Jingoism (#45)
Jingoism is a term describing an arrogant nationalism characterized by an aggressive foreign policy with military threats.
The term comes from the period of the Russian-Turkish war in 1877, where Great Britains population was siding against Russia. This feeling was expressed in a popular pub and music hall song:
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!
(What happened to the rhyme at the end…?!)
It's unclear, what by Jingo means, but it's assumed, that it stands for by Jesus. It could also stem from the Basque word jinko, which means god and was adopted by British sailors. A British radical then used the term Jingoism in a letter to the Daily News and coined the term. It was popoular at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. For example this statement of Theodore Roosevelt in a New York Times article from 1895:
“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’.”
A specific American version is also called Spread-Eagleism (de: Ausgebreiteter-Adler-ismus) and refers to the American Eagle protecting the nation under it's wings.
