Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 123, Issue 3, 2010

Many historians believe that the aim of their work is to produce an objective and accurate reconstruction of the past, disposed of moral and political judgements. Analysing various scandals and controversies regarding the history and memory of World War II , Dutch colonialism and the Dutch involvement in Srebrenica, the authors aim to show that pleas to free historiography from the traditional patriotic moral schemes Read More

The trade in both the Baltic and Norway was in Hanseatic hands in the Late Middle Ages. Hollanders ventured to penetrate both markets and attained growing success in the Baltic. A lesser known story is that they failed to do so in Bergen, Norway. This article explores the reasons behind the failure in the period c. 1440- 1560 and advances the view that local conditions should be considered.

The Consulate is the last of the many regimes of the First French Republic. During these four crucial years the de facto head of state, Napoleon Bonaparte, gradually accumulated so much power that in the end he seemed to occupy an almost royal position, foreshadowing his imperial dignity. Although Bonaparte tried to keep up a façade of revolutionary symbols and republican customs, it became more and more diffic Read More

In the second half of the nineteenth century an amalgam of European and American adventurers travel towards the unknown centre of Africa. Confrontations with powerful Arab traders in equatorial Africa discharge into a bloody colonial war: king Leopolds ‘Arab Campaigns’. This article attempts to spread a new light on the Arab question, by examining, from a cultural point of view, Western perceptions and representatio Read More

Since Herder, Germans have looked upon the cultural legacy of Iceland as part of their own Volksgeist, and thus as a key to finding clues about their own Germanic ancestry. This imagological paper focuses on the development of this idea in the discourse of Neo Romanticism and in Nazi Germany, and on the differences and similarities between these two. After the academic and philosophical roots of the National Socialist Read More

During the Second World War, the Dutch government in exile and the illegal press in the occupied Netherlands on several occasions discussed the question what to do with Germany once the war ended. Strikingly, they both resented a harsh treatment of post-war Germany. There was a plain reason for this: the economic importance of Germany to a recovery of the Netherlands was of fundamental concern. This led to modera Read More

Rather than being the dawning of a secular age, the 1960s were also the start of religious transformation and revitalization, in which ‘those Dutch Catholics’ internationally stood out. Instead of focusing on the usual suspects (bishops or the Vatican), this article analyzes the finest hour of social scientists. These played a significant but hardly acknowledged role in the introduction of new narratives of crisis and renewal. Social eng Read More

Historical narratives consist of three different kinds of information: information about past events (the inventory of the past), information about other historical narratives (the historiographical thesis), and information about the meaning of the past (the historical thesis). These different aspects of historical knowledge together constitute a coherent view on a certain period in time. This article examines these forms of inf Read More