Schoon Schip Maken [A Clean Ship]

This Dutch wood engraving satirizes administrative housecleaning at the Colonial Ministry, showing a figure sweeping vigorously while officials observe from a ship's interior. The scene extends the cleanup metaphor to institutional reform—a common visual strategy in 19th-century political satire. The print descends from Gillray and Rowlandson's tradition of embedding political critique in domestic or everyday scenes. Dutch satirists of this era adopted similar methods to British precedents, using exaggerated posture and cluttered composition to mock bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption. The wooden vessel setting suggests both literal and figurative notions of state administration, while the figures' expressions convey skepticism about whether reform will succeed.