L'Entente Cordiale 1915
- Title:
- L'Entente Cordiale 1915
- Alternate Title:
- L'Entente Cordiale 1915
- Collection:
- Persuasive Maps: PJ Mode Collection
- Creator:
- Baumgarten, Eugen von
- Date:
- 1915
- Posted Date:
- 2017-04-14
- ID Number:
- 2097.01
- File Name:
- PJM_2097_01.jpg
- Style/Period:
- 1900 - 1919
- Subject:
- World War I
Satirical
Pictorial
Unusual Graphics/Text - Measurement:
- 44 x 37 on sheet 57 x 38 (centimeters, height x width)
- Notes:
- This is a powerful poster by Eugen von Baumgarten "reinforcing the German propaganda message that Great Britain's aggressive imperial ambitions were the principal cause of the war, and that she was dragging her misguided allies into the conflict to fight on her behalf." Curtis 2016, 65.
"The title refers to the Anglo-French alliance originally signed in 1904. It perhaps makes a pun of the French words corde (rope or twine) and cordiale (heartfelt), as the image portrays a giant British spider voraciously consuming a symbolic French soldier and spreading her legs and weaving an all-encircling web across the whole of Western Europe and the Mediterranean. Onlookers, including Uncle Sam, are fully entwined in the spider’s fine threads on the peripheries of the map. The Imperial German Eagle surveys the scene in the foreground, whilst German U-boats cut through the outermost strands of the web, a reference to the increasing impact of German submarine attacks on British shipping in 1915." Barron 2008, 16.
For more about Baumgarten, see Curtis 65. For a postcard version of this poster, see ID #1182.
The spider and its web have been widely used in political maps, for example, by Germany to describe the British and Soviets; by the U.S. to describe the Nazis; and by the Dutch to describe the Japanese . Search > "spider."
For further information on the Collector’s Notes and a Feedback/Contact Link, see https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/about-collection-personal-statement and https://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/content/feedback-and-contact - Repository:
- Private Collection of PJ Mode
- Format:
- Image
- Rights:
- For important information about copyright and use, see http://persuasivemaps.library.cornell.edu/copyright.