The South Sea Company with Greed on a Chain

This Dutch engraving depicts the collapse of the South Sea Bubble, the financial catastrophe that devastated European investors in 1720. A crowned figure representing the Company sits enthroned while Greed, personified as a chained demon, hovers overhead spewing banknotes. Courtiers and common people lie prostrate, ruined. The architectural setting evokes classical authority now revealed as corrupt.

Executed in fine line engraving, the print exemplifies the Northern European tradition of political-financial satire that flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries. Such sheets—with accompanying verses in multiple languages—circulated widely among the literate classes, combining visual allegory with didactic moral commentary. This satirical mode, emphasizing vice, folly, and social disorder through exaggeration and symbolic excess, directly precedents the cartoon traditions of Hogarth and later comic journalism.