ABSTRACT
Literary historians, particularly in France and Germany, would collect and classify every page penned in the colonies and mould their material into a 'history of literature' with autonomous movements and trends just like those established in the larger literary scene in Europe. German critics such as Friedrich Brie tended to emphasize the organic unity of English colonial literature and the continuity of English imperialism because both qualities represented a goal towards which German literature had laboured in vain throughout the nineteenth century. The colonies became increasingly important within French domestic politics, and as a result the literature dealing with them was frequently under debate. Colonial literature therefore drew on the strengths and weaknesses of the European literary scene in its efforts at self-definition. Frieda von Bulow was among the earliest exponents of German colonial fiction. German colonial fiction therefore came after the scramble for Africa and had no roots in a less hectic period of colonial experience.
