ABSTRACT
Anthony Trollope wrote several travel books that reveal his interest in, yet also his reservations about, imperial expansion through settlement. When he described settler colonies, he was particularly concerned with their suitability for British emigrants and speculated on the colonies’ future within the growing empire. His novels as well as travel accounts offer critical insight into colonial policies, the conflicts between new emigrants and earlier settlers, between settlers and indigenous populations, and between the settler colonies and the imperial centre. Still, although Trollope assessed modes and means of settlement, weighed the pros and cons of rival emigration destinations, and in his fiction, exposed the implications of colonial life at these different destinations, he stopped short of questioning the expansion of British civilisation itself. Trollope, like the majority of his contemporaries, took the growth of the settler empire for granted. It seemed natural and necessary, given the population growth in Britain’s metropolitan spaces, that more and more Britons would venture out and settle the growing empire. The lost colonies that had become the United States of America – colonies that, as Trollope pointedly put it, “have now, happily, passed away from us” ( South Africa ch. 2) – necessarily occupied a peculiar position within this world map. The main emigration destination for Britons throughout much of the century, this renegade settler colony was also a rival commercial and colonising power. Hence, emigration to the U.S. became perceived as a drain of human resources. So even if certain strata of society, or types of people, were deemed “superfluous” or “redundant” (Johnston; cf. Kranidis), it was argued that they would still usefully populate the British Empire. Victorian emigration manuals reflected changing policies that urged migration within the empire, while popular fiction as well as travel writing frequently pitted rival destinations against each other. In presenting the disappointments as much as the eager expectations of emigrants and, with a peculiar dry humour that countered common sensationalist strategies of the time, the difficulties returnees faced, Trollope participated in controversial discourses on emigration and empire. Judging from his travel accounts, he was well-informed about the places he visited as well as about topical debates on emigration. Yet the representation of these places in his fiction also provided him with an opportunity to engage consciously and self-reflexively with their representation in popular culture. Trollope’s fictional treatment of emigration was always as much about playing with readers’ expectations as about current controversies.
