ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on direct references to the colonies in Thomas Hardy's writings, examines the significance of these references and considers the contribution they make to narratives in which they occur. It considers the extent to which colonization, in second half of the nineteenth century, may be considered as a process occurring within national boundaries, a domestic replication of the relationship existing between metropole and its far-flung colonies. Those distant, shadowy lands colonized by the British were used by Hardy to show that however strange and disparate they may appear to be, they form part of the same small planet, and that although moral views of their inhabitants may be far removed from those of Victorian Christians, those views were equally valid and possibly more desirable. The views expressed by Hardy in His Country on interconnectedness of man and the unity of all those living on this planet are often accompanied elsewhere in his writings by astronomical imagery.
