Mark Twain's India: The Private-Public Divide in Following the Equator

Mark Twain lectured across the Indian subcontinent for over two months and narrated his experiences of India, Australia, and South Africa in his travelogue Following the Equator (1897). Even though Twain makes transnational connections between slavery at home and European imperialism around the globe, his travelogue is replete with ideologically contradictory statements. He alternates between respect for native cultures and a typical nineteenth-century assertion of the superiority of Anglo-American civilization. This article examines Twain's varying private responses to people and cultural practices in India. It also analyses his problematic endorsement of the British Empire as "reinforced by just and liberal laws" which was in contrast with his later scathing denunciation of American imperialism. It will delve into the possible reasons for Twain's complicity with the colonialist discourse when he operates in a public sphere informed by his reliance on colonialist sources of history.