Native Mis/Rule and ‘Oriental Despotism’ in Alexandre Dumas’s Adventures in Algeria (1846) and Rudyard Kipling’s From Sea to Sea, Letters of Travel (1889)

Borrowing concepts from Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978), this article argues that Rudyard Kipling holds the same views on native rule in India as Alexandre Dumas does on Algerian structures of government. Both regard native rule as a paradigm of ‘Oriental despotism,’ which Orientalist scholars attribute to Oriental structures of power. Dumas asserts that Algerians owe their ‘misgovernment’ to the political influence of their late Turkish conqueror. Kipling contrasts native ‘misrule’ with enlightened British rule in order to legitimate British encroachment in India. Besides, both agree that native misgovernment fosters the spread of corruption and violence among their subjects.