| Summary: | The three authors and travelers studied in this paper (Albert Londres, André Gide, Michel Leiris) speak out against colonialism. They are critical of its effects in the context of late European colonial rule in black Africa during the late 1920s and early 1930s. For various reasons however, ranging from institutional aspects to personal sensibilities, it was undesirable to interfere in political debates. Hence, the reluctance to subscribe to the role of early intellectuals and public watchmen. They justified their outspokenness with their personal experience as travelers and the urgency of the matter they discussed. It can be shown that the literary forms that resulted from this situation (grand reportage, literary travel log, ethnographic journal) modernized the genre of travel writing in a critical moment of its evolution.
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