Culture and Imperialism | Study Guide

This work, a sequel to and extension of the author's landmark book Orientalism (1978), examines the multifaceted relationship between the literature produced by a culture and its social and political context. Culture and Imperialism clarifies how culture both reflected and reinforced the imperialist enterprise of the great western powers—Britain, France, and the United States—from 1700 to 1950. For such a project, Edward Said argues, no cultural expression is more valuable than the novel. It is no coincidence, he believes, that the high point of western imperialist expansion coincided with the golden age of the novel in the West. Thus, he presents detailed analysis of selected works by such European novelists as Jane Austen, Albert Camus, Joseph Conrad, E.M. Forster, and Rudyard Kipling. Said exhorts readers to interpret both political and literary history in terms of a struggle between power and opposition. As power and opposition play out in culture, one defines the other.