John Bull's Family Arises

Britain’s national symbols, personifications of the homeland and its public virtues, are, historically speaking, relatively young. They emerged as we know them about the mid-nineteenth century as high Victorian cartoonists’ stereotypes. Until recently, most historians treated these national symbols as self-evident ornaments or fixed, unchanging icons. This interpretation guarantees that the modern viewer will fail to grasp the crucial role these satiric figures played in the growth of English patriotism and chauvinism, in the development of national and regional self-images and stereotypes, and in the political dialogue of the latter half of the eighteenth century. When examined as part of a visual chronicle, their metamorphosis allows us not only to focus on the rise of patriotism noted by so many in the late eighteenth century, but also to trace shifts in public opinion between 1750 and 1850.