ABSTRACT
Martineau wrote about sub-Saharan Africa in three formats: the didactic-fiction, political economy tale, Life in the Wilds; her discussions of trade relations and geographical exploration in History of the Peace; and her analyses of slavery and racism in her periodicals writing. The Illustrations of Political Economy tale, Life in the Wilds, investigates emigration and colonization in South Africa, revealing a pattern of failed interactions between settlers and natives. In the nineteenth-century, Africa represented one of the last unmapped regions on Earth, tantalizing puzzle European explorers longed to be the first to unravel, for personal, scientific, and national gratification. Martineau periodically invoked a popular analogy between England's industrial working poor and plantation slaves. The most frequently treated topic throughout Martineau's writing is slavery, the slave trade, the economics of human productivity, and the politics of slavery. The slave-trade has been like a plague in Africa, DemeraraNationality is the miracle of political independence; race is the principle of physical analogy.
