I am not claiming to present here a representative sample of Ottoman satire, or even of the satirical press' visions of Europe. By European imperialism, here, I mean the intentions and activities, the threat and the reality, of European nation states expanding their « empires » either at Ottoman expense or at the expense of those non-European states with which the Ottoman press identified (such as India and Morocco)2. Imperialism was not a word employed in Ottoman cartoons it was, rather, a catchword, evoking an evolving set of ideas, fears, and ambitions with which the cartoonist of 1908 were preoccupied and with which the historians of today, for different reasons, are also preoccupied. In this essay I propose to discuss the images through which the Ottoman satirical press, in the aftermath of the second constitutional revolution in 1908, characterized European imperialism. As such, they are a perfect vehicle for conveying the anxieties of a people undergoing radical transformation and for portraying a state and society imperfectly imagined. Cartoons blurr the boundaries between what is real and what is imagined.

Satire (in particular cartoon satire) both personifies and alters perceptions of revolution1.

Imperialism 2 ottomans