K is for Kings. Once warlike and haughty (1889)
Great Britain subdued them. Because they'd been naughty.
This is one image from “An ABC for Baby Patriots” (1899), a children’s book by Mrs Ernest Ames (Mary Francis Ames). In her efforts to simultaneously train baby Britons in both politics and the alphabet, Ames provides a very sanitized look into the otherwise dark side of British colonial values.
Mary Francis Ames (1853-1929), born Mary Frances Leslie Miller, authored and illustrated children's books in Great Britain and Canada as Ernest Ames or Mrs. Ernest Ames.
Ames' books include An ABC, for Baby Patriots (1899), which was used for teaching children the alphabet, The Bedtime Book (1901), Wonderful England!: Or, The Happy Land (1902), a patriotic paean, Tim and the Dusty Man (1903), The Great Crusade: an alphabet for everybody (1903), Little Red Fox (1908), Watty: a white puppy (1913).
Ames also illustrated Really and Truly! Or, the Century for Babes (1899), The Tremendous Twins or How the Boers Were Beaten (1900), The Maid's Progress (1901), and Sessional: Big Ben ballads (1906), to accompany text written by her husband Ernest Fitzroy Ames, a railroad engineer. ~Wikipedia
Title: An A B C, for Baby Patriots
Creator: Ames, Mary Frances
Place of Publication: London (160a Fleet Street E.C.)
Publisher: Dean & Son
Publication Date: 1899
Well, as a current Englishwoman, I can say that this is thoroughly ghastly!
No, really - I went and looked at the rest of it, just to see how awful it is, and believe me, it’s stomach churning, even by those times!
Please let me apologise on behalf of my ancestors (who, to be fair, were poor miners, tenant farmers, some shop/building owners, and generally working or lower middle class, with one or two noted exceptions in the upper middle classes). I’m so sorry that this sort of jingoistic rubbish was ever believed, and I’m so glad to have grown up in a time where I could mix with people from all over the world on an equal footing.
I’ve learned so much from folks from other countries and other backgrounds to my own, that I feel that I would be far poorer if I thought the way that this benighted author clearly did!