Popular imperialism and the textual cultures of Empire

This chapter revisits John M. MacKenzie’s scholarship from the perspective of a literary critic in order to assess his contribution to the study of popular imperial literature. It addresses MacKenzie’s research on adventure fiction and the representation of the natural world; his studies of heroic biography and the construction of imperial reputations; and his work on the geographical imaginations of British guidebooks and the Protestant missionary record. The chapter also sketches possibilities for future research emerging from a closer convergence of imperial history and literary studies. It argues that there is scope to extend the ‘four nations’ approach and comparative perspectives on European empires to the study of imperial literary production, and to investigate the ways in which some neglected late-imperial forms responded to decolonisation.