Colonialism at Work

...in P O'B's HMS Surprise. Mr. O'Brian starts his description (Maturin's description, actually) with some of the stock images we've come to expect when talking about the east, and then he veers off a little, talking instead about what the British have also brought to India, what some of the hands refer to earlier as 'the spicy coast'. (Recall Colonel Brandon's response to Margaret's inquiry about what India is like in Sense and Sensibility -- "The air is full of spices!")

"Bombay: Fresh fruit for his invalids, iced sherberts for all hands, enormous meals, the marvels of the East; marble palaces, no doubt; the Parsee's silent towers; the offices for the Commissioners of the former French Settlements, counters and factories on the Malabar coast; the Residence of Mr. Commissioner Canning." (P.189)

That is the expected -- in the next chapter we see the real.

"Fresh Fruit for the invalids, to be sure, and enormous meals for those who had time to eat them; but apart from the omnipresent smell and a little arrack that came aboard by stealth, the wonders of the East, the marble palaces, remained distant, half guessed objects for the Surprise." [bold my own] (p.190)

It's interesting (and telling) that P O'B uses the same phrase twice, the 'marvels of the East'; He, like so many others before him, is using Orientalist stock images, renting a crowd, as Achebe would say. And his last line, about how the crew of the Surprise will remain in the dark about what India really looks like, says a lot about how those stock images are transfered -- by ignorance and a lack of original data.


Quotes from O'Brian, Patrick. "HMS Surprise" Reprinted WW Norton and Co, New York, 1991.