ABSTRACT
White colonial society is usually thought of as conservative and traditional. Pictures come to mind of the officers' mess, with its etiquette and regimental silver, or of other corners of the globe made forever England by the habits of dressing for dinner and drinking the Queen's health. Social innovation and reform had been part of the attraction of overseas territories. This had been the motive of the various sects which established settlements in America, as well as of the majority of the emigrants flooding out of Metternich's Europe, determined to build political and social liberty elsewhere. The actual word 'democratic' is rare in colonial literature. It smacked of socialism to some and to others, like Kipling, of corrupt and inefficient South American despotisms. Colonial fiction was consequential in its approach to democracy, and based its ideas upon a sincere critique of the class-system of Europe. English colonial fiction too was convinced that racial kinship created links which obliterated traditional class-distinctions.
