The Jingo Minstrels: Ben Baconsfelt's Celebrated Niger Song

This wood engraving caricatures Benjamin Disraeli as a blackface minstrel performer. The figure wears a crown and exaggerated features while brandishing a rifle, satirizing British imperial aggression during the Second Afghan War and tensions with Russia. Descended from Gillray and Rowlandson's tradition of scathing visual satire, such prints fed directly into the visual language of later comic strips and editorial cartooning, establishing caricature as a primary weapon of political discourse.