In the decade preceding the Revolutionary War, the short, rotund figure of John Bull entered British political caricature as the personification of the quintessential Englishman, fond of food and drink and patriotic to the core. Soon after, the figure of Brother Jonathan was created to represent Bull’s colonial archrival. In this scathing caricature, Brother Jonathan forces the older, fatter Bull to drink some “perry,” an unmistakable reference to Oliver Hazard Perry, America’s premier naval commander during the War of 1812. But here the term perry also doubles as the name of a pear liqueur, which, when drunk to excess, was known to cause severe digestive problems.