The British Lion’s Triumph over the Bengal Tiger: The Royal Combat and the Allegory of Imperial Dominance

Abstract

This article shows how the allegory of British-tiger rivalry became a distinct feature in 19th-century British imperial visual culture to imagined imperial attitudes over India. After the second Anglo-Mysore war (1799) between the East Indian Company and the Tipu Sultan, in 1808, a visual description of lion-tiger bloodshed was issued as a medal by the East India Company to reward its troops. Such a description shows a lion, representing the British nation’s suppression over a Bengal tiger, the royal emblem of Tipu Sultan. After this, the same imagery served to be imagined and visualised the British dominance and control over ruthless and unwilling India. Moreover, in such an allegory, a fiction of dead white women was added to invoke nationalism among Britons. This raises a feminist issue of how this fictional image of victimised women fulfils the British masculine agenda of imperialism and nationalism while the women remain deprived.