I feel as if An Outpost of Progress represents the mentality most people in Britain who were agents of Imperialism have about British Imperialism in Africa as well as Slavery in general. After having their workers sold into slavery, the remaining three at the outpost sat that "slavery is a horrible thing." They take a hollow moral stance against it, even though it was one of them who sold their workers in the first place. It is as if as long as it is not happening by their hand, it can just be overlooked. It does not matter that they have trampled on the lives of their fellow man. What matters in the end is that the company has prospered. In the story, the company gains the quality ivory in exchange for their workers. Although the three who remain claim that slavery is wrong, they do nothing about it aside from sit around and be angry about it. Their inaction does not make them any less guilty, even if action would be futile.
I think this sort of "say one thing and do another" attitude represents British Imperialism fairly well. They are supposedly spreading civilization as well as claiming new territory for the empire. However, they consistently neglect to care about the peoples they trample over and established civilizations they have to crush to achieve this goal. They may take a false high ground and speak out against slavery and other atrocities, but at the same time, what they're doing isn't really better.
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