Dissonant Heritage between the Lines: Southern Africa in Nineteenth-Century Travel Narratives

The chapter explores 19th-century European travel narratives in Southern Africa, revealing tensions between cultural curiosity and imperialist ideology. Presented as exploration, these accounts often reinforced colonial hierarchies and helped shape perceptions of the colonised world. Set against rising bourgeois travel and better infrastructure, such literature circulated widely, embedding distorted images that still affect historical memory today.