Introduction to Comic Empires -- Cartoons, Caricature, and Imperialism: A Symposium

Abstract

In recent years, the cultural turn in the history of imperialism has shed much new light on how agents of empire, its opponents, and subject populations, functioned under its aegis. Yet despite ample attention being given to the role played by commercial advertising (McClintock, 1995; Ciarlo, 2011 ), print capitalism (MacKenzie, 1986; Kaul, 2003), travel and tourism (Clark, 1999; Pratt, 2007), and other cultural forms (e.g. film: Bums, 20 13 ), there has been little considered analysis of the key function of cartoons, satirical art, and caricature in sustaining -- as well as challenging -- imperial systems. Aside from useful surveys by Roy Douglas (1994) and Mark Bryant (2008), there exists no thorough, scholarly interrogation of the relationship between cartoons and empire. This is a significant omission, for it is almost impossible to imagine the "New Imperialism" in Africa without picturing Linley Samboume's "Rhodes Colossus" (Punch, Dec. 10, 1892: 266 -- Fig. 1) standing astride the continent from Cape to Cairo (Scully, 2012). Similarly, Thomas Theodor Heine's famous representation of the different Belgian, French, British, and German methods of colonialism (Simplicissimus, May 1904: 55 -- Fig. 2) continues to color our understandings of imperial exploitation, as do numerous similar works by American, Japanese, and cartoonists of other nationalities.