“Its throat will be cut off, For the maintenance of people and cities”: Depicting the social implications of a zoonosis in an 18th-century Dutch print

The present paper concerns a Dutch print of the second half of the 18th century. The work was created by an unknown artist and it is entitled Children who contemplate this work, Remember that God ordered it (Gy kinderen die dit werk beziet, Gedenkt dat God dit al gebied, 1761-1804, Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum). It consists of multiple frames and accompanying captions and depicts the story of a farmer who, while his herd is infected with cattle plague, violates government restrictions regarding the management of the disease because of his dire financial situation. The print is associated with one of the two waves of the zoonotic disease that struck the Dutch Republic during the periods 1744-1764 and 1768-1786, depending on the dating of the work. The paper will aim to explore how a widely circulated print has conveyed the impact of the disease on the wider Dutch society and to outline its reception by the 18th-century public. It will be argued that, although of a moralistic nature, the work seems to portray sympathetically the illegal behavior of a representative of the lower social class. In this context, elements will be drawn from the field of microhistory, since the story of an individual citizen serves as a trigger for presenting the psychological state of Dutch society under the light of an extremely destructive event. Ultimately, the work will emerge as a field of public debate between the lower social strata and the bourgeoisie of the 18th century.