Veroordeelde wordt gewurgd op de Hawaïaanse eilanden 1822

Jacques Etienne Victor Arago made this print of a strangling in the Hawaiian Islands sometime in the first half of the 19th century. It's a scene of punishment, but it’s also a depiction of foreign, non-European justice, and as such, it provided information, and perhaps also, titillation to European audiences back home. Arago was the artist on a French scientific expedition, and so this image is presented as ethnographic documentation. Note the bare chests and native garb of the executioners, the palm tree, and the backdrop of a tropical island. Such visual codes situate the image within the broader context of European colonialism, in which images played a key role. Western artists depicted foreign lands, often exoticizing them, and those images, in turn, justified colonial expansion and the exploitation of resources and peoples. To better understand this work, we could research the artist’s journals and the records of the French voyage. What was his attitude toward the people he encountered? What purpose did he imagine these images would serve back in Europe?