In 1572 is Zutphen het toneel van een burgeroorlog. In juni vindt de stad aansluiting bij de Opstand van Willem van Oranje en Willem van den Bergh, dankzij hulp van binnenuit. In november wordt de...Show moreIn 1572 is Zutphen het toneel van een burgeroorlog. In juni vindt de stad aansluiting bij de Opstand van Willem van Oranje en Willem van den Bergh, dankzij hulp van binnenuit. In november wordt de stad door het regeringsleger van Alva en don Fadrique heroverd en gestraft voor de opstandigheid. Volgens verhalen uit de latere herinneringscultuur vindt er dan een bloedbad onder de burgerbevolking plaats. Deze scriptie laat zien dat dit verhaal het product is van eigentijdse geruchten en propaganda, en gepolitiseerde herinneringspraktijken in de zeventiende eeuw. De lokale herinneringscultuur is een modern verschijnsel. Het aanvankelijke uitblijven van een lokale herinneringstraditie wordt verklaard door het ontbreken van belanghebbenden en de werking van vergetelheidclausules in amnestieregelingen als het Generaal Pardon (1574) en de Pacificatie van Gent (1576). Wat is er dan wel gebeurd? In werkelijkheid wordt het garnizoen Waalse huurlingen ter dood veroordeeld. Voor de Zutphenaren is 1572 (in hun woorden) vooral een 'ellendig jaar', waarbij de nadruk niet vanzelfsprekend op de gebeurtenissen in november ligt.Show less
Building on recent scholarly work on anticolonialism in European metropoles, this thesis looks into the activists and initiatives that advanced an anticolonial agenda in the interwar Dutch...Show moreBuilding on recent scholarly work on anticolonialism in European metropoles, this thesis looks into the activists and initiatives that advanced an anticolonial agenda in the interwar Dutch metropole from 1927 to 1935. This thesis places its focus on three main groups: activists from the Netherlands, the Dutch colonies and other parts of the global South and turns towards initiatives like the World Congress against Imperialist War (1932) in Amsterdam. Devoting special attention to the Dutch branch of the League against Imperialism (the LAI-NL), this thesis seeks to carve out an hitherto understudied part of Dutch, colonial and global history.Show less
Between 1945 and 1952, Dutch non-governmental organisations (NGOs) closely cooperated with intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) to administer aid to refugees. Making use of a case study approach,...Show moreBetween 1945 and 1952, Dutch non-governmental organisations (NGOs) closely cooperated with intergovernmental organisations (IGOs) to administer aid to refugees. Making use of a case study approach, this thesis scrutinises the cooperation between four NGOs and the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees (IGCR) and the International Refugee Organisation (IRO). How and why did NGOs and IGOs join forces to effectuate refugee relief? It turned out that interdependence played an important role: NGOs were reliant on the financial support from IGOs, whilst IGOs needed the ‘grassroot’ expert knowledge of NGOs. NGOs also distributed IGO support to the refugees and mediated on behalf of the refugees. In return, IGOs provided NGOs with legal assistance and advice. Moral arguments and preventive considerations (keeping the refugees on the right path and the fear for unwished precedents) played a lesser role in fuelling NGO-IGO cooperation. All in all, this thesis provides a first insight in the unstudied activity of Dutch relief NGOs directly after the war. The case studies are conducted against the backdrop of an extensive and inconclusive debate on NGOs and their role in the establishment of the modern humanitarian refugee regime.Show less
Greek poets reflected upon the epiphany – the presence - of the Muses in their poems in Ancient Greece. This study aims to determine why poets reflected upon the epiphany of the Muses in their...Show moreGreek poets reflected upon the epiphany – the presence - of the Muses in their poems in Ancient Greece. This study aims to determine why poets reflected upon the epiphany of the Muses in their poems. Since Greek poetry was performed in front of a public, it focusses on the social demands to question the epiphany of the Muses in Ancient Greece. Specifically, it investigates how various political and military crises may have created social demands to reflect upon the Muses’ epiphanies. To test the hypothesis that crises created needs for poets to question the reliability and presence of the Muses, the circumstances of poets’ lives and careers are investigated. Biographical and autobiographical literary evidence, in combination with archaeological and iconological evidence, supports the idea that crises led to a demand to reflect upon the Muses’ epiphanies. This suggests that disruptive experiences such as war and diseases impacted the trustworthiness of divine inspiration and divine knowledge.Show less
By addressing the theory associated with studying nationalism from below, and approaching the case study of the German occupation of the Netherlands during WWII, this thesis expands the...Show moreBy addressing the theory associated with studying nationalism from below, and approaching the case study of the German occupation of the Netherlands during WWII, this thesis expands the methodological toolbox with which to approach the evidence problem associated with historical research on nationalism from below. By taking the Stimmungsberichte (mood reports) written by the Wehrmacht, as ledgers of everyday actions performed by the silent majority of the Dutch population, this thesis assesses the fluctuation of nationalistic sentiment in terms of the commonly used repertoires of contention. This leads to a more dynamic perception of nationalism in the Netherlands during this unique time in the history of the nation-state.Show less
How did racialized ideas about work and rest change in the Dutch East-Indies towards the end of the nineteenth century? In the Dutch colony, the idea that Javanese worker showed a natural tendency...Show moreHow did racialized ideas about work and rest change in the Dutch East-Indies towards the end of the nineteenth century? In the Dutch colony, the idea that Javanese worker showed a natural tendency for laziness and lacked the urge to improve their material condition was highly influential and repeatedly invoked to justify coercive labor practices. Whereas the Dutch used to consider Javanese’s alleged laziness as a stable and in-built feature of their inferior “race”, this study shows that they increasingly started to treat it as a by-product of their deplorable socio-economic circumstances by the turn of the century. Given that the Cultivation System (1830-1870) robbed the Javanese off the fruits of their own labor, the Dutch asserted that the natives had failed to develop the “natural” materialist urges they associated with industrial capitalism. In attempts to cure Javanese agricultural workers of their supposed indolence, the agents of capital therefore endeavored to inculcate work ethic from above via the so-called Ethical Policy of 1901. This study not only documents this discursive change, but also aims to understand and explain it. To this end, it places the historical transformation of the stereotype against the background of the racial capitalist regime change it emerged from: the shift from a system in which natives were excluded from the White economy to one in which they were demanded to assimilate. My findings fill up the empirical lacuna on the circulation of this racial-economic trope in the late nineteenth century and advances the historiography on the topic by thoroughly embedding it within Black Marxist theorizing.Show less
In deze scriptie wordt onderzocht waarom Nederlandse kinderen na de Tweede Wereldoorlog naar het buitenland werden uitgezonden en buitenlandse kinderen gelijktijdig in Nederland werden...Show moreIn deze scriptie wordt onderzocht waarom Nederlandse kinderen na de Tweede Wereldoorlog naar het buitenland werden uitgezonden en buitenlandse kinderen gelijktijdig in Nederland werden ondergebracht. In deze scriptie worden motieven voor de organisatie in kaart gebracht, wordt de uitzending vergeleken met andere kinderuitzendingen en wordt vanuit een governance perspectief bekeken welke actoren betrokken waren bij de vorming en uitvoering van beleid en wat hun invloed was op keuzes voor opvang, transport, verlengd verblijf, terugkeer, opvoeding en onderwijs op de plaats van opvang. Uit dit onderzoek blijkt dat het laten aansterken van de kinderen bij deze en andere kinderuitzendingen de aanleiding vormde voor de organisatie hiervan. Ook de mogelijkheid tot (her)opvoeden van de kinderen bleek een rol te spelen. Doordat veel organisaties betrokken waren bij de kinderuitzending ontstonden onderlinge concurrentie en tegengestelde belangen op nationaal en internationaal niveau.Show less
In older scholarship, it was often claimed that Christian martyrdom contributed significantly to the conversion of the Roman Empire. This assertion, however, has been significantly criticized in...Show moreIn older scholarship, it was often claimed that Christian martyrdom contributed significantly to the conversion of the Roman Empire. This assertion, however, has been significantly criticized in recent decades, so that conversion in response to witnessing acts of Christian martyrdom now appears to have been relatively minor. In order to both elaborate on and critically evaluate these criticisms, the present thesis compares a number of Christian and ‘pagan’ texts from the second and third centuries CE that deal with martyrdom and/or ‘noble death’. While the thesis pays attention to issues surrounding the scale on which martyrdom occurred and the extent to which witnessing the torture and execution of Christians may have inspired conversion, its main focus is on the importance of martyr texts to the Christianization of the Roman Empire. ‘Christianization’ here is used in a more general sense, and includes not only conversion, but also the formation of Christian (group)identity and the catechesis of new members. With regards to the possibility of Christian texts being used to convert outsiders or instruct the newly-initiated, the thesis works from the assumption that these ‘pagan’ audiences would have been more likely to adopt a favourable view of Christian martyrdom – and perhaps concomitantly, Christianity – insofar as its (literary) representations presented it as similar to noble death. Simultaneously, the thesis argues that Christian martyr texts contain several unique elements, principally religious in character, that allowed them to out-live ‘pagan’ noble death traditions like that of the Acta Alexandrinorum. These shared and unique aspects are recovered through an in-depth analysis and comparison of a number of Christian and ‘pagan’ texts. All in all, the findings of the thesis generally agree with earlier revisionist publications, and suggest that conversion induced by martyrdom was rare, and that the importance of martyr texts to Early Christianity mostly lay in their ability to provide Christian groups with powerful communities identities and moral exemplars.Show less
Een cultuurhistorische analyse van Nederlandse diplomaten in de twintigste eeuw, waarbij in de eerste plaats op basis van diplomatieke memoires een beeld geschetst wordt van de grote veranderingen...Show moreEen cultuurhistorische analyse van Nederlandse diplomaten in de twintigste eeuw, waarbij in de eerste plaats op basis van diplomatieke memoires een beeld geschetst wordt van de grote veranderingen in de habitus en persona van de de diplomaat en de diplomatieke cultuur in Nederland tussen 1900-2000. Tegen de achtergrond van een democratiserende maatschappij bleef het corps diplomatique lange tijd een bastion van adel en patriciaat, waarbij een belangrijke brugfunctie was weggelegd voor corporale studentenverenigingen. Na de Tweede Wereldoorlog begint een decennialange transformatie, waarbij het aristocratische karakter van de diplomatie geleidelijk aan plaatsmaakt voor een meer bureaucratische bedrijfscultuur.Show less