Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 122, Issue 3, 2009

This article briefly explores the ways in which literate members of the Dutch Republic deployed depictions of sexual violence in order to stimulate specific forms of Dutch national, religious, and social identification during the first half of the seventeenth century. Understanding the centrality of the discourse of rape in the nascent Dutch Republic reveals the ways in which power was expressed in bodily terms. By means of their depictions of rape, patriarchs asserted control not only over women, but also over poorer men and minors; literary elites declared Dutch superiority over the Spanish; and Dutch Catholics and Protestants challenged each other’s views of the ideal constitution of the new Dutch social body.

In the first half of the sixteenth century the prosecution of ‘heretics’ was one of the main tasks of the officers of the prince in The Hague in Holland. Some officers have been unfairly branded as zealous prosecutors, while others are considered to have been lenient and unwilling to follow orders received from above. In this article the role of the officers is analysed by means of three different questions: What did the officers do? What did they have to do according to their orders? What did the people of Holland want them to do? It is argued that these questions can lead to different conclusions on the role of the officers, all of which need to be taken into account if one is to reach a balanced view of their activities.

This article reassesses the motivations of noblemen during the Dutch Revolt by means of a case study of the so-called Treason of Rennenberg. According to the conventional view, on 3 March 1580, Georges of Lalaing, Count of Rennenberg, betrayed his nation by surrendering the city of Groningen to Philip II. He did so because he was a Catholic and an egotistical opportunist, seeking money and offices from the King. This article, however, presents Rennenberg’s ‘treason’ as a reconciliation with his King and the outcome of nine months of negotiations. Hence, his decision to give up his rebellion is assessed within the broader models of early modern nobility and state building, patronage, and particularism. This paper argues that although traditional stereotypes fail to explain fully why Rennenberg became reconciled to Philip, the three components of this model are helpful when considered separately. In a combined and contextualized analysis Rennenberg’s reconciliation is seen as one in which he saved Catholicism in Groningen but let it go in Friesland; in which he promised loyalty to the King without receiving his immediate military assistance; in which he won royal favours but saw other properties confiscated by the rebels; in which he acted in concert with some but not all of his kin; and in which he ceded to local pressures as a provincial governor. It was for precisely these reasons that it took Rennenberg nine months to reach an agreement.

The introduction of philological method and its contribution to the creation of modern historiography is associated most commonly with Leopold von Ranke. The ‘Dutch Ranke’ , Robert Fruin, was trained in classical philology, like his German counterpart. But it was Reinier Cornelis Bakhuizen van den Brink (1810-65) who first introduced the methods of critical philology into Dutch historiography. As a young scholar, he used the approaches developed in German classical philology in order to study Dutch seventeenth century literature. In exile, he became a scholar of political history, mainly of the Dutch Revolt. Primary sources were his favoured material; a precise source criticism was his method. This made him a frequent visitor to archives throughout Europe, and after returning to his fatherland he became the archivist that modernized standards of record-keeping in the Dutch archives. Fruin and Bakhuizen seem to have exaggerated the results of their philological method: they produced only brilliant exercises in source criticism, never grand narratives.

In the interwar period New Guinea served for a number of groups in the Netherlands and the Dutch Indies as an opportunity to escape from contemporary society. Socio-economic suppression of Eurasians in Indonesia, increasing unemployment, and fear of overpopulation in Holland resulted in plans for the colonization of New Guinea. The thinly populated, second largest island in the world seemed to provide an outstanding opportunity to create a ‘tropical Holland’ . This article focuses on these highly ambitious, utopian colonization plans and the associated representations made mainly by right-oriented groups in the Netherlands and the Dutch Indies between the two world wars. The eventual attempt to colonize failed completely. According to the author, the main effect of the utopian representations must be seen in the degree to which they generated hopes for a more ideal society. It is argued that these plans and especially the representations of New Guinea as a new Holland, were very successful. Even the Dutch government, which had previously strongly rejected colonization, seemed after the Second World War to have been seduced by the idea of a tropical, Dutch island.

This article argues that German Unification did not cause a break in the memory-politics of the Federal Republic. Instead, more fundamental changes in German historical culture seem to have taken place in the early 1980s, and then again in the late 1990s. The argument begins from the observation that many of the historical symbols of the ‘New Berlin’ are deeply rooted in the ‘old’ West Berlin or in Bonn. Here, the shift in memorydiscourse from Vergangenheitsbewältigung to the concept of remembering itself had already started in the decade before the fall of the Wall. This West German development continued into the period of unification in the 1990s and also informed the construction of the ‘New Berlin’ as a memory-scape of the united Germany. Such lines of continuity also explain why East German stories and experiences were hard to integrate into the discourse of the 1990s.

The growing interest in the past manifests itself in the success of television series about the history of the Netherlands and Europe. In 2008 the TV series Verleden van Nederland and De geschiedenis van Nederland in twaalf moorden were also published as books. Is television a suitable medium to transfer knowledge to an interested of audience of non-specialists? And what do historians think of it? Media historians Chris Vos and Frank van Vree discuss these questions with the makers of the two series, Ad van Liempt and the Blokker family. One downside to ‘audio-visual historiography’ is that it can transfer only a limited amount of information, Vos argues. He analyses both the content and form of the series. Van Vree admires the beautiful images of the Dutch landscapes, but believes that too much emphasis is placed on the upper classes in urban areas. This prompts the question as to what is the right balance between the grand narrative, critical scholarship, and the laws of film-making? Van Liempt replies by explaining some of the choices that have been made for Verleden van Nederland. In their contribution Jan Blokker, Jan Blokker jr. and Bas Blokker point out the importance of television for broadening the historical awareness of the general public.