't Wonderlijk Verkeer-Spel (The Wonderful Traffic Game)

This Dutch etching depicts a negotiation or confrontation between English and Dutch figures around a gaming table, with armed men in the background. The print satirizes Anglo-Dutch tensions during the First Anglo-Dutch War (1652–1654), mocking English claims and Dutch responses through the metaphor of a wager or game of chance. The work exemplifies the Northern European tradition of political combat prints—predecessors to Hogarth and Gillray—in which etched or engraved lines rendered contemporary conflicts as theater. The flanking maps and explanatory verses below anchor the image in urgent current events, a format that would evolve into the captioned political cartoon.