"Revelations of Pompeii"

In place of the infantile colonial narrative and oppressive racial hierarchy, "Revelations of Pompeii" proclaims the paternalization of the racial other and with it a shift towards international/interracial relationships in which authority is gained by setting an example, not by enforcing expansionism or oppression.  

The ignorance described in "Plain English" is remedied not by the invasion of new knowledge done by the sword or the pen, but by discovery, through the “spade” ("Revelations of Pompeii" 510). Intercultural contact occurs by welcoming foreigners into the homeland, not by expansion of the homeland into the foreign.  

The author of the "Revelations of Pompeii" opens with the sentiment that “we” (510), referring to the readers, are already “indebted” (510) to the ancient culture of the Pompeiians, calling them a “past generation” (510), ancestral. The form of their ovens “was exactly the same as that in which they are fashioned today” ("Revelations of Pompeii" 510). Clearly, the ancient cultures, regardless of skin tone as the Pompeiians would certainly have been dark, already inform and continue informing the modern public. Taken in tandem with The Moonstone, the author reminds the audience that the Indian culture is just as ancient as Pompeii. The “sacred city of Somnauth” (Collins 464) was sacked in “the eleventh century” (Collins 464), meaning that it had reached its peak of civilization long prior, during which America was centuries away from even being settled, and England was Britannia, undergoing the Dark Ages.   

By comparison, the civilizations of Pompeii and India, being markedly older, paternally offer to England and America a wealth of information and diversity of understanding. They do not enforce this knowledge but exemplify it.  

Works Cited: 

Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. Edited by John Sutherland, Oxford University Press, 1999.

"Revelations of Pompeii." Harper’s Weekly: A Journal of Civilization, 8 Aug. 1868. pp. 510.