Interpreting the Visual Evidence
Learning to Live in a Global Economy
The commercial networks
of the Atlantic
world were already
well established before
the Industrial Revolution,
and Europeans were also trading
widely with South and East Asia before
the end of the eighteenth century. Nevertheless,
the advent of an industrial
economy in Europe at the beginning of
the nineteenth century created such
a demand for raw materials and such a
need for new markets abroad that it became
profitable for manufacturers and
merchants to ship much larger amounts
of goods over long distances than ever
before. As different industrialized regions
in Europe became more and more
dependent on overseas markets, people
in Europe came to be aware of the extent
to which their own activities were linked
to other parts of the world. Awareness
of these linkages did not always mean
that they possessed complete or accurate
information about the people who
produced the cotton that they wore, or
who purchased the manufactured goods
that they made, but the linkages stimulated
their imagination and changed
their consciousness of their place in the
world.
This awareness is well-illustrated in
the cartoons shown here, which come
from the British illustrated news in the
1850s and 1860s. The first (image A)
depicts John Bull (representing British
textile manufacturers) looking on as
U.S. cotton suppliers fight one another
during the Civil War in the United States.
He states, "Oh! If you two like fighting
better than business, I shall deal at the
other shop." In the background, an Indian
cotton merchant is happy to have
him as a customer.
The second cartoon (image B) depicts
the ways that the increasingly interconnected global economy might
stimulate a new kind of political awareness.
Emperor Napoleon III has placed
a French worker in irons for participating
in a revolutionary movement. The
worker compares his situation to an
African slave seated next to him, saying,
"Courage, my friend! Am I not a man and
a brother?" On the wall behind the two
men a poster refers to the Portuguese
slave tradeNapoleon III himself came
to power by overthrowing the Second
Republic in France, a government that
had abolished the slave trade in French
territories.
Images
Questions for Analysis
1. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d What constellation of private and national
interests were at play in the
relationships portrayed in image A?
What significance might contemporaries
have attached to the possibility
that the British may have chosen to
buy their cotton from an Asian source
“over the way” rather than from
North America? |
|
2. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d In image B, what is the message of
the cartoon’s suggestion that the
slave and the worker might discover
their equality only in the fact that
they are both in chains? What was
at stake in comparing a worker to a
slave in mid-nineteenth-century Europe?
Why does the caption read
“Poor Consolation?” |
|
3. fiogf49gjkf0d fiogf49gjkf0d How does the racial imagery of these
images relate to their intended
message? |
|
Submit to Gradebook: