Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 122, Issue 4, 2009

The current debate on globalisation has increased the interest in global history. This interdisciplinary approach to study the past offers an integrated analysis of various supranational processes. Despite a regular focus on long-term developments, it seems suitable for a new way of analysing the global interactions during World War II. By doing so, it will enlarge our understanding of the transnational nature of this period, and of th Read More

The Second World War was the greatest man-made disaster in history. The war destroyed countless human lives and left indelible marks on modern memory. This essay examines the impact of this catastrophic event on economic development. Using a wide array of recent studies in economic history and the history of technology, the author argues that, contrary to what intuition would suggest, the impact was in reality rather li Read More

The Second World War in Indonesia should not be viewed as an isolated event, but in conjunction with the wider events of decolonization and the formation of independent states, and also in a wider geographic framework. This article examines the shifting patterns of migration and mobility in the period of transition from colonial rule to independence. The Second World War appears to have had a decisive effect on patterns of Read More

The ideal of the citizen-soldier around which the Dutch patriots of the 1780s rallied, has been well documented in the literature. However, little has been written on what happened to these ideals, once their proponents gained power in 1795 with the blessing of revolutionary France. This article describes how the arming of the citizenry in this newly named Batavian Republic, became a source of serious dissension. Four positions Read More

While the Dutch government tried to maintain neutrality during World War I, the belligerent nations closely watched the Netherlands and its public opinion. At the same time, the French, English, and German authorities used propaganda to influence Dutch public opinion. The famous documentary film The Battle of the Somme (1916) is a good example. Its critical reception in the Netherlands has been studied before, Read More

This article offers a historiographic review of Belgian and Dutch nationhood during the long nineteenth century. It is argued that history from below is weakly represented. In the late 1980s the subjectivist turn was adopted in research on Belgian and Dutch nationalism, although the sources of inspiration differed (Hroch and A.D. Smith in the former, Gellner and Koselleck in the latter). Initially, a top-down vision predominated in Read More

This article deals with België, een parcours van herinnering, a twovolume book, edited by four historians and one literature historian. It is a Belgian attempt to write the history of a nation through its lieux de mémoire. Following in Pierre Nora’s footsteps, the idea behind this book is that traditional history cannot but fail when attempting to write national history, because the nation has undergone tremendous changes. In t Read More