by Reading 1900s Literature While Contemporary Imperialism Happens In Real Time
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
The Pattern That Never Changes
Sunday afternoon, reading Heart of Darkness while the news reports on Western military interventions in Africa. The juxtaposition is impossible to ignore. Conrad was writing about imperialism in 1898. Here we are in 2026, and we’re still implementing imperialism. Just with slightly different language.
What Conrad understood was that imperialism isn’t primarily about economic extraction. That’s the mechanism. But the actual driver is psychological: the need to impose your civilization on people you consider uncivilized. The absolute conviction that your way is better and that you’re doing people a favor by forcing them to adopt it.
The Historical Pattern
The British Empire told themselves they were bringing civilization to Africa. The French told themselves they were spreading enlightenment. The Americans tell themselves they’re bringing democracy. Every imperial power has had a narrative about how their imperialism was actually benevolence. And every imperial power has been wrong.
What’s fascinating about reading 1900s literature while watching contemporary imperialism is that the narratives haven’t changed. We’re still being told that military intervention is for the good of the people being intervened on. We’re still being told that it’s reluctant intervention. We’re still being told that there’s no alternative.
The Modern Version
Contemporary imperialism looks different. It’s not colonies anymore. It’s military bases. It’s corporate extraction. It’s cultural imperialism through Hollywood and social media. But the fundamental logic hasn’t changed: we know better than you. Let us impose our system. It’s for your own good.
And I’m complicit in this. I’m reading books written in English about British imperialism using frameworks developed by Western academics. I’m consuming Western culture and Western understanding of history. I’m participating in the imperialism even as I critique it. Which is the trap. You can’t escape it by thinking about it clearly. You can only acknowledge your complicity.
What Literature Teaches
What reading 1900s literature teaches you is that historical analysis doesn’t prevent repetition. We can read Conrad’s critique of imperialism and then immediately implement imperialism with different language. Knowledge doesn’t prevent behavior. It just allows you to be more conscious while doing the thing you shouldn’t be doing.
This is depressing. But it’s honest. The honest version of history isn’t that we learn from the past. It’s that we repeat the past while being slightly more aware that we’re repeating it. Which doesn’t actually change anything.
The Difficult Truth
I’ve been wrestling with why I read this literature if it doesn’t change anything. Why spend time understanding imperialism if understanding it doesn’t prevent it? Part of the answer is just: because understanding something is better than ignorance, even if understanding doesn’t change behavior.
But part of it is also: maybe the point isn’t to change the system. Maybe the point is to be conscious within the system. To read the literature. To understand the history. To acknowledge the patterns. To resist where possible. To accept what you can’t change. To live with integrity as much as the system allows.
For literary analysis, check The Hard Times.
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