Author: Kristian Kleffman
Email: kriskleff1296@hotmail.com

       "Social, political, and scientific ideas have changed since Joseph Conrad wrote Heart of Darkness in 1899. Colonialism, for the most part, has been replaced by a global economy and the world—at the edge of ecological disaster—has recognized the error of its ways and struggles to make up for lost time. Some say it is too late to repair the damage we have done to the environment. For the thousands of species that have become extinct since the industrial revolution, this statement is true.
       The ivory trade of the 19th Century is a particularly interesting point from which to start an ecocritical examination of literature because texts are vastly different in their treatment of wildlife and the environment. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, is a poignant novella which describes some of the practices of the 19th century ivory trade in Africa. Marlow, an Englishman and the protagonist, captains a Belgian steamboat deep into the rivers of Africa to retrieve ivory harvested in the jungles.
       Conrad never mentions elephants except as ivory. In this way, Conrad dissociates the product from the slaughter and juxtaposes the horrors of slavery and human suffering with what we are expected to understand as the cold business of ivory acquisition. In “The East African Ivory Trade in the Nineteenth Century,” R.W. Beachey describes the practices of the colonial ivory trade. In the following excerpt, Beachey quotes a mid-nineteenth century ivory hunter named Baker:

                           In Bunyoro an established value for a healthy young girl was that she was equal to a single elephant's tusk

                           or a new shirt. A girl might be purchased in Uganda for thirteen English needles…In some cases we purchased

                           ivory at 2,000% profit and both sellers and buyers felt perfectly contented. Here was free trade thoroughly

                           established, the future was tinged with a golden hue. Ivory would be almost inexhaustible, as it would flow from

                           both east and west to the market where such luxuries as two-penny handkerchiefs, ear-rings at a penny a pair,

                           finger signet-rings at a shilling a dozen, could be obtained for such comparatively useless lumber as

                           elephant tusks. (282)

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