Joseph Conrad’s essays and letters in the light of postcolonial studies

This article is an attempt to explore the feasibility of using the analytical and interpretational tools offered by postcolonial criticism in order to reassess those texts in which Joseph Conrad expressed his political views. The author’s basic aim is to present the methods which Conrad used in his political essays in order to make a critique of great power politics in Central and Eastern Europe, and in particular to draw attention to techniques and content that were specifi cally designed to deconstruct the imperial practices of Germany and Russia. The article also shows how Conrad constructed a characteristically Polish defensive national identity, thus placing his political thinking within the context of the tradition of Romantic theories of nationalism, which found their finest expression in the writings of Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Słowacki and Conrad’s father Apollo Nałęcz-Korzeniowski