Imitation, Abrogation and Appropriation: the production of the post-colonial text

The first texts produced in a post-colonial society, that is in a society which has undergone the experience of colonisation in one of its numerous forms (settlement, intervention etc.), are those produced by the representatives of the viewpoint of the colonising centre: e.g. gentrified settlers, administrators, box-wallahs and missionaries; or those 'birds of passage' such as travellers, sightseers etc., who seem to have been born hand in hand with the Imperial enterprise and the opportunities it offered for adventurous voyeurism. Writers as diverse as Froude, Mary Kingsley and Charles Wentworth fall into this category.