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We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too.
So went a popular music-hall song by G. W. Hunt, circa 1878. What people were singing about in those days was Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's hawkish foreign policy with Russia, threatening the Russians with war if they kept messing about with Turkey. Because, really, what else would you sing about but foreign policy?
Although used as a mild oath colloquially since about 1694 (inspired, it is said, by the nonsensical conjurer's spell, "presto-jingo!"), "Macdermott's War Song" helped jingo evolve into its current meaning, denoting a "cocky, pugnacious, shrill, xenophobic chest-thumping" brand of patriot (in the words of Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary of Allusions). "By jingo" became a rallying cry for those Brits who supported intervention in the Russo-Turkish War, leading critics to refer to Disraeli supporters, disparagingly, as jingoes and their worldview as jingoism.
Hunt's song and its attendant chauvinism spread to the U.S. several decades later as American imperialism began to take hold. The Americanized version of the song, in describing a riveting three-way fishing conflict with Britain and Canada, went a little something like this:
We don’t want to fight, but by Jingo, if we do,
We’ll scoop in all the fishing grounds and the whole Dominion, too.
Also during this time, President Benjamin Harrison’s secretary of state James G. Blaine was nicknamed "Jingo Jim" for his aggressive approach to foreign affairs.
Jingo began life as, of all things, a euphemism for Jesus.
More cultural jingo references: "next to of course god america i"
Also, the late Orbit Magazine, a free paper in Detroit, used to have an advice column written by Baby Jingo, the World’s Smartest Baby. His political leanings were unclear, but he did have a giant cranium.
Hmmmmm.