Quincampoix in duigen (The Mississippi Bubble in Dutch)

This engraving satirizes the collapse of John Law's Mississippi Company scheme, a financial catastrophe that ruined thousands across Europe. The crowded scene depicts frenzied speculators and duped investors swarming the company's office, their bodies contorted in panic, greed, and despair. The print employs dense cross-hatching typical of early 18th-century Dutch engraving to render chaos—figures gesticulate wildly, some fight, others flee or collapse. Accompanying verses in Dutch underscore the moral lesson: unbridled speculation and get-rich-quick fever lead to ruin. This work exemplifies the satirical print tradition's role in mocking financial folly and public delusion, foreshadowing the political and social caricatures of Hogarth, Gillray, and their successors who used exaggerated bodies and crowded composition to expose vice and folly to popular ridicule.