, patriotism and, importantly,
compassion with Africans. The book aspires to provide its young readers
with a fairly comprehensive picture of Africa in accordance with the
10 Florian Krobb

prominent themes of the contemporary discourse on the continent—

ranging from topics such as Egyptian state brutality in asserting their
rule over recently annexed regions of Sudan, to slavery and despotic
local rulers, and further to glimpses of the harshness and perils of the
environment, but also its splendors and wonders. It comments on the
character and culture of various autochthonous peoples and their
mentalities which, in the author’s and his sources’ eyes, prevented
“development” in a European sense. And it strives to suggest ways in
which European interference can remedy perceived ills and imple-
ment its civilizing mission. Reflecting dominant paradigms of scientific
thinking, Burmann’s fiction constructs Africa in much the same way as
Verne: namely by pronouncing the continent intelligible in its total-
ity, in Verne’s case by subjecting it to cartographic representation. In
Burmann, however, Africa is constructed predominantly as a human,
an inhabited entity, since the travelers’ encounters revolve largely
around people, and their adventures constitute significant symbolic
interventions in human affairs. Most tellingly, the travelers adopt at
the very outset of the narrative a young boy who was orphaned when
Egyptian troops raided his village. The boy is thus taken under Ger-
man tutelage, and with him Africa as a whole. In a separate episode,
the Germans rescue a captured slave and reunite him with his brother,
thereby achieving another reunion and fixing what the scourge of
Africa, slavery, had severed. These brothers become the Germans’
placeholders in foreign territory, their mentees and willing followers,
as evidenced by their baptism at the end of the narrative:
Wir Neger sind nicht alle böse, es gibt viel gute Menschen unter
uns . . . . Viele glauben auch noch nicht an den Gott der Christen,
der sagte, daß wir unseren Mitmenschen Gutes thun sollen. . . .
Wir werden thun, was wir können. (Burmann 276)
We negroes are not all bad, there are many good people amongst
us. . . . But many do not yet believe in the Christian God who
told us that we should do good to our fellow man. . . . We will do
what we can.7
The point made here is that these Africans are willing to accept external
leadership, and that the Germans in particular are destined to provide
it. Just as the first mentee’s development was disrupted by indigenous
forces—he is described as member of an ancient Christian community
that suffered from oppression—and is reawoken by the visitors, so to
Imaginary Conquest & Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature 11

Africa generally is ascribed the potential to be resuscitated and then

integrated into the family of nations and their history. The example of
the two brothers illustrates that gratitude is the strongest bond between
master and subject. Conversely, other representatives of the indigenous
population are excluded from this contract: some, like the Egyptian
raiders and the slavers, play only a shadowy role here, others, like some
inhabitants of the infamous “interior,” are more explicitly denied favor,
perhaps because they are deemed too “savage” to be included in the
imagined community. It is in the German author’s gift, through his
fictitious agents and their deeds, to decide and determine the Others’
status as enemies or allies. By uniting families, by restoring their history
and granting them a future, the Germans gift Africa to the Africans.
And in the process the narrative invites young readers to participate in
this aspirational act, and to share its power of definition.
The aspect of asserting the beneficial German role in Africa is
elaborated even further, and with somewhat more concrete political
overtones, in Karl May’s Sklavenkarawane where the enemy of European-
led “progress” is clearly identified (slave hunters) and the protagonists
represent German virtues in a much more elaborate way than Bur-
mann’s youthful thrill seekers. May’s two heroes are mature scientists,
philanthropists, hunters, trackers, linguists, negotiators, fighters, and
detectives. And there is also a real-life model for these superior human
beings that is referenced several times in the novel as the embodi-
ment of German agency in colonial space: the medical doctor Eduard
Schnitzer who had become famous under his assumed name of Emin
Pasha as governor of Sudan’s province of Equatoria, appointed by
Charles Gordon, but in the service of the Egyptian viceroys. At the
time of the book’s publication, Emin had attained European celebrity
because the Mahdist uprising in lower Sudan had isolated him in his
post, and he had assumed a status of martyr for European ideals. In
Germany, his fame was based mainly on a reputation as a successful
administrator who ruled his province—encompassing the regions desig-
nated as deepest and innermost Africa—in accordance with European
principles and had supposedly eradicated the slave trade where many
others had failed. In this role, Emin became the galvanizing point for
German self-positioning in colonial space.8
Karl May is the best-selling German author of adventure stories for
young readers of all time. The circulation of his books is estimated to
have reached 200 million in German alone, and another 200 million
in other languages. Karl May’s Die Sklavenkarawane was first published
12 Florian Krobb

in serial form in a magazine for young readers, Der gute Kamerad (The
Good Comrade) in 1889 and 1890. Even stripped to its bare bones,
the plot of the novel appears quite implausible and convoluted. On his
journey through the desert, the brother approaching from the north,
Emil, is betrayed by his Arab guides. He manages to capture some of his
attackers; the ringleader, however, absconds. The captives are brought
to Fashoda where the local Egyptian governor officially charges the
European to go after the fugitive who happens to be the most notori-
ous slave hunter in the Egyptian Sudan. Equipped with ships, machine
guns and a contingent of soldiers, Emil Schwarz and his party make
their way up the Nile and Bahr-el-Ghazal rivers. En route they pick up
two slaves on the run and several disgruntled former allies of the slave
hunter join the convoy so that eventually they command an army of six
Nile barges and some thousand men of at least four different ethnici-
ties. Meanwhile Joseph Schwarz, the brother approaching from the
south, and an Arab companion identified only as the elephant hunter,
have been captured by the slavers, forced to witness their attack on an
African village, and held as collateral.
It is a significant and highly charged twist that the unification of the
two brothers coincides with their defeat of the slavers. The brothers
Schwarz are fictitious testimony to German entitlement to rule over
parts of Africa, an entitlement legitimized by ability and a benevolent
attitude towards Africa as well as their beneficial role in protecting
the Africans against animals and human predators. The conclusion of
the plot highlights in slight variation motifs familiar from Burmann’s
narrative: the reinforcement of the relationship between Germans and
Africans, and the role of the Germans as “enablers” of Africa:
Am anderen Morgen . . . traten die befreiten Belanganeger
[the inhabitants of the raided village] ihren Heimmarsch an.
Glücklich, der Sklaverei entgangen zu sein, dachten sie doch mit
Trauer der Ankunft in ihrer verwüsteten Heimat. Sie nahmen die
Leichen ihrer Gefallenen mit, um sie bei und mit den Ermordeten
in Ombula [the location of the raid] zu begraben. Ihr Abschied
von ihren Rettern war ein außerordentlich bewegter. Später
zogen die Sieger ab, denselben Weg, den sie gekommen waren,
da sie zu ihren Kähnen und Schiffen mußten. Die Leichen der
Sklavenjäger ließ man liegen, ein Fraß für das Raubzeug der Lüfte
und des Waldes. (May 602)
Imaginary Conquest & Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature 13

The next morning the Belangas [the inhabitants of the raided

village] began their march home. Happy to have escaped slavery,
they anticipated with sadness their return to their devastated
home. They took the bodies of their fallen comrades to bury them
together with those murdered in Ombula [the location of the
raid]. The farewell from their saviors was extraordinarily moving.
Later the victors withdrew, taking the same route by which they
had arrived since they had to return to their ships and barges.
The bodies of the slave hunters were left behind as prey for the
raptors of air and forest.
The showdown in the very heart of Africa, when the unification of the
two German brothers and their parties, the liberation of the slaves and
the annihilation of the slave traders coincide, enacts the completion
of an imaginary seizure of power; it showcases the Europeans’ ability
to move freely in colonial space, to fend off any challenge to their
supremacy and to determine what is best for the land’s well-being.
The blank spaces left in Verne’s cartographic enterprise are filled
on the ground with activity that has—in contrast to that imagined by
Burmann—a very concrete political dimension. The Germans here act
as more than mentors, they act as police, they punish and reward, they
collaborate with the rightful authorities (the Egyptian government)
as they see fit, but mostly act independently of and more effectively
than any innate force. The particularly German qualities that ensure
continued success are their superior knowledge of all things African,
based on explorers’ reports from which May cites copiously9 (which
enables them to “go native” without losing themselves), and an unfail-
ing moral compass. The name of the protagonists (Schwarz = Black)
suggests that May wanted them to be understood as the epitomes of
Africa. Through them the message goes out to juvenile readers that
they, too, should strive to bring Africa everything that the continent
requires to sustain development as defined by the German masters, a
development which includes accepting that very mastery.

Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer Abroad: Rejecting Intelligibility

Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) also describes a fantastic bal-
loon journey, but this time an unplanned and involuntary one that
occurs when the flying machine that is exhibited in a midwestern vil-
lage accidentally comes loose and drifts eastwards across the United
14 Florian Krobb

States and the Atlantic Ocean only to make landfall in West Africa.
The short narrative has been identified as being influenced by many
of the episodes contained in Jules Verne’s work such as “stopping at
an oasis, encountering a lion, using the ladder for rescues, seeing a
mirage, and hovering above a caravan while a sandstorm sweeps over
it and entombs both people and camels” (Gerber, foreword to Twain
xi). Yet pointing to “similar experiences” such as “splendid rescues”
(McKeithan 261) underestimates the extent and depth of Twain’s en-
gagement with the model. In both stories an ingenious constructor of
a revolutionary contraption enables the enterprise, but while Verne’s
Dr. Fergusson is an intrepid, astute, sane, and determined scientist,
Twain’s balloonist is a bitter, disappointed drunk and mad genius who
is ridiculed by the public wherever he exhibits his machine. Fergusson
embarks on his journey with the financial and moral backing of one of
the world’s most powerful institutions, the Royal Geographical Society,
and this association makes clear that it is to be seen as an endeavor
of pan-European proportions; Twain’s aeronaut is acting on his own
and his balloon journey does not adhere to any plan or mission. While
Verne’s crew of three is bound by strong ties of friendship and loyalty,
Twain’s aeronauts Tom, Huck, and Jim are accidental passengers, co-
incidentally hiding in the gondola when the ropes come loose. And
while Verne’s navigator accomplishes his task, Twain’s falls overboard
very early on and the remaining passengers drift without purpose or
direction. That Twain discards his navigator so early on, and with him
the entire concept of targeted expansion of knowledge, of a systematic
and purposeful approach to mastering the environment and interacting
with the wider world, suggests that his narrative intends to cast doubt
on common concepts of knowledge and knowledge generation. While,
in short, Verne’s book represents a narrative of purpose in which or-
der is imposed on the areas covered, and the German texts represent
attempts to attach meaning to foreign conditions and suggest direc-
tion for further interaction with colonial space, Twain’s story is one of
profound disorientation and of severe mistrust in the mechanisms that
purport to afford orientation, a tale of being lost in an almost nonsensi-
cal, contingent world. In this light, Tom Sawyer Abroad can be read as a
calculated contrafacture of and response to Verne.
Apart from the obvious motifs, further similarities between the Af-
rican adventure books concern the narrative structures. Like Verne’s,
Twain’s book is episodic, due to the itinerary structure. In Verne, much
of the entertainment stems from the dialogue which, though often
Imaginary Conquest & Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature 15

educational, is also occasionally emotional; in the German novels it is

familial and personal in Burmann and overwhelmingly pragmatic or
learned in May. In Twain, conversations are turbulent, fraught with
misunderstanding, idiosyncrasies, puns and punchlines. In that, the
book resembles many of the previous works of the author in which
the roles and interplay between the central characters had been firmly
established. Amongst Twain’s aeronauts, a configuration similar to
that in Verne might be detected: Tom is the rationalist and explainer,
the other two are listeners and learners, figures perhaps representing
young readers’ expectations; together they enact a public performance:
“the group’s incessant discussions replicate the structure of minstrel
comedy, as Tom plays the erudite middleman, repeatedly defending
abstract principles of representation against the horse-sense naïveté
of his interlocutors,” writes Henry Wonham (127). In this setting, the
narrative negotiates fundamental epistemological questions by allo-
cating to Tom, with his middle-class education, the role of accepting
conventionally agreed upon epistemological concepts (for example on
the mechanisms of proportion, representation, and symbolism), while
attributing to Jim a “literalist cast of mind” combined with superstition,
and by casting Huck not only as an alert skeptic, but also, of course,
as the chronicler of events and thus the agent of the uncertainty and
bewilderment that the narrative transmits (Briden, e.g., 47).
Twain satirizes the vision of Africa as colonial space in general and
a place of prospect and promise throughout his narrative mostly by
indulging in a plethora of clichés, secondhand images and twisted
references. While in Verne the significance of the gold hoard is literal,
and the message contained in the rejection of this trivial reward for
the travelers’ efforts morally unambiguous, and while the meaning of
the baptism in Burmann is obvious, Twain obfuscates what his travel-
ers’ encounters are meant to signify. Twain’s interest lies in drawing
attention to the frailty of any signification; he casts doubt on the intel-
ligibility of the world as such. With reference to the different colors
used to distinguish federal states on a map of the US, Tom explains,
“It ain’t to deceive you, it’s to keep you from deceiving yourself” (19);
and with reference to time difference at various degrees of longitude,
he asserts: “The Lord made the day, and He made the night, but He
didn’t invent the hours, and He didn’t distribute them around—man
done it” (21). Orientation is based on convention, agreement, and
imposition of an abstract system of measurements on the immeasur-
able, and perception determined by predispositions governs how man
16 Florian Krobb

conceptualizes his environment: “It’s a matter of proportion, that’s what

it is” (45, emphasis in original). Twain’s three travelers speculate about
the market value of Sahara sand for sale in America—not indeed its
actual value (which must be negligible) but symbolic value as souvenir,
as representation not of anything of substance but of a mere notion,
the notion of travel as such, and the notion that the distant and the
distinct in themselves are of value. The very idea of Africa, or colonial
space, or the exotic as epitomes of something meaningful, desirable,
and rewarding is discarded and discredited, and with it the premises
of a modernity of progress and advancement.
In Verne a truncated Africa, reduced to and totalized as merely
a geographical entity, remains an object of surveillance, recording,
integration into the European body of knowledge, and submission
to the European spirit of expansion and completion. In the German
adventure stories of the 1880s Africa becomes a designated field of
operation where Germans can provide guidance and direction. But for
Twain, Africa is a random, moderately titillating, in itself essentially un-
interesting backdrop for the negotiation of epistemological concerns.
While Verne’s, Burmann’s, and May’s narratives incorporate selected
but extensive knowledge from a variety of sources, Twain, as regards
his depiction of the continent, revels in the clichéd and outlandish. His
Africa comes across as an exaggerated derivative version of a number of
pre-texts and images of an exoticist and orientalist nature. The sighting
of a lion, the emblem of Africa, reveals to Tom where they actually are;
in line with convention, they are attacked immediately by the beast and
only their flying machine can save them: “pretty soon there was a couple
of dozen of them under me skipping up at the ladder and snarling and
snapping at each other; and so we went skimming over the sand . . . and
then some tigers come, without an invite, and they started a regular riot
down there” (35). Sand storms, savage attacks on caravans complete
with the abduction of a child that the air travelers manage to return
to its mother, mirages (“It ain’t anything but imagination,” 55; “We all
seen it, en dat prove it was dah,” 56), mummified bodies buried in the
sand, Aladdin’s caves, and many such fantastic props that populate
the imaginary are cited as determining our perception, recognition,
and thus the understanding of unfamiliar phenomena: “It was a pam
tree, of course; anybody knows a pam tree the minute he sees it, by the
pictures” (63). Derivativeness is lauded as the foremost determinant
of our grasp of the world:
Imaginary Conquest & Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature 17

Tom said we was right in the midst of the Arabian Nights, now.
He said it was right along here that one of the cutest things in
that book happened; so we looked down and watched while he
told about it, because there ain’t anything that is so interesting
to look at as a place that a book has talked about. (49)
As mentioned above, the dynamics in this group of travelers resembles
that of a minstrel show where not even skin color can serve as a signifier
since actors’ faces might be blackened. Similarly, the farcical enactment
of a minstrel show high in the air, the randomness of destination, the
exaggerated, stereotypical depiction of an unreal Africa, all of these
devices suggest that “Africa” profoundly eludes understanding, and
that “otherness” as such cannot be grasped at all.
After visiting the pyramids, the sphinx, Mount Sinai, and other
Biblical sites, the story sinks to a level even below the grotesque and
implausible; it deteriorates into outright and explicit lunacy when
Tom sends Jim back home to fetch his pipe and to return to Egypt
within the day. Even distance has become a mere figment of fantasy,
or a construct which can be reversed (or neutralized) by using a cor-
responding mechanism, fantasy. While the previous narratives served
the comprehension of the world, Twain pursues an agenda of obscur-
ing it, or better, of revealing that any comprehension of the world is
predetermined, conventional, and thus insecure; that the “essence” of
any object of perception remains elusive and is therefore practically
nonexistent. And in the end, the map of the world has become mystical
and unreal again, as the congenial original illustration depicting the
balloon’s itinerary indicates, a map in the style of old mappae mundi
where mythology in the form of sea monsters substitutes for fact (101).
Africa is remystified, returned to a premodern condition where the
explanation Hic sunt leones sufficed to identify places to leave well alone.
All of this conveys the profound message that authentic experi-
ence is fundamentally impossible and that representation based on
abstraction is essentially flawed since the assumptions upon which any
understanding is based consist of a cultural consensus which, though
generally accepted to be the only way to facilitate meaningful percep-
tion and reasoned deduction, is subject to social, racial, and many
other forms of predispositions. Such an insight will go over the heads
of those readers who approach the book with certain expectations,
namely that it forms a continuation of Tom Sawyer’s and Huck Finn’s
adventures. The aspect of entertainment remains visible only on the
18 Florian Krobb

very surface of the narrative; the aspect of instruction and edification is

absent here altogether, as the skepticism regarding the intelligibility of
the visited places logically implies the unteachability of any presumed
factual knowledge relating to the object of observation, and since the
entire journey is determined by chance. The ingenuity of the youthful
navigators is hardly suitable to serve as a role model in resolve, resource-
fulness, courage, or entrepreneurial spirit. Twain’s departure from the
narrative of progress represented by Verne and his German successors
is expressed by a combination of stereotype, mediated perception and
misunderstanding, played out in Jim’s and Huck’s inability to accept
consensual principles of conceptualizing the world and in Tom’s failure
to convey the results and methods of his reasoning in a convincing way.
In the early 1860s, Verne maps not only Africa, but more importantly
the European project of subjugating it without really taking notice of
anything that does not fit into the regimen of geographical order; in
the 1880s Burmann and May define Africa as the theatre for the imple-
mentation of a specifically German mission in the overseas world; in
the 1890s Twain uses Africa as a mere pretext to stage the uncertainty
of perception, the randomness of knowledge and the absurdity of the
fiction devoted to the topic. Verne’s approach to educating young
readers about Africa as the frontier of knowledge generation was truly
European in scope and ambition; he does not discriminate between the
achievements of British, French, or German precursors.10 The asserted
knowledge system is, from a European perspective, a universal one, and
so are the aims and ambitions of the nations and individuals engaged
in it. The trajectory on which Verne’s fictitious enterprise is situated
is punctuated by German, French, Swiss, Scottish, Italian, and Arabic
names. The German novels, in contrast, are concerned with instructing
a German audience about a specifically German mission in Africa—but
at the same time they mark a shift from focus on the broad outlines
of geography, of framing Africa as merely a geographical entity, to
concerns with the human conditions in this space. The traversed and
described territory is thereby transformed into a specific colonial space
in which the representatives of superior ability, insight, and morality
have been allocated (or rather allocate to themselves) a specific duty.
Mark Twain’s agenda, finally, is much broader and simultaneously
much narrower: it appears self-indulgent, cynical even in its handling
of the concrete subject matter that drives the narrative: African travel.
What the books have in common, though, is that they instruct young
European readers in techniques with which to master this new reality of
Imaginary Conquest & Epistemology in Nineteenth-Century Adventure Literature 19

a world that is no longer local, but simultaneously national and global.

In describing Africa, the authors appropriate the continent for the ben-
efit of their domestic consumers. Some of the strategies by which this
is achieved are familiar from factual travel writing and from so-called
colonial literature, i.e., fiction for adults produced by writers actually
engaged in the colonies. The exotic destination chosen to negotiate
the Europeans’ and Germans’ position in the world provides the writers
with an endless supply of adventure, and thus entertainment, arising
from the confrontation with the strange and unpredictable. The avail-
ability of an Other such as Africa facilitates self-positioning vis-à-vis the
“other,” but neither reflection on this position nor acknowledgement
of the “other” in its own right, meaning an acknowledgement of differ-
ence as such. In Verne’s, Burmann’s, and May’s narratives, the eventual
aim of instructing young readers about the foreign, and entertaining
them by means of the different and the remarkable, ultimately serves
as reassurance of the self. Only Twain departs from this pattern. But
then, his book freely signals that it has no interest in Africa as such,
that Africa has become a mere pretext.

Notes
1
See Bowersox.
2
In fact, this feat was only achieved by Henry Morton Stanley’s trek through central
Africa from East to West in 1874–77 and Hermann Wissmann’s march in the reverse
direction in 1880–83.
3
See Pratt 201–08.
4
See Krobb, “Family Reunions.”
5
Schweinfurth (1874), Junker (1889–91).
6
Rohlfs (1874–75).
7
All translations of the German originals are my own.
8
See Krobb, “Defining Germanness Overseas.”
9
See Kosciuszko, Koch, and Zeilinger.
10
See the list of African explorers in Verne 171.

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