Gillray’s caustic representations of the French Revolution form part of a complex culture of print media - and his images were reproduced and re- appropriated on both sides of the Channel. Richard Taws reveals the French Revolution’s role in spurring on further transformations in communication media. Technological revolutions - such as telegraphy - were fuelled by a desire to spread utopian ideals over great distance at high speed. The desire to conquer time and space however confronted a conundrum - presented to the French in the form of the Haitian Revolution - how could France spread a message of universal human rights, while also profiting from colonialism and slave economy?

Dr. Richard Taws currently teaches eighteenth and nineteenth century European art at University College London.