This print depicts and labels the essential components of a plantation producing indigo, a blue dye used for coloring cloth. Slaves are shown here working at different parts of the production process. In 1789, over 3,000 plantations in Saint Domingue…
This depiction of a sugar plantation in Saint Domingue emphasizes the grinding mill and refining vats. An overseer with a gun supervises the slave labor. By 1789 Saint Domingue excelled at sugar production, outpacing other French colonies and the…
As shown here, numerous activities of plantation life were carried out by slaves. This scene includes women and children, who formed a relatively small part of the enslaved population.
In this spectacularly vivid rendition of Liberty, she holds the Phrygian cap of freed slaves on a pike. That, combined with her colorful pants, suggests aggressive liberty. Yet the scrolls in her right hand also underscore the role of legislation in…
The Queen, never popular to begin with in France, also bore the brunt of popular anger in 1792, as seen in these images of the King, Queen, and elsewhere the entire royal family, as animals. One wonders if this dehumanization of the King and Queen…
This allegorical image represents the sentiments of social unity that the National Assembly sought to promote through the Festival of the Federation of 14 July 1790. This festival, though technically but a military parade of units from around the…
This print depicts the Third Estate—represented by the peasant at the rear of the chariot, the worker leading the horse, and the merchant driving—delivering to the National Assembly a petition listing "abuses" to be remedied.
The Terror, which many justified then as now as an unfortunate necessity, raised enormous anxieties. A hostile cartoon equates the Revolution with severed heads.
