Global Encounters and the Archives: Britain’s Empire in the Age of Horace Walpole

Female Combatants, January 26, 1776

This print depicts the contest between Britain and its rebellious North American colonies as a daughter fighting her "mother" –the "Mother Country" being a common designation for Britain. The "daughter's" appearance as an indigenous woman with bared breasts, flowing locks, and tattoos adds to her supposed "unruliness" when contrasted with her "mother's" fashionable English dress and mountain of styled hair (though, interestingly, both women sport feathers). The mother, advocating "Obedience," declares her daughter, who desires "Liberty," to be a "Rebellious Slut." The more mature but truncated tree on Britain's side, compared to the younger but growing tree on the colonies' side, suggests the dying off of one power and the upstart blossoming of another. Erased from this image are the actual indigenous persons whom both parties at turns sought to make self-serving alliances with and to displace and murder. Catalog Record

Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University Library

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