Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 127, Issue 2, 2014

In the special section EVERYTHING IS ENLIGHTENED three authors present new developments in the Enlightenment research. In this short introduction we determine the boundaries within which the more than thirty books that are discussed by these authors can be placed, en we observe that historians of the Enlightenment have in recent years explored the limits of what can still be considered Enlightened.

The many forms of sociability that flourished during the eighteenth century have long been viewed as vehicles of the Enlightenment. Not only were societies, clubs, and lodges permeated by a spirit of egalitarianism, secularism, and religious tolerance, they were also essential factors in the dissemination of knowledge and new ideas. Additionally, sociability has been associated with the rise of the public sphere and civil societ Read More

In this article several new publications on the critics of the Enlightenment are reviewed. These works build partly on the legacy of Isaiah Berlin’s concept of the Counter-Enlightenment, but they also emphasise the problematic nature of his essentialistic and timeless interpretation of the Counter-Enlightenment tradition. The authors argue that the so-called enemies of the Enlightenment should in fact be examined as part Read More

Since the publication of Peter Gay’s The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, scholarly interest in the classical presence in Enlightenment culture has waned. Over the past decade, however, this topic has returned to center stage. This review article discusses the ways in which recent research has contributed to the rediscovery of the classical past in the Enlightenment. It starts with an evaluation of the current reinterpretation of th Read More

This article re-evaluates Paul Wittek's famous gaza thesis, which until the 1980s was the dominant explanation of the Ottoman state and remains influential. It situates Wittek within the intellectual genealogy of Ottoman Studies, which exhibits two major lines: the Ottomans were either barbarians without an understanding of state-building, or fanatical Muslims who were engaged in continuous holy war. Since Wittek, ma Read More

After World War I the technocratic movement Technocracy Inc. was established in the United States. Supporters of this movement were utopian engineers who wanted to eradicate waste in American industry, and increasingly considered their methods applicable to the economy and society at large. Technocratic ideas also gained ground in the Netherlands in the interwar period. The purpose of this article is to examine the e Read More

This article adopts a new perspective on the interaction between political parties and Dutch television in election campaigns from the 1960s onwards. Rather than exploring the ‘real’ impact of television on the nature and content of political campaigning, it presents a case study of televised debates in order to explore changing perceptions among parties and press regarding the so-called mediatization of politics. It s Read More