School Begins

This source comes from a period sometimes deemed the Age of American Imperialism. In 1899, this political ad was produced in New York. This image shows Uncle Sam, the personification of the U.S. government, teaching “lessons of self-governance” to recently acquired territories in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean regions alongside people groups already within the continent, such as Native, Asian, and Black Americans. Behind the students are rational for the actions of Uncle Sam, using the British Empire and the Union’s own actions with the thirteen colonies and Confederacy as justification for his current actions. There are also additional territories represented by content White students with the names of newly acquired states of the enlarged union. The image puts the unruly and unwilling, and thus “uncivilized,” non-White territories in contrast to the eager and civilized States. In addition to this, note that the Black American is made to work, excluded and unwanted in this process, the Asian American is willing and ready but yet to be received, and the Native American is made to participate unwillingly and separated from the rest. Put all together, this not only shows the approach to assimilation into the nation taken by the government, but the racial-social dynamics of this time.