Analyse how Conrad criticizes colonialism in the story 'An Outpost of Progress'

In the short story "An Outpost of Progress", the author Joseph Conrad explains the principles of the colonial time in the Congo Free State. The story is about two european agents, Kayerts and Carlier, beeing responsible for the trading of ivory and the station. Both are neither intelligent nor self-dependent, so Makola "a Sierra Leone nigger"(P.9 L.4) helps them trading the ivory. Kayerts and Carlier have the aim to earn much money. But they don't want to dirty their hands with the trading, so in effect Makola is the chief of the the station. He swaps their "Stationmen" for the ivory. Both agents are shocked about this behaviour, but they let Makola doing the deal. The author mean that the occupiers did not have subjectivly the control over their colonized country, they did niot know the necessary manners and behaviour in the country. So the natives had still the power.

The title of the story also mediated that the place isn't industrialized and civilizated like "normal" towns in european countries. It is a place, where happens or develops nothing. So Conrad chooses the title to make fun over the development of imperlism and colonialism of the european countries. Kayerts and Carlier are the example for the incompetence of the occupiers of a country. But it was not a failling of the goverment employing them, it was deliberate. Since the last agent died, the director (symbolize the goverment) was in need of new inferior agents beeing naive and bonafide. So he found Carlier and Kayerts believing to be the "two pionieers of trade and progress" and earning money. They were two innocent guys with no real perspective of the living in a colonized country, they just dream of getting rich and famous.

antonio