This thesis explores Joseph Conrad's first two novels, Almayer's Folly and An Outcast of the Islands, from the perspective of history. It broadly argues that in order to understand Conrad's Malay novels, it is necessary to get a sense of the author's own experiences and memories of living and working in the Malay Archipelago in the late nineteenth century. Read against the background of Conrad's own experiences, the novels reveal as much about the author as it does about the history of the people and the place he writes about. Through several readings that trace the connections between history, fiction, and experience, I argue that it was Conrad's experiences in the Malay Archipelago that impelled the writing of his Malay world in the English language.   iii