The Rhodes Colossus

Edward Linley Sambourne's Punch cartoon of December 10, 1892 turns Cecil Rhodes into a modern Colossus of Rhodes, one foot at the Cape and the other at Cairo, stretching a telegraph wire the length of Africa. It was drawn as a comment on Rhodes's Cape-to-Cairo dream, and it works on two levels at once: a giant striding over a continent can be read as a bold scheme or as breathtaking arrogance. That double edge is why it became the shorthand picture of the Scramble for Africa. Few cartoons show so clearly how the meaning of a drawing can shift with its readers, with a whole continent reduced to the ground beneath one man's boots.