For some, Rhodes’s legacy was clear even before his death. This late-nineteenth-century political cartoon makes its point in as blunt a fashion as possible. Stripped of its high ideals, its lofty language, and its self-justifying assumptions of racial superiority, British imperialism, as personified by Rhodes, had brought nothing but suffering and death to colonized peoples. As you examine the cartoon, think about the reaction it might have produced. How might an English audience have responded to the cartoon? What about an African audience?

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER