The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe – Illustrated

After years of prosperity and family life in England, Robinson Crusoe cannot suppress the desire to travel again. He returns to the island he once occupied and finds a divided settlement of Spaniards, English mutineers and Indigenous inhabitants struggling over labour, authority and survival. Crusoe supplies the colony, attempts to impose order and then resumes his voyage rather than remaining to govern the society he helped create.

The journey carries him through Madagascar, Southeast Asia, China and Siberia before an overland return to Europe. Encounters with merchants, missionaries, violence and unfamiliar religious practices extend the first novel’s interest in trade and self-reliance into a much wider imperial geography. The sequel is more episodic than Robinson Crusoe, but it places its ageing traveller inside the global routes of early modern commerce and expansion.