History of The Netherlands

| www.bmgn-lchr.nl | e-issn 2211-2898 | print issn 0165-0505 Robert-Jan Wille, Mannen van de microscoop. De laboratoriumbiologie op veldtocht in Nederland en Indië, 1840-1910 (Nijmegen: Vantilt, 2019, 365 pp., isbn 9789460043796). Hoe ontstaat een wetenschappelijke discipline? Om antwoord te geven op die vraag kan men enerzijds bestuderen hoe methoden, theorieën, instrumenten of onderzoeksvragen zijn samengevoegd. Anderzijds kan men zich buigen over de politieke, culturele of sociale factoren die de oprichting van onderzoeksinstellingen,-banen en-financiering in de hand hebben gewerkt.

This short news paper article is not written by me, but describes a landscape walk through the northern Netherlands coastal clay area, the former terps area. Oscar Borsen and I introduce the landscape and point out the relics of a dynamic past, many centuries before the dikes were build.

Hoewel de belangstelling voor de Tweede Wereldoorlog omvangrijk is en er sprake lijkt van een aanhoudende behoefte aan – vooral persoonlijke – verhalen uit de bezettingstijd, zijn bepaalde verhalen en thema’s prominenter aanwezig dan andere. Wat zijn nu eigenlijk die ‘vergeten’ verhalen en thema’s?

"Le territoire d’Amsterdam a plus que quintuplé entre 1585 et 1663. Cette croissance a, au travers des siècles, attiré l’attention des historiens comme des urbanistes. Ils ont passé au crible fin le développement de la ville au XVIIe siècle, et ce sous de nombreux angles. Deux aspects les ont
particulièrement intéressés : l’échelle de la croissance et la planification. Ce dernier aspect a, à partir du XIXe siècle, été étudié du point de vue du paysage urbain. La ville était considérée comme une composition scénographique géniale, comme le Versailles du Nord. Plus tard, le
regard s’est surtout porté sur le plan de ville au sol. Amsterdam était considérée comme l’incarnation de la ‘città ideale’, le summum de la planification.
Dans cette étude, nous nous baserons sur une idée plus pragmatique de l’urbanisme. La ville idéale, théorique, cède la place à la ville réelle et, par voie de conséquence, à la ville optimale : une réalité physique rétive dotée d’une dynamique spatiale et sociale imprévisible, laquelle est aménagée et gérée le mieux possible en vue de son utilisation par les autorités municipales en fonction de la situation du paysage et des eaux, des opinions prédominantes, des connaissances techniques, de la méthodologie urbanistique et de l’instrumentation disponible."

The retail of alcohol was so central to the economy and society of the Cape of Good Hope during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that it earned the nickname “tavern of two oceans”. This retail business was organised on the so-called
lease or monopoly ('pacht') system whereby a person paid the authorities for the right to sell a certain type of alcohol for a given period in a specific area. This article traces the intellectual origins of this system of alcohol retail at the Cape during the VOC era. It does so by tracing both the idea of using leases or monopolies, first in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century, and by investigating the ways in which various products, including alcohol, were leased off in the largest and most significant of the VOC’s colonies, Batavia, during the first half of the seventeenth century. It is demonstrated that the ways in which alcohol retail and other economic activities were organised at the Cape developed out of practices established elsewhere in the seventeenth-century Dutch world, but that the exact nature of the system was adapted to unique local circumstances at the early Cape. As such, this comparative article serves as an illustration that developments at the Cape in such a central sphere as business practices were the product of both global and local forces and influences.

De kustzone van Holland wordt gekenmerkt door een afwisseling van parallel aan elkaar liggende strandwallen en tussenliggende strandvlakten. Op de oude wallen liggen de geesten, voor de Hollandse kust kenmerkende akkercomplexen. Ook in de omgeving van het Noord-Hollandse Castricum worden in de literatuur geesten onderscheiden, maar omdat hier de monding van het Oer-IJ lag zijn er geen strandwallen aanwezig. Welke geesten zijn er in Castricum, en welke bodemkundige eigenschappen hebben deze bouwlanden?

Urbanization in the Netherlands. A thousand years of spatial development.

(Paper in Dutch)

The history of Dutch cities has been the subject of
extensive research. Many themes and periods, as
well as many individual cities, have been studied.
However, a comparative overview of Dutch urbanization
has never been written. Therefore, the
Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands and
the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University
of Technology decided to launch the Atlas of
Dutch Urbanization. This research project, the
first results of which are presented in this article,
aims at describing and explaining the growth of
cities from early mediaeval times up till the present.
This long-term overview of urbanization explains
the locations, structures and appearances of
our present-day cities. Many questions about city
design, transformation and heritage protection
can only be answered on the base of such an overview.
In this article, an overall picture of Dutch urbanization
is presented on the basis of a classification
of today’s 35 largest cities, classified by their origins.
From this classification five groups of cities
emerge. The oldest cities developed in the 11th and
12th century, all situated on the borders of wide
rivers, on locations throughout the Netherlands. A
second group of cities formed in the 13th and 14th
century on the borders of smaller rivers,. The third
group of late mediaeval cities consists of Amsterdam,
Rotterdam and The Hague, the three largest
cities of our time. The first two are located on the
fringes of the core area of the province of Holland,
on locations excellently connected to the sea and
the hinterland, while The Hague developed as the
administrative centre from the 16th century onwards.
From around 1400 AD, no new cities emerged until
the 19th century. From 1870 onwards, new
cities arose along the new railway infrastructure
in the sandy areas in the east and south as a result
of rapid industrialization. At the same time, suburbanization
led to the emergence of residential
towns. After World War II, a number of new
towns were created to absorb the rapid population
growth of the big cities in the west. In this period,
the roadway infrastructure played a leading role.
These first observations show that the emergence
and growth of cities is connected to their original
functions, but also to the landscape in which they
are located, and their location with regard to the
main infrastructures.

Summary
In 1943 the Dutch government in exile in London formed a committee that had to make a plan for the social insurance after the war. The report of the Van Rhijn-committee published in 1945 has been considered as a watershed in the Dutch social security system. New research, partly based upon the committee’s archive, however, points to a much more gradual development without any major interruptions. Innovations like the general social insurance came already up for discussion from about 1937 but had to wait for introduction upto 1956. Future research on this important aspect of Dutch social history should cover the period 1937-1952 and should not pay too much attention to the divisions between the London scene and the occupied territory on the continent.

The Netherlands and Denmark housed Europe’s first two postwar homophile organizations, and by the 1960s, activists were already debating anti-homosexual laws in national media, and (in the Netherlands) demonstrating publicly; thus Stonewall was not the origin of activism in either of these countries. Yet the events in New York City 1969 had two lasting influences in these countries: first, Stonewall catalyzed a transnational ‘consciousness’ (or solidarity) among gay and lesbian activists during a period of radicalization; and second, the Christopher Street Liberation Day 1970 inspired the visible demonstrations known today as ‘Pride’ celebrations. From 1971, Denmark’s national organization planned Christopher Street Day demonstrations every June; and that same year, a radical Gay Liberation Front split off from the association. From 1977, the Netherlands planned its own late-June demonstrations, often with transnational themes (e.g. Anita Bryant in 1977, the Iranian Revolution in 1979). In the following decades, these demonstrations of gay/lesbian visibility moved to August, and Denmark (and Belgium) dropped Christopher Street from event names. Yet scholars, activists, and the general public still evoke the memory of the first Liberation Day when referring to a ‘post-Stonewall’ era in the Netherlands and Denmark.

World history of the Netherlands and Flanders: about the (im)possibility of an open, global, and non-nationalist history for a wider audience
Following the success of the Histoire mondiale de la France, 2018 saw the publication of the World history of the Netherlands and World history of Flanders. After the French example both volumes have three goals: to bring history to a wider audience; to give a global reading to the national past; and to offer a non-nationalist and non-teleological perspective. Eminently readable, both books succeed in their first goal. The second ambition is fulfilled by the World history of the Netherlands, but in the World history of Flanders the global dimension is underdeveloped. The verdict on their third aim is double-edged. Both volumes explicitly claim to be open-ended and reject traditional nationalist tropes, but several Dutch and-to a lesser extent-Flemish chapters have a subtext of banal nationalism. The genre of public history seems to be particularly susceptible to this type of teleology.

There is little literature surrounding the practicality of a cycling culture in the Netherlands and how this contributes significantly to a sense of national identity and pride. As this essay will demonstrate, cycling is completely accepted and integrated as an everyday practice in Dutch everyday life. Infrastructure is designed with cycling in mind and cycling infrastructure architecture is increasingly representative of the prominence of the culture in the country. After all, there are more bikes than people in the Netherlands.

The German invasion of the Netherlands on the 10th of May 1940 was not only a tragedy for the Dutch people; it was also a tragedy for Dutch literature. In a few weeks time, the intellectual leaders of an entire generation would disappear. In the chaos of the battle of Rotterdam, Doeke Zijlstra, editor in chief of the publishing house Nijgh & Van Ditmar, was killed by a stray bullet. Publisher Robert Leopold, who feared German revenge for his publication of Hermann Rauschning’s critical work Hitler Speaks, shot himself. The promising Jewish writer Jacob Hiegentlich took poison and died. The young poet Tom de Bruin was accidentally shot by a nervous Dutch sentry. Hendrik Marsman, the most celebrated Dutch poet of his time, was among the few who found a place on a ship that would bring him to England. Within sight of the coast, however, they were hit by a German torpedo and he drowned. By then, two of the most prominent essayists, Edgar Du Perron and Menno ter Braak, had already died; Du Perron collapsed with a heart attack during the bombardment of an airport near his home in Bergen and ter Braak committed suicide upon the news of the Dutch surrender to the Germans. None of them ever knew about the death of the others.
What might seem as the last chapter of a Greek tragedy was only the beginning. During the occupation, at least 700 men and women of the underground press would lose their lives. The punishment for participation in the clandestine press was equivalent to that for acts of sabotage. Propaganda had been an essential element in the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany and, as such, a strict control over the press in the occupied Netherlands was considered of paramount importance. Literature was given a totally new purpose in the occupied Netherlands; it became propaganda in support of the Nazification of Dutch society and the tightening of links between the “Germanic” Dutch and their German “brothers.”
Hence, Dutch authors were suddenly confronted with a tough challenge. For decades, most of them had preferred the loftiness of the ivory tower over the squabbling of daily politics. In 1937, the celebrated novelist Simon Vestdijk still wrote: “The creative artist faces war like a toddler: utterly helpless.”  Only a couple of years later, his publishing house was bombed and he himself was taken hostage. The same author, who didn’t want to have anything to do with war, had ended up in its clutches.
In fact, after the German invasion, participation in political debates was no longer an option. It had become a necessity. Even keeping quiet was now considered a political statement. In this context, a simple poem could have a huge impact.

This article presents an overview of the long term trends in the trading patterns for salted herring in the area of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea and their hinterlands in the period of c. 1600-1850. The market is defined as ‘the interaction between supply and demand to determine the market price and corresponding quantity bought and sold.’  In this period the north European herring market underwent several changes. This is analysed from four different points of view:
The first main section examines the main trading routes for herring in Northern Europe by use of records from the Sound toll registers as well as from accounts of herring imports in the German North Sea and Baltic cities. Then a number of price series for various parts of northern Europe give indications for the long term development of prices of herring. Following this an analysis of the consumption patterns of salted herring is carried out, and finally the influence of mercantilist policies is evaluated.

Dutch Architects in the South African Republic

Jaap Evert Abrahamse

South Africa is one of the eight countries taking part in the Mutual Cultural Heritage programme, which was set up by the Dutch Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Education, Culture and Science. The Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands is a participator in the research project ZA/Wilhelmiens, in which the contribution of Dutch architects to the architecture and building practice in the South African Republic in the Transvaal region is the central theme.
In the 19th century, the South African Republic was seen as a legal and moral successor of the Dutch Republic, that had long before lost its military and economic power and its leading role in international politics, as the English took over most international trade routes and London replaced Amsterdam as the main commercial centre. Many civil servants and other professionals left for the Transvaal to help build the new South African Republic, especially as tax revenues boomed when gold was found near Johannesburg. Among them were quite a number of architects and engineers. Sytze Wierda was appointed the head of the Public Works Department with Klaas van Rijsse as his assistant. Both were architects of Dutch origin. In the period until 1899, the beginning of the Second Anglo-Boer War, the department would design and construct many public buildings, such as the Government Building and the Palace of Justice in Pretoria, but also post offices, prisons, local government buildings, and many others. At the same time, the NZASM railway company built railway lines, station buildings and company towns, many churches were built in which a Dutch influence is clearly visible, and military works were realized outside Pretoria, that seem to be closely connected with the Stelling van Amsterdam, which was also built in this period.

Women’s suffrage as a controversial issue among Dutch feminists,
1870-1900
Female suffrage was not the Dutch women’s movement’s central issue from the beginning, nor did contemporary social reformers conceive it as part of the democratisation process they favoured. This article explores the public debate on women’s suffrage against the backdrop of the movement towards universal suffrage in its first three decades. Due to sources refraining from stating the obvious, it remains obscure why exactly parliamentary politics continued to be seen as an exclusively male domain for so long. What is clear, is that conservative feminists
associated the demand for women’s suffrage with a radical strand of feminism which they abhorred.

In dit fraai geschreven boek beschrijft Lotte Jensen negen vredesverdragen tussen 1648 en 1815. De Vrede van Münster vormt het startpunt. Nadat de Republiek door Spanje werd erkend als zelfstandige staat, werden er tal van lofdichten geschreven. Dit niet vaak bekeken aspect geeft een nieuw licht op dit deel van de vaderlandse geschiedenis. Tegelijkertijd laat Jensen het verloop tussen oorlog en vrede zien aan de hand van diverse vredesverdragen die op hun buurt weer tot een nieuwe strijd zouden leiden. Dit boek wordt daarmee onderdeel van een nieuw onderzoeksterrein, namelijk Peace Studies. Het wordt duidelijk dat Jensen zich voornamelijk situeert in het kamp der traditionalisten dat tegenover de modernisten worden geplaatst. Dit standpunt houdt in dat de wortels van bijvoorbeeld nationalisme al vóór 1800 zijn waar te nemen. Hoewel zij de kant van de traditionalisten kiest, spreekt ze wel regelmatig over de modernistische invention of tradition en imagined community. Jensen geeft inzicht in personen die vaak vergeten zijn in de bestudering van deze verdragen die vanuit een politiek historisch standpunt worden onderzocht. Gedichten, liederen en toneelstukken komen uitvoerig aan bod, ondersteund door mooie gravures en kleurenplaten. In het eerste deel 'Nederlands zelfbesef' worden drie vredes beschreven, namelijk de Vrede van Münster (1648), de Vrede van Breda (1667) en de Vrede van Nijmegen (1678). Het eerste vredesverdrag uit 1648 toont aan dat verzoening het algemene thema was. Niet alleen protestantse groeperingen als doopsgezinden en remonstranten, maar ook katholieken waren zeer te spreken over de blijdschap die na zoveel jaren van onderdrukking eindelijk openlijk belijd mochten worden. De Nederlandse Opstand bracht een supranationaal oogpunt tot stand dat boven de gewesten transcendeerde. Opmerkelijk is de verbindende en verheffende rol van de Oranjes. Hierbij werd het klassieke idee van de Gouden Tijd aangehaald als reflectie op de eigen tijd. In 1748 werd de honderdjarige vrede herdacht tijdens de Vrede van Aken. Het was belangrijk dat de grandeur van de Gouden Eeuw tot in lengte van dagen zou doorklinken. Helaas zou 1652 een keerpunt worden in de Nederlandse geschiedenis, toen de Nederlands-Engelse Zeeoorlogen van start zouden gaan. Met de minder bekende Vrede van Breda kwam er op 31 juli 1667 een einde aan de Tweede Engelse Zeeoorlog. Ook hier werd positief door de bevolking op gereageerd. De Haagse dichter Jacob Westerbaen (1599-1670) hoopte dat deze vrede zou blijven voortbestaan, ondanks dat Nieuw-Amsterdam aan de Engelse werd overgedragen en de Republiek Suriname zou behouden. Hoewel minder bekend, waren er veel grote schrijvers die lofzangen opschreven zoals Joost van den Vondel en Joannes Antonides. Jensen wil met de beschrijving van dit verdrag aantonen hoezeer oorlog nog in het bloed zat. De onderlinge relaties tussen orangisten en staatsgezinden kon elk moment exploderen. Het verschil met de Vrede van Münster was dat het concept vrijheid hier veel meer politiek geladen was. In de gedichten op de Vrede van Breda zijn meerdere kenmerken herkenbaar, zoals de positieve invloed op koophandel en welvaart, de herdenking aan eerdere oorlogen en tenslotte respect voor de bestuurders van de Republiek, specifiek Johan en Cornelis de Witt. Andere belangrijke

Th e schoolmistress and best-selling poet Anna Bijns was one of the few laypeople in the sixteenth-century Netherlands who was prepared publicly to fi ght for the Catholic cause. Th is article contends that Bijns's work, exceptional as it was, refl ects a "moral" understanding of the problem of heresy that was not unique to her, but that exemplifi ed the way in which many clerics responded to the threat of Protestantism. Th ey equated heresy with sin, and argued that this required a penitential response from all in society. Yet by contending that each "order" in society was best left to fi ght its own sins, and that "each should tend his own garden" their arguments also created the impression that heresy was fi rst and foremost a clerical problem. Th is may help explain the "passive" way in which Catholics in the Netherlands, as well as in many other parts of Northwestern Europe, responded to the Reformation.

Études sur la sainteté et l'hagiographie-Studies on Sanctity and Hagiography HAGIOLOGIA Études sur la sainteté et l'hagiographie-Studies on Sanctity and Hagiography Des saints et des livres Christianisme fl amboyant et manuscrits hagiographiques du Nord à la fi n du Moyen Âge ( e- e siècle) Études réunies par Fernand Peloux F H 17 Des saints et des livres Des saints et des livres Christianisme fl amboyant et manuscrits hagiographiques du Nord à la fi n du Moyen Âge ( e- e siècle) À la fi n du Moyen Âge, la production hagiographique manuscrite se transforme et connaît son dernier âge d'or entre le succès éditorial de la Légende dorée et l'arrivée de l'imprimerie. De nombreux textes anciens sont abrégés pour intégrer de nouvelles collections. Ce phénomène est en partie responsable du relatif désintérêt des historiens à leur égard : à quoi bon s'intéresser à ces abrégés alors qu'il reste tant à découvrir dans les grands légendiers du Moyen Âge central, et qu'on commence à peine à mieux connaître les tout premiers manuscrits conservés ? L'objectif de ce livre est de mieux saisir la fonction sociale du manuscrit hagiographique, à une période, celle du « christianisme fl amboyant », caractérisée par l'accumulation et la multiplication des dévotions. En se focalisant sur les Pays-Bas méridionaux et une large France septentrionale, une région traversée par la devotio moderna et d'intenses dynamiques religieuses, son objectif est aussi de comprendre ensemble les légendiers latins et vernaculaires, en moyen néerlandais comme dans les parlers d'oïl. Il s'agit de saisir les conditions matérielles de la circulation des textes hagiographiques, mais aussi l'usage de ces manuscrits, dans le cadre de la pastorale et des pratiques cultuelles collectives comme dans celui de l'affi rmation de l'individu à la fi n du Moyen Âge.

Al met al bevredigt dit Indië-deel van de Drees-biografie niet helemaal. Omstandig wordt het Haagse aandeel in de Indonesische kwestie aan de hand van het rijkelijk aanwezige en ook zorgvuldig gebruikte bronnenmateriaal nog eens gereconstrueerd, maar het hier gebezigde Dreesperspectief biedt geen nieuw zicht op de kwestie. Nu hoeft dat in een biografie ook niet per se, maar de uitvoerigheid die Daalder heeft betracht suggereert wel een pretentie van de biograaf in die richting. Dat leidt tot de conclusie dat het boek als (onderdeel van de) biografie niet zo geslaagd is, maar ook dat we er weer een gedegen monografie over de Indonesische kwestie bij hebben.

'Zullen wij nog terugkeeren....' De jodenvervolging in Amersfoort tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog. [Will we ever return.... A local study of the persecution of the Jews of Amersfoort , the Netherlands , under National Socialism during the Holocaust in World War II ] (In Dutch)

Op vrijdag 15 september 2006 vond in het Antillenhuis (Kabinet van de Gevolmachtigde Minister van de Nederlandse Antillen), ’s-Gravenhage,  de presentatie plaats van de tweedelige geschiedschrijving en anthologie De kleur van mijn eiland. Bij die gelegenheid werd bijgaande voordracht gehouden. De tekst werd opgenomen in het Antilliaans Weekblad van 22 september 2006.