New book: The concurrences of colonialism. Swedish travelogues from Central and East Africa during the interwar period (1919-1939)

In the study 27 Swedish travelogues from Belgian Congo, British Kenya and Ethiopia are examined. These narratives are divided in four subgenres (colonization narratives, expedition narratives, hunting and adventure narratives, and missionary narratives) and are analysed in four sepatate chapters. A prime objective is to contribute to the investigation of the various roles played by Swedes in relation to European colonialism as well as to contribute to research on Swedish travel literature from the interwar period.

One important question for research is how these travel stories relate to colonial discourses, a relationship whose complexities can be detected in the light of the concept of concurrences. The analyses of colonial discourses involve ideas of modernity and development pertaining to cultural and racial differences, , and they contain both texts and illustrations. Another question concerns Swedish self-image in the various colonial contexts in which the narratives take place. A further area of interest is the form of the stories, how they relate to other travel literature, as well as the role played by intertexts and paratexts. Other subjects of the investigation include dependence on colonial infrastructures and the role played by gender, class and ethnicity. In addition to concurrences, concepts such as panoptical view and anachronistic space, universalism, stage theory, debasement and affirmation, and subaltern voices are frquently referred to in the book.