Jindee Shah, Kamit Peer Baba, Afghanistan, from the Savage and Semi-Barbarous Chiefs and Rulers series (N189) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co. 1888

This lithograph of Jindee Shah, Kamit Peer Baba of Afghanistan, belongs to a series entitled ‘Savage and Semi-Barbarous Chiefs and Rulers’ distributed by Wm. S. Kimball & Co., a 19th-century tobacco company. Produced during a period of intense colonial expansion, the series reveals how cultural institutions like commercial manufacturers contributed to popular conceptions of race and civilization. Here, Jindee Shah is depicted with dark skin and what the company no doubt considered exotic clothing. These visual cues, combined with the series title, marked him as racially inferior to white Europeans and Americans. The visual codes and cultural references were meant to reinforce the racial hierarchy. Examining these images through a historical lens allows us to better understand how racist ideologies were propagated through popular culture. By consulting archives and analyzing the social context in which these images were produced and consumed, we can learn much about the relationship between art and society.