Culture and Commerce in Conrad's Asian Fiction by Andrew Francis

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

Reviewed by: Culture and Commerce in Conrad's Asian Fiction by Andrew Francis Joyce Wexler (bio) Andrew Francis. Culture and Commerce in Conrad's Asian Fiction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015. 228 pp. 9781107093980. Andrew Francis's book may become as indispensable to Conrad's Asian fiction as The Golden Bough has been to The Waste Land. Francis brings detailed knowledge of commerce to Conrad's stories about European traders in Asia. While critics concerned with economic factors usually rely on generalizations about capitalism, Francis focuses on the particulars of commercial codes and legal regulations. He regards commerce as a "phenomenology" that is a more reliable source of knowledge than words, arguing that Conrad's accounts of trade compensate for the "inadequacies of language" (6). Francis bases his argument on the financial records of British and Dutch trading companies, legal documents, and accounting practices. He uses this archival research to familiarize readers with the period's business norms. Bypassing the usual criteria for assessing Conrad's Asian texts, his readings amplify the irony of the narrative voice and magnify the significance of material conditions. Texts that have been considered second rate become more interesting when explanations of trade move background information into the foreground. For example, Francis argues that double-entry bookkeeping represents "the force of Western culture" because it is "crucial to commercial success in the increasingly globalized world" (57). This accounting method provided controls that allowed corporations to raise capital and operate across vast distances. Francis points out that traders with "access to larger capital resources and bigger trade networks, whether Arab, Chinese, or European" displaced independent owner-captains (22). As the technology of steam replaced sailing, the independent shipowner could no longer compete with corporate-financed steamships. This kind of information helps readers perceive nuances of meaning between the extremes of scrupulous probity and the blatant criminality of slave trading, arms dealing, smuggling, and prostitution. Francis shows that [End Page 143] ledgers, like heads on stakes, can reveal ethical, moral, and psychological subtleties. In the chapter titled "Negotiating the Nets of Commerce and Duty: Lord Jim," Francis proposes that commerce provides another set of norms for judging Jim. In addition to legal and marine codes, Francis applies "commercial standards" as articulated in regulations covering bankruptcy, commissions, exchange rates, and fraud (85). Marlow insists that Jim's life can't be understood by facts alone, yet readers must at least know how Jim's contemporaries understood the "externals" (87). Given this context, Francis argues, readers can appreciate important differences between Jim and Stein. Stein is a paragon of integrity: his abilities are "illuminated as much as anything by his commercial record, which demonstrates the relevance of matters of conduct in the field of economic endeavor which connects humanity" (109). Unlike Jim, Stein is "trustworthy" (110). Illustrating the phenomenological thesis of the book, Francis points out that "the facts of his [Stein's] commercial life, in which the ethical and the economic are linked, speak for themselves, perhaps more so than his memorable utterances" (116). Thus, Francis argues, "Stein is Conrad's supreme portrait of the possibility of the productive presence of business in a rounded, imaginative life" (108). Shifting the critical discussion of Lord Jim from ethical quandaries to quotidian acts, Francis argues, "Commerce is not only a common experience of most of mankind, but also offers a metaphorical framework in which people's lives are lived in the everyday dimensions of time and space" (115). Francis's explanation of economic conditions also leads to a new interpretation of The Rescue. Aware of the practical constraints on adventurers like Tom Lingard, Francis defends the novel against the chorus of critics who regard it as an albatross that Conrad carried for twenty years. The common view is that the novel fails because Conrad was incapable of writing about sex or women, but Francis regards Lingard as a representative case rather than an individual who succumbs to passion. In this reading, Edith Travers is an independent woman who tries to resist "her society's severe limitations on her role" (73). Francis persuasively claims that in a broader cultural context, the novel is a "more successful depiction of romantic and...