Visualizing Colonial Power: A Qualitative Pictorial-Semiotic Analysis of Identity, Resistance, and Nation-Making in Philippine Political Caricatures, 1900–1941

Abstract

Political caricatures offer critical visual records of how societies represent power, identity, conflict, and social change. This study examined the political and social narratives conveyed in 36 editorial cartoons from Philippine Cartoons: Political Caricature of the American Era, 1900–1941, edited by Alfred W. McCoy and Alfredo R. Roces. Using qualitative historical research, the study integrated pictorial-semiotic analysis, critical visual discourse analysis, and historical contextualization to interpret the cartoons’ visual and textual elements, ideological positions, and historical meanings. The findings revealed six interconnected themes concerning unequal colonial modernity, paternalistic tutelage, elite-dominated democracy, religious authority, racialized national boundaries, and the emergence of Filipinos as political subjects. The cartoons depicted American colonial rule as a contradictory project that introduced modern institutions while sustaining foreign domination, economic exploitation, elite patronage, religious privilege, and unequal citizenship. Although they encouraged political criticism and contributed to Filipino national consciousness, some images also reproduced gendered, class-based, religious, and ethnic exclusions. The study concludes that political caricatures are multimodal historical texts that not only reflected colonial realities but also shaped public understandings of authority, citizenship, resistance, and nationhood. It advances an integrative framework for interpreting caricature as historical evidence, ideological discourse, and social criticism, with implications for Philippine history education, historical thinking, visual and media literacy, and citizenship formation.