The African Artisan Meets the English Sailor: Technology and the Savage for Defoe.

A literary analysis of the novel "Captain Singleton" by Daniel Defoe is presented. Focusing on scenes that describe Mozambican artifacts, the story of a rebellion aboard a slave ship, and a meeting with a naked Englishman in Africa, it argues that Defoe depicts savagery as a product of history rather than a result of inherent incapacity. The author goes on to suggest that the novel indicates the technologies that made Great Britain a global power could be lost or forgotten.