The Secret Agent: Cosmopolitanism, Transnationalism and Internationalism

Nostromo was written in response to recent and contemporary events, including the Spanish-American Warwar of 1898 and its aftermath. This engagement with the contemporary was also evident in Conrad’s next two novels, The Secret AgentConrad, Joseph (1907) and Under Western Eyes (1911). It is perhaps less obvious in the case of The Secret Agent, a narrative based on the 1894 Greenwich bombing, in which a young Frenchman, Martial BourdinBourdin, Martial, was killed, but Conrad’s interest in this incident reveals its topicality in the context of the debates around the 1905 Aliens Act and more recent newspaper reports on anarchist activities. The chapter discusses Conrad’s fictional engagement with anarchists in ‘An Anarchist’, ‘The Informer’ and A Secret Agent and places them in the context of Italian, French, and German anarchists in London as well as Jewish refugees from Tsarist Russia. Cosmopolitanism and transnationalism are discussed in this context.