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358 Edina Kicsindi ernment and the opposition satirical papers used African natives in their jokes and cartoons in connection with the Anglo-Zulu War, but in different ways. The main reason for the difference was that while the main topic of the opposition press was to critique the governing party and its politicians, the progovernment paper obviously did not publish such jokes and instead could cover more international political events. The other reason arguably was that the government-subsidized paper focused on international politics instead of internal affairs, partly to refocus the attention of their audience, and partly to strengthen their identity as one of the European empires. This was aided by the fact that the jokes depicting the Zulu—after the English template—followed the trend in western Europe, which focused on demonizing the Zulu image and through this erased the earlier general idea of the “noble savage.” The western European way of thinking reaffirmed the feeling of “/n-der-Welt-Sein” in the readers of a country who had just begun in the last decade to deal with politics again and to consider itself a part of Europe. According to Agnes Fiilemile, “The caricature was also influenced by earlier graphical traditions” (2010: 29). The signs of the constructed image of Zulu descended also from multiple sources. Preconceptions in the minds of Hungarian readers were limited to the images of the “dark-skinned human” and the “exotic savage” connected to early images of indigenous peoples and African slaves of America and illustrations of African peoples in travel writings. As Fiilemile wrote, the general “attribute-like metonymic signs” connected to the constructed image of indigenous peoples were different objects, such as the pike, the bow and arrow, nude or half-naked bodies, and feathers as decoration for male indigenous people (2010: 36). Due to the practice of international press reviews, British Zulu cartoons appeared in the European press, but the cartoonists of Hungarian satirical papers had other sources as well, such as earlier Az Ustokds cartoons about feather-haired “exotic savages” or cartoons from Az Ustékés (ill. 158) and Bolond Miska (Foolish Michael) about American slaves from the Civil War period (ill. 159).!° Similar forerunners are illustrations from Vasdrnapi Ujsdg (Sunday News) published descriptions of African journeys, for example, etchings from the 1873 voyage of Stanley (ill. 157) or illustrations of Africa-based novels by Jules Verne published in weekly installments in the Vasárnapi 15 "The Bolond Miska (published between 1860 and 1875) was a relatively short-lived newspaper, compared to its contemporaries. Its readership was mostly the same as the leading political daily paper of the period between 1850 and 1870, the Pesti Napló (Pest Journal). Its editorial staff was the same as that of Az Üstökös. Between 1860 and 1861, its editor was the poet Kalman Toth, followed by Viktor Szokoly, although Kälmän Töth remained on staff until the end. The graphic artist was János Jankó; not surprisingly, he created most of the original cartoons for most satirical papers of the period. The Bolond Miska was the most popular satirical paper of the first half of the 1860s. Its popularity—maybe because the readers preferred the “noisy actualities” of the newfound freedom of press to the “time-tested, higher humour”—exceeded that of Az Üstökös (Kosäry, Nemeth 1985: 172-185). In 1868, however, it could not keep up with up-and-coming Borsszem Janké, and the paper was discontinued (part of the staff joined the competition).
