This essay examines letters of petition sent by failed white settlers in South Africa to the British Governor General. These letters comprise a particular discursive genre that combine aspects of both private and public. The key to their success was controlled emotion: petitioners had to present their distress in such a way as to excite the exercise of compassion. Allowing subversive or stray emotions to enter a letter was bound to undermine a petitioner’s appeal. Reading this epistolary corpus critically allows us to understand the discursive strategies by which colonials claimed a sentimental attachment to Britain, the empire and, indeed, the Governor General himself.
