The literary world was shocked when in 1889, at the height of his career, Robert Louis Stevenson announced his intention to settle permanently on the Pacific island of Samoa. His readers were equally shocked when he began to use the subject material offered by his new environment, not to promote a romance of empire, but to produce some of the most ironic and critical treatments of imperialism in 19th-century fiction. Stevenson emerges as a witness both to the cross-cultural encounters of 19th century imperialism and to the creation of the global culture which characterizes the post-colonial world.