Jingoism

Jingoism is nationalism in the form of aggressive and proactive foreign policy, such as a country's advocacy for the use of threats or actual force, as opposed to peaceful relations, in efforts to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests. Colloquially, jingoism is excessive bias in judging one's own country as superior to others – an extreme type of nationalism.

The American War-Dog, a 1916 political cartoon by Oscar Cesare, with the dog named "Jingo"

Quotes

• I had certainly intended to mark, by a convenient name, a new species of patriots who, often found in the germ state in their native haunts, had propagated in the bibulous atmosphere of a Tory Government, had begun to infest public meetings, and were unrecognised and unclassified. Their characteristic was a war-urging pretentiousness which discredited the silent, resolute, self-defensiveness of the British people. … A term to obtain currency must be brief, relevant to the time, and easily spoken. The qualities I did not invent. I had no merit save that of discerning them in the new political pretensions of the Music Hall party and their Jingo song.
• There is an abuse of the term when applied to politicians of intelligence and sober thought who are for the consolidation of the empire or for imperial policy. The Jingoes are mainly the habitués of the turf, the tap-room, and the low music halls, whose inspiration is beer, whose politics are swagger, and whose policy is insult to foreign nations.
  • George Holyoake, about the coinage and meaning of the term "Jingoes". In Sixty Years of an Agitator’s Life (London, 1893), pp. 217-18.

• We don't want to fight but, by Jingo, if we do,
  We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too
  We've fought the Bear before and while we're Britons true
  The Russians shall not have Constantinople.
  • G. W. Hunt, Macdermott's War Song (1878), quoted by Richard Anthony Baker, British Music Hall: An Illustrated History (2014), p. 22.

• There is much talk about "jingoism". If by "jingoism" they mean a policy in pursuance of which Americans will with resolution and common sense insist upon our rights being respected by foreign powers, then we are "jingoes".
  • Theodore Roosevelt, in "For An Honest Election". New York Times. 23 Oct 1895. The reference is found halfway down the article.

External links

Encyclopedic article on Jingoism on Wikipedia