ABSTRACT
Scott's romances did not deliver on all the problems of historical correspondence, even if they did point out the difficulties raised for history by postal delay or postmodern deferral. Joseph Conrad reopens this matter by reminding us that we don't always know how to treat such correspondence once it has arrived. Hegel's system of world history, the progressive manifestation of the Spirit of Being, is not, however, the only philosophy of modernist history which can neatly present the case for imperialism. Conrad does not, however, lead us to believe that one man is capable of carrying out the romance of capital single-handed. For Conrad, to remember the force of the event, to write a history that can be other than self-imperialization, will be to remember a disaster, the disaster of imperialism as it is implicated textually.
