ABSTRACT
In the course of this paper I shall consider how Dickens constructs ideas about England’s empire by im agining both the m etropolitan centre and the savage periphery. I cannot read these constructions w ith detachm ent. As a white Zimbabwean I am only too aware of the texts which around the tu rn of this century helped to create the ideas of empire and Rhodesia, and my life has been lived w ith the historical consequences of these ideas.
