Defoe and the Politics of Representing the African Interior

The article approaches Daniel Defoe as a founding figure of eighteenth-century discourse on Africa, and sites "Captain Singleton" within a typology of such writing. New light is thrown on the novel by material from the archives of the Royal African Company relating to one of Defoe's chief informants, who served also as a model for his landlocked White Man. Particular reference is made to debates on the slave trade, and to changing attitudes towards mercantilism. For as long as the continental interior remained unexplored, certain themes dominated its portrayal, and the political implications of these were already overt in Defoe's lifetime.