CHINESE LABOUR CARTOON PICTURE POSTCARD
“CAPE TIMES”
Jeff Woolgar
The cartoon picture postcard illustrated here (Ex. Joan Matthews), published by Cape Times Limited is from their ‘Comic Series’ and the divided back (address side) is printed in light brown. Entering the post at Sea Point on 17th July 1907 with arrival datestamp for Waterloo, Liverpool, on the 3rd August, where it was readdressed to Dublin. Captioned ‘On the Rand’ the cartoon portrays two affluent Chinese indentured labourers on the Witwatersrand having their bags carried by a black youth. The signature of the artist ‘Ben / 07’ is at lower left.
From at least 1906 there had been reports in the popular press of Chinese indentured labourers returning home to China, dressed in European clothes and carrying Zulu shields, assegais, knobkerries, fly-flickers, and other mementos. Similar reports in 1907 of labourers returning home with gold watch chains, bicycles, etc. were questioned by The Illustrated London News, (15th September 1906 and 28th August 1907), “It may be noted that the coolies’ photographs we give show no outward and visible sign of this opulence”.1
As the cartoon illustrated here is dated ‘07’ by the artist and the date of postage is 17th July 1907 it would have been thought that this cartoon had appeared in the Cape Times before July 1907. However, this was not the case as the cartoonist ‘Ben’ did not feature in the Cape Times during this period. There were two cartoons concerning repatriation of the Chinese labourers published during this period although these were by different cartoonists and both quoted or misquoted Winston Churchill.
Conclusion
There is already a precedent noted in in an article, by Woolgar, of a newspaper which published a Chinese labour cartoon picture postcard which had not appeared in their newspaper2. During 1906 and 1907 the Chinese labour question was so much in the public domain, both in South Africa and the United Kingdom that the issuing of such picture postcards was guaranteed to be a financial success.
References
1Woolgar, J., (2010), Chinese Indentured Labour on the Witwatersrand Gold Fields illustrated by Picture Postcards published between 1904 and 1910, includingan analysis of postcards and covers, Gravesend, p.19.
2Woolgar, J., (2009), Propaganda cartoon picture postcards relating to the Chinese Labour Experiment in the Transvaal - The Elgin Dispatch, The Transvaal Philatelist, (170), p.38-39.
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