The colonial fairytale doesn’t hold up at all in our contemporary world. Crusoe, to put it bluntly, was a slave trader – but somehow it became a children’s story: “Educationists agreed that the island narrative of Crusoe was an ideal text for teaching the virtues of self-reliance, careful management of resources and trust in the overall – if a little mysterious, but that’s a part of the appeal – wonderfulness of the Christian God. That the novel could be harnessed to the business of empire was a further recommendation.” – The Guardian (UK)