Better Decisions Through Data.
Satirical drawing from 1789. We started off this series (on our IG) of French Revolution postings with a United Nations graphic on current inequality (or an inequality-adjusted Human Development Index.)
We wanted to help illustrate why some current theory says it’s important. Historians debate the causes of the revolution, but commentators at the time pointed out inequality. This is one of the social commentators arguing the social inequality aspect, but doing so with a cartoon rather than words. (The 3rd estate is carrying the wealthy 1st and 2nd estates on its back. The 3rd estate were the commoners in the French ancient regime. Amongst other things, they were subject to much heavier taxation than the other two estates.)
Then, as now, these cartoons could get you in trouble. This was 18th century drawing was published anonymously. If it annoyed the King too much, the 18th century police would launch an investigation to trace the source. (The pen was mightier than the sword, even in those days, so the perpetrators needed to be put down.)
Unmasked satirical cartoonists would be issued a lettre de cachet (Wikipedia) and typically sent to the Bastille. Fortunately, in those days the king was enlightened. The penalty for an anti-religious cartoon like this one was usually not death. (We take that back. The rats in Bastille were pretty nasty. Poor sanitary conditions and malnutrition probably slowly killed many inmates. In any event, there are famous examples of those imprisoned becoming physically ill, and, even if they survived, were never quite the same. All for a silly cartoon.)
Post and some comments below may be synced from our original Instagram version.
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Interesting