Taming Cannibals

In Taming Cannibals , Patrick Brantlinger unravels contradictions embedded in the racist and imperialist ideology of the British Empire . For many Victorians, the idea of taming cannibals or civilizing savages was oxymoronic: civilization was a goal that the nonwhite peoples of the world could not attain or, at best, could only approximate, yet the "civilizing mission" was viewed as the ultimate justification for imperialism.