Creative Historical Thinking offers innovative approaches to thinking and writing about history. ... more Creative Historical Thinking offers innovative approaches to thinking and writing about history. Author Michael J. Douma makes the case that history should be recognized as a subject intimately related to individual experience and positions its practice as an inherently creative endeavor. Douma describes the nature of creativity in historical thought, illustrates his points with case studies and examples. He asserts history’s position as a collective and community-building exercise and argues for the importance of metaphor and other creative tools in communicating about history with people who may view the past in fundamentally different ways. A practical guide and an inspiring affirmation of the personal and communal value of history, Creative Historical Thinking has much to offer to both current and aspiring historians.
Historians working in the classical liberal tradition believe that individual decision-making and... more Historians working in the classical liberal tradition believe that individual decision-making and individual rights matter in the making of history. History written in the classical liberal tradition emerged largely in the nineteenth century, when the field of history was first professionalized in Europe and the Americas. Professional historical research was then imbued with liberal values, which included rigorous attention to the sources, historicist suspicion of an ultimate mover, an honest and dispassionate rational outlook, and humility towards what could be known. Above all, liberals wanted to chart the history of liberty, warn against threats to liberty, and defend it in an evolving political world. They believed history was real, and that it had lessons to teach, but that these lessons could not provide sufficient knowledge to predict the future or reorganize society around a central plan.
This book demonstrates how the classical liberal tradition in historical writing persists to this day, but how it is often neglected and due for renewal. The book contrasts the classical liberal view on history with conservative, progressive, Marxist, and post-modern views.
Each of the eleven chapters address a different historical topic, from the development of classical liberalism in nineteenth century America to the the history of civil liberties and civil rights that stemmed from this tradition. Authors give particular attention to the importance of social and economic analysis. Each contributor was chosen as an expert in their field to provide a historiographical overview of their subject, and to explain what the classical liberal contribution to this historiography has been and should be. Authors then provide guidance towards possible tools of analysis and related research topics that future historians working in the classical liberal tradition could take up.
The authors wish to call upon other historians to recognize the important contributions to historical understanding that have come and can be provided by the insights of classical liberalism.
Deirdre McCloskey argues quite persuasively that rhetoric and ideas were essential for the rise o... more Deirdre McCloskey argues quite persuasively that rhetoric and ideas were essential for the rise of capitalism in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Dutch scholars could benefit from McCloskey's views on the topic, but they will be reluctant to engage her work because it is not based on primary research and does not engage most major contemporary works in the relevant historiography. Contemporary scholarship, in Dutch and in English, emphasizes the important role of institutions and government actors in early Dutch capitalism. This article aims to situate McCloskey's work within this literature, with the hope for more discussion in the field so that McCloskey's thesis will receive the attention it deserves.
In 1862-1863, well over 1,000 foreign-born men living in the United States argued that they had b... more In 1862-1863, well over 1,000 foreign-born men living in the United States argued that they had been illegally drafted into the Union military. Fearing a diplomatic row, the Lincoln Administration sought to clarify the rules of draft eligibility and its relation to citizenship. Secretary of State William Seward determined to include in the pool of potential draftees men who had filed their declaration of intent to become American citizens and men who had voted in any election in the United States. Seward’s policy, already in action in 1862, was partially codified in the Enrollment Act of March 3, 1863, and further enunciated in circulars from the Departments of State and War. The policy therefore broadened and redefined the nature of American citizenship. Highlighting the parallels to earlier forms of impressment, and breaking new ground with a quantitative analysis of the Department of State’s Case Files on Drafted Aliens, we argue that this previously unexplored history of forced military service for foreign-born soldiers during the American Civil War should be considered an example of impressment. With additional source material from foreign archives, we demonstrate the extent of Union impressment and its transnational character. We argue furthermore that concerns about forced service were widespread and had significant consequences for relations with European countries and for immigrant communities domestically. Official complaints about impressment represented a new kind of draft resistance, in which legal and political knowledge, as well as local and regional immigrant networks, were essential for securing freedom from military service.
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Jun 1, 2017
In the 1850s and 1860s, Dutch immigrants in America struggled to square their racial views with t... more In the 1850s and 1860s, Dutch immigrants in America struggled to square their racial views with the politics of slavery in their new country. The historiography of the Dutch world would benefit from incorporating this story, because it is often in moments of conflict when the most explicit expressions of ideology present themselves. The letters of Charles Liernur, a Dutch-born Confederate, provide a unique insight into the mind of an explicit supporter of slavery in an American context. How and why a Dutchman could defend slavery is the primary question this article addresses. Building on Liernur’s story, this article also challenges the standard view that Dutch Americans were natural opponents of slavery. Instead, they held diverse and ambiguous views, shaped in part by the circumstances of their settlement. Een Nederlandse Confederate: Charles Liernur verdedigt slavernij in Amerika In de jaren vijftig en zestig van de negentiende eeuw hadden Nederlandse immigranten in Amerika grote moeite een standpunt in te nemen met betrekking tot de slavernij. Een analyse daarvan lijkt van belang voor de Nederlandse geschiedschrijving, omdat ideologische overtuigingen vaak tijdens conflicten op scherpe wijze uitgedragen worden. De brieven van Charles Liernur, een Nederlandse ‘Confederate’, bieden een unieke blik op de denkwereld van een uitgesproken voorstander van de slavernij. Hoe en waarom kon een Nederlander zo fel de slavernij verdedigen? Dat is de centrale vraag waarop dit artikel een antwoord probeert te geven. Het verhaal van Liernur laat zien dat de gangbare visie, dat Nederlandse Amerikanen van nature tegenstanders van de slavernij waren, niet klopt. Immigranten hadden veeleer uiteenlopende en ambigue meningen over slavernij, bepaald door de omstandigheden waarmee ze in hun nieuwe vaderland te maken kregen.
Tijdschrift voor sociale en economische geschiedenis, Jun 15, 2010
Imagining a new identity: the Dutch American immigrant community, 1847-1875 National and transnat... more Imagining a new identity: the Dutch American immigrant community, 1847-1875 National and transnational studies of migration define borders within a political framework and try to explain ethnic group identity ultimately through migrants' relationships to national identities. But the Dutch American community formed in the nineteenth century Midwest defined itself to a significant degree through non-political spatial and cultural relationships. The Dutch American community was a matrix of associations originating in the process of migration itself and in the struggles of the American Civil War. In settlements across the American Midwest, Dutch Americans sought belonging among their own and drew mental maps connecting their kind. They concentrated where possible, showed concern for establishing links between settlements, and by keeping 'Yankees' at arm's length, retained cultural habits carried over from the Netherlands. The result was a unique and persistent Dutch American ethnic subculture. Millions of European immigrants settled in the United States in the nineteenth century, and while only 200,000 of these came from the Netherlands, Dutch immigrants managed to form and maintain a distinct subculture in America. Many immigrants chose not to settle among other Dutch-born people and blended into their surrounding communities. Dutch Protestant immigrants, for the most part, however, intended to settle together, and together they founded and maintained Dutch American communities. These communities, which have drawn much scholarly attention, are the focus of two additional articles in this collection. 1 If, as these and other studies indicate, the most salient and interesting characteristic of Dutch American communities is their emphasis on religious orthodoxy and their allied maintenance of Dutch culture, then it is particularly worthwhile to ask how these communities initially formed and came to share cultural elements. This is the leading question this article addresses. 1. See the articles of Schoone-Jongen and Zwart in this issue. Theme Imagining a new identity » The story begins with the Dutch Seceders (Afgescheidenen: Protestants who had broken from the state church in the 1830s), who in the United States promoted religious and cultural orthodoxy, and with it an ideal of being 'true Dutch'. Dutch Protestant immigrants were greeted by the open arms of Reformed Church ministers in New York, Americans like Isaac Wyckoff and Thomas De Witt, who thought the new arrivals were a gift from heaven, a dose of orthodoxy from the old country and the best of potential missionaries. From the beginning, the Dutch had planned to settle together, as families and reconstituted religious communities. The Dutch American network grew in the 1850s with two bases in the Midwest, the mostly Gelderland-South Holland colony of Pella, Iowa, and the more diverse Holland, Michigan. Its connections stretched like a comet's tail east into and through New York State, inviting new immigrants to follow the road west. In the decades to come, Dutch immigrants founded more settlements, daughter colonies on the plains and in the Far West that made space for additional migrants from the Netherlands. And as the Grand Rapids, Chicago, and Wisconsin Dutch communities grew they reinforced the network's religious and cultural linkages. 2 During the nineteenth century, Dutch immigrants mixed with Americans and took on American customs and habits. They celebrated the Fourth of July with as much pomp and circumstance as did other Americans. But Dutch Americans also became increasingly interconnected and aware of each other through a self-conscious promotion of a unique religious and ethnic identity. While national identities provided parameters for the group, at times these immigrants expressed ethnic solidarity that superseded national boundaries. From 1899 to 1902, for example, Dutch Americans expressed deep sympathies for the South African Boers, as these ethnic kin resisted British political domination of South Africa. The Dutch American subculture faced Americanisation drives in the First World War, a persistent threat of secularisation, and -particularly evident in the 1920s and 1930s -the loss of the Dutch language. Historians have produced many studies of nineteenth century Dutch American immigration, but most works that discuss Dutch American subculture specifically, engage this entity in a period after its formation. For example, in the best work on the Dutch American subculture, James Bratt investigates the theological underpinnings and flavours of Dutch American Calvinism, but he largely neglects the period before 1880, jumping instead from the subculture's ideological antecedents in the Netherlands to the introduction of Abraham Kuyper's neo-Calvinism in Dutch American circles in the 1880s. 3
During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln’s administration engaged in protracted n... more During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln’s administration engaged in protracted negotiations with representatives of the Netherlands to aid in the voluntarily colonization of free African Americans to Suriname. Scores of diplomatic letters in Dutch, English, and French, dating to the period 1862 to 1866 attest to the very real possibility that such a migration stream could have become a reality. They also indicate reasons why this scheme failed: it was bogged down by differences of opinion, mail delays, and ultimately the reluctance of African Americans to migrate. Previously unpublished and unknown, these letters have been transcribed and translated here for the first time. The sources provide a rare look inside the minds of liberal government officials during the age of emancipation in the Atlantic World. They demonstrate the officials’ humanitarian concerns, their racial prejudices, respect for legal order and process, and faith in governments to solve international problems.9789400603486 (pdf); 978400603493 (epub)Wetensch. publicati
Creative Historical Thinking offers innovative approaches to thinking and writing about history. ... more Creative Historical Thinking offers innovative approaches to thinking and writing about history. Author Michael J. Douma makes the case that history should be recognized as a subject intimately related to individual experience and positions its practice as an inherently creative endeavor. Douma describes the nature of creativity in historical thought, illustrates his points with case studies and examples. He asserts history’s position as a collective and community-building exercise and argues for the importance of metaphor and other creative tools in communicating about history with people who may view the past in fundamentally different ways. A practical guide and an inspiring affirmation of the personal and communal value of history, Creative Historical Thinking has much to offer to both current and aspiring historians.
Historians working in the classical liberal tradition believe that individual decision-making and... more Historians working in the classical liberal tradition believe that individual decision-making and individual rights matter in the making of history. History written in the classical liberal tradition emerged largely in the nineteenth century, when the field of history was first professionalized in Europe and the Americas. Professional historical research was then imbued with liberal values, which included rigorous attention to the sources, historicist suspicion of an ultimate mover, an honest and dispassionate rational outlook, and humility towards what could be known. Above all, liberals wanted to chart the history of liberty, warn against threats to liberty, and defend it in an evolving political world. They believed history was real, and that it had lessons to teach, but that these lessons could not provide sufficient knowledge to predict the future or reorganize society around a central plan.
This book demonstrates how the classical liberal tradition in historical writing persists to this day, but how it is often neglected and due for renewal. The book contrasts the classical liberal view on history with conservative, progressive, Marxist, and post-modern views.
Each of the eleven chapters address a different historical topic, from the development of classical liberalism in nineteenth century America to the the history of civil liberties and civil rights that stemmed from this tradition. Authors give particular attention to the importance of social and economic analysis. Each contributor was chosen as an expert in their field to provide a historiographical overview of their subject, and to explain what the classical liberal contribution to this historiography has been and should be. Authors then provide guidance towards possible tools of analysis and related research topics that future historians working in the classical liberal tradition could take up.
The authors wish to call upon other historians to recognize the important contributions to historical understanding that have come and can be provided by the insights of classical liberalism.
Deirdre McCloskey argues quite persuasively that rhetoric and ideas were essential for the rise o... more Deirdre McCloskey argues quite persuasively that rhetoric and ideas were essential for the rise of capitalism in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Dutch scholars could benefit from McCloskey's views on the topic, but they will be reluctant to engage her work because it is not based on primary research and does not engage most major contemporary works in the relevant historiography. Contemporary scholarship, in Dutch and in English, emphasizes the important role of institutions and government actors in early Dutch capitalism. This article aims to situate McCloskey's work within this literature, with the hope for more discussion in the field so that McCloskey's thesis will receive the attention it deserves.
In 1862-1863, well over 1,000 foreign-born men living in the United States argued that they had b... more In 1862-1863, well over 1,000 foreign-born men living in the United States argued that they had been illegally drafted into the Union military. Fearing a diplomatic row, the Lincoln Administration sought to clarify the rules of draft eligibility and its relation to citizenship. Secretary of State William Seward determined to include in the pool of potential draftees men who had filed their declaration of intent to become American citizens and men who had voted in any election in the United States. Seward’s policy, already in action in 1862, was partially codified in the Enrollment Act of March 3, 1863, and further enunciated in circulars from the Departments of State and War. The policy therefore broadened and redefined the nature of American citizenship. Highlighting the parallels to earlier forms of impressment, and breaking new ground with a quantitative analysis of the Department of State’s Case Files on Drafted Aliens, we argue that this previously unexplored history of forced military service for foreign-born soldiers during the American Civil War should be considered an example of impressment. With additional source material from foreign archives, we demonstrate the extent of Union impressment and its transnational character. We argue furthermore that concerns about forced service were widespread and had significant consequences for relations with European countries and for immigrant communities domestically. Official complaints about impressment represented a new kind of draft resistance, in which legal and political knowledge, as well as local and regional immigrant networks, were essential for securing freedom from military service.
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Jun 1, 2017
In the 1850s and 1860s, Dutch immigrants in America struggled to square their racial views with t... more In the 1850s and 1860s, Dutch immigrants in America struggled to square their racial views with the politics of slavery in their new country. The historiography of the Dutch world would benefit from incorporating this story, because it is often in moments of conflict when the most explicit expressions of ideology present themselves. The letters of Charles Liernur, a Dutch-born Confederate, provide a unique insight into the mind of an explicit supporter of slavery in an American context. How and why a Dutchman could defend slavery is the primary question this article addresses. Building on Liernur’s story, this article also challenges the standard view that Dutch Americans were natural opponents of slavery. Instead, they held diverse and ambiguous views, shaped in part by the circumstances of their settlement. Een Nederlandse Confederate: Charles Liernur verdedigt slavernij in Amerika In de jaren vijftig en zestig van de negentiende eeuw hadden Nederlandse immigranten in Amerika grote moeite een standpunt in te nemen met betrekking tot de slavernij. Een analyse daarvan lijkt van belang voor de Nederlandse geschiedschrijving, omdat ideologische overtuigingen vaak tijdens conflicten op scherpe wijze uitgedragen worden. De brieven van Charles Liernur, een Nederlandse ‘Confederate’, bieden een unieke blik op de denkwereld van een uitgesproken voorstander van de slavernij. Hoe en waarom kon een Nederlander zo fel de slavernij verdedigen? Dat is de centrale vraag waarop dit artikel een antwoord probeert te geven. Het verhaal van Liernur laat zien dat de gangbare visie, dat Nederlandse Amerikanen van nature tegenstanders van de slavernij waren, niet klopt. Immigranten hadden veeleer uiteenlopende en ambigue meningen over slavernij, bepaald door de omstandigheden waarmee ze in hun nieuwe vaderland te maken kregen.
Tijdschrift voor sociale en economische geschiedenis, Jun 15, 2010
Imagining a new identity: the Dutch American immigrant community, 1847-1875 National and transnat... more Imagining a new identity: the Dutch American immigrant community, 1847-1875 National and transnational studies of migration define borders within a political framework and try to explain ethnic group identity ultimately through migrants' relationships to national identities. But the Dutch American community formed in the nineteenth century Midwest defined itself to a significant degree through non-political spatial and cultural relationships. The Dutch American community was a matrix of associations originating in the process of migration itself and in the struggles of the American Civil War. In settlements across the American Midwest, Dutch Americans sought belonging among their own and drew mental maps connecting their kind. They concentrated where possible, showed concern for establishing links between settlements, and by keeping 'Yankees' at arm's length, retained cultural habits carried over from the Netherlands. The result was a unique and persistent Dutch American ethnic subculture. Millions of European immigrants settled in the United States in the nineteenth century, and while only 200,000 of these came from the Netherlands, Dutch immigrants managed to form and maintain a distinct subculture in America. Many immigrants chose not to settle among other Dutch-born people and blended into their surrounding communities. Dutch Protestant immigrants, for the most part, however, intended to settle together, and together they founded and maintained Dutch American communities. These communities, which have drawn much scholarly attention, are the focus of two additional articles in this collection. 1 If, as these and other studies indicate, the most salient and interesting characteristic of Dutch American communities is their emphasis on religious orthodoxy and their allied maintenance of Dutch culture, then it is particularly worthwhile to ask how these communities initially formed and came to share cultural elements. This is the leading question this article addresses. 1. See the articles of Schoone-Jongen and Zwart in this issue. Theme Imagining a new identity » The story begins with the Dutch Seceders (Afgescheidenen: Protestants who had broken from the state church in the 1830s), who in the United States promoted religious and cultural orthodoxy, and with it an ideal of being 'true Dutch'. Dutch Protestant immigrants were greeted by the open arms of Reformed Church ministers in New York, Americans like Isaac Wyckoff and Thomas De Witt, who thought the new arrivals were a gift from heaven, a dose of orthodoxy from the old country and the best of potential missionaries. From the beginning, the Dutch had planned to settle together, as families and reconstituted religious communities. The Dutch American network grew in the 1850s with two bases in the Midwest, the mostly Gelderland-South Holland colony of Pella, Iowa, and the more diverse Holland, Michigan. Its connections stretched like a comet's tail east into and through New York State, inviting new immigrants to follow the road west. In the decades to come, Dutch immigrants founded more settlements, daughter colonies on the plains and in the Far West that made space for additional migrants from the Netherlands. And as the Grand Rapids, Chicago, and Wisconsin Dutch communities grew they reinforced the network's religious and cultural linkages. 2 During the nineteenth century, Dutch immigrants mixed with Americans and took on American customs and habits. They celebrated the Fourth of July with as much pomp and circumstance as did other Americans. But Dutch Americans also became increasingly interconnected and aware of each other through a self-conscious promotion of a unique religious and ethnic identity. While national identities provided parameters for the group, at times these immigrants expressed ethnic solidarity that superseded national boundaries. From 1899 to 1902, for example, Dutch Americans expressed deep sympathies for the South African Boers, as these ethnic kin resisted British political domination of South Africa. The Dutch American subculture faced Americanisation drives in the First World War, a persistent threat of secularisation, and -particularly evident in the 1920s and 1930s -the loss of the Dutch language. Historians have produced many studies of nineteenth century Dutch American immigration, but most works that discuss Dutch American subculture specifically, engage this entity in a period after its formation. For example, in the best work on the Dutch American subculture, James Bratt investigates the theological underpinnings and flavours of Dutch American Calvinism, but he largely neglects the period before 1880, jumping instead from the subculture's ideological antecedents in the Netherlands to the introduction of Abraham Kuyper's neo-Calvinism in Dutch American circles in the 1880s. 3
During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln’s administration engaged in protracted n... more During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln’s administration engaged in protracted negotiations with representatives of the Netherlands to aid in the voluntarily colonization of free African Americans to Suriname. Scores of diplomatic letters in Dutch, English, and French, dating to the period 1862 to 1866 attest to the very real possibility that such a migration stream could have become a reality. They also indicate reasons why this scheme failed: it was bogged down by differences of opinion, mail delays, and ultimately the reluctance of African Americans to migrate. Previously unpublished and unknown, these letters have been transcribed and translated here for the first time. The sources provide a rare look inside the minds of liberal government officials during the age of emancipation in the Atlantic World. They demonstrate the officials’ humanitarian concerns, their racial prejudices, respect for legal order and process, and faith in governments to solve international problems.9789400603486 (pdf); 978400603493 (epub)Wetensch. publicati
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Books by Michael Douma
This book demonstrates how the classical liberal tradition in historical writing persists to this day, but how it is often neglected and due for renewal. The book contrasts the classical liberal view on history with conservative, progressive, Marxist, and post-modern views.
Each of the eleven chapters address a different historical topic, from the development of classical liberalism in nineteenth century America to the the history of civil liberties and civil rights that stemmed from this tradition. Authors give particular attention to the importance of social and economic analysis. Each contributor was chosen as an expert in their field to provide a historiographical overview of their subject, and to explain what the classical liberal contribution to this historiography has been and should be. Authors then provide guidance towards possible tools of analysis and related research topics that future historians working in the classical liberal tradition could take up.
The authors wish to call upon other historians to recognize the important contributions to historical understanding that have come and can be provided by the insights of classical liberalism.
Papers by Michael Douma
This book demonstrates how the classical liberal tradition in historical writing persists to this day, but how it is often neglected and due for renewal. The book contrasts the classical liberal view on history with conservative, progressive, Marxist, and post-modern views.
Each of the eleven chapters address a different historical topic, from the development of classical liberalism in nineteenth century America to the the history of civil liberties and civil rights that stemmed from this tradition. Authors give particular attention to the importance of social and economic analysis. Each contributor was chosen as an expert in their field to provide a historiographical overview of their subject, and to explain what the classical liberal contribution to this historiography has been and should be. Authors then provide guidance towards possible tools of analysis and related research topics that future historians working in the classical liberal tradition could take up.
The authors wish to call upon other historians to recognize the important contributions to historical understanding that have come and can be provided by the insights of classical liberalism.