Henry Creswicke Rawlinson, 'Our Eastern Policy'

Leslie Ward ('Spy') renders Sir Henry Rawlinson, 1st Baronet KCB — soldier, diplomat, and the era's pre-eminent decipherer of cuneiform — as Statesmen No. 147. The plate caption, 'Our Eastern Policy,' anchors the caricature firmly in contemporary anxiety over Russian expansion toward British India, a debate Rawlinson had shaped through his influential 1875 book England and Russia in the East. Ward exaggerates his large, forward-jutting head and thick white hair above a stooped, dark-suited frame, white gloves clasped before him — an image of brooding, slightly burdened authority. A medal and order ribbon signal his decorated career.