De Groote Waereld Verdeelder (The Great World Divider)

This Dutch engraving depicts the partition of European power through an allegorical feast. Seated figures representing nations—labeled Handelsman (Merchant), Kapela (Chapel), and others—divide a terrestrial globe while attendants and soldiers jostle beneath. The print employs the visual language of political satire inherited from Hogarth's successors: exaggerated physiognomy, densely packed symbolic detail, and acerbic commentary on imperial ambition. Created during the War of Spanish Succession, it ridicules the great powers' territorial greed through carnivalesque inversion—those who consume the world are themselves consumed by appetite. The dense text columns flanking the engraving in Flemish verse amplify the critique. This tradition of illustrated political commentary, combining caricature, typography, and narrative sequence, would feed directly into the pictorial satire and comic sheets that preceded modern comics.