Puck — July 16, 1879 — page 9: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This Puck cartoon satirizes the late 19th-century rush by European powers to establish colonies under the guise of religious missions. The chaotic scene depicts competing Christian missionaries and colonial administrators scrambling over a map of Africa, fighting over territory while claiming to bring civilization and Christianity. The title's irony is key: the cartoon mocks how colonizers used "religious colonization" as moral justification for territorial conquest and exploitation. Various European figures appear engaged in violent competition, suggesting that beneath pious missionary rhetoric lay naked imperial ambition and greed. The scene emphasizes the hypocrisy—these supposedly devout Christians are shown brawling and scheming rather than practicing their professed faith, revealing the cartoon's central critique: colonial expansion was fundamentally about power and profit, not genuine religious conviction.