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Abstract
The mid eighteenth century witnessed multiple depictions of blacks in English and American society. Satirists, painters and playwrights on both sides of the Atlantic in dealing with the political tumult of the Georgian period, used the black body to connote slavery of their fellow Britons and Americans. One central symbol was that of Mungo, a caricature of a black slave that became famous during this period. Mungo first appeared as a fundamental character in Isaac Bickerstaff’s 1768 comic opera, The Padlock, where he presented a comic foil and a sharp commentary on his oppression. This paper investigates newspapers, poetry, and images to interrogate how the invention of the Mungo character represented race in Great Britain and North America.