This thesis aims to shed light on legal practice of the nineteenth century in France and The Netherlands and contrast it with legal theory and current historiography. In both older and newer French...Show moreThis thesis aims to shed light on legal practice of the nineteenth century in France and The Netherlands and contrast it with legal theory and current historiography. In both older and newer French and Dutch historiography, the nineteenth century is described as the century of legalism, also referred to as exegetical thinking. This exegetical school of law considers the codified law to be the highest and practically the only source of law on which the judge and legal scholar must rely. This historiography is mainly based on the development of legal theory as practised at universities. Implicitly or sometimes even explicitly, legal practice is equated with this legal theory. This fallacy obscures the practice of law, which did not take place in the university or the chambers of scholars, but in the courtroom. To address this lacuna, the following question was answered: To what extent was legalism in the Netherlands and the exegetical school in France really the dominant approach in legal practice and how can possible differences between both countries be explained? In order to know the practice of law and to assess whether judges, like legal theorists, were under the spell of exegetical thinking, judgments of courts were analysed. These can be found in case law journals that emerged in the nineteenth century. This study looked specifically at the judges' references to case law; the work of colleagues. The reference to case law is contrary to the doctrine of the exegetical school which accepts codification as the sole source of law. Referral to sources of law outside the codification by the courts, either implicit or explicit, imply a freer attitude towards the codification than legal scholars of the nineteenth century and current historiography would have us believe. Analysis of approximately two thousand Dutch and French judgments throughout the nineteenth century showed a difference in the quantity and nature of the references between both countries. In France, judges themselves referred explicitly to specific case law or to case law in general, whereas in the Netherlands judges did not refer to case law themselves, but relied on the arguments of the litigants and the Advocate-General, who did explicitly invoke case law. My research gives cause to adjust the image of nineteenth century legal history. The nineteenth-century judge was a child of his time, but not a puppet of legal theory. Lex semper dabit remedium: The law always provides a remedy; this was the starting point, but case law often supplemented it. The demonstrated difference between legal theory and legal practice fits within a broader development in current historiography, emphasising continuity of politics, culture, and in this case legal practices, in the wake of the French Revolution.Show less
This thesis takes the Poison Reports of the Dutch East Indies, a compilation of indigenous knowledge about poisons based on specimens and information which were collected around the turn of the...Show moreThis thesis takes the Poison Reports of the Dutch East Indies, a compilation of indigenous knowledge about poisons based on specimens and information which were collected around the turn of the twentieth century, as a case study of the process of colonial scientific knowledge production. It asks why Europeans were interested in indigenous toxicological knowledge and how this knowledge was appropriated and transformed into stable, ‘scientific’ knowledge. Through an examination of scientific publications, archival sources and newspapers, this thesis sheds light on the colonial anxieties and commercial interests that motivated research into poisons home to colonies and the ways in which it relied on indigenous knowledge to lay the groundwork for emerging European, ‘scientific’ toxicological knowledge. I do this by following the Reports through their conception, production, circulation and use between 1885 and 1914. This case study shows that research into poisons from the colonies was a part of a broader movement of empires searching for medically useful plants for commercial benefits in the late nineteenth century. Crucially, this research was shaped by colonial anxieties about the perceived expertise of indigenous people in local poisons, which Europeans living in the Indies imagined to pose. By focusing on the indigenous contributions to the Reports, this illustrates how the production of scientific knowledge was a complex process which heavily relied on the expertise of indigenous people as collectors and informers. Indigenous knowledge of poisons was judged on its authority and then included or excluded into a European ‘scientific’ framework. This transformed indigenous knowledge was then used for various applications, such as pharmacological research as well as medico-legal applications which aimed to control the dangers of poisons in the Dutch East Indies. I show how indigenous knowledge was folded into scientific knowledge, after which the indigenous origins of this knowledge were denied and forgotten. As such, this thesis illustrates the complex process of colonial knowledge production and shows the forgotten indigenous influences on scientific toxicological knowledge.Show less
This thesis studies the way in which colonists and revolutionaries defined the value of the French Revolution and its relation to the colonies. It does so by looking at the issue of citizenship for...Show moreThis thesis studies the way in which colonists and revolutionaries defined the value of the French Revolution and its relation to the colonies. It does so by looking at the issue of citizenship for free people of colour in Saint-Domingue. This question was central to the colonial debate between the colonist lobby, the Club d’hôtel Massiac, and the revolutionaries of the Société des Amis des Noirs. Both these pressure groups used the press to influence the public. A look at some of the relevant newspapers shows how revolutionary discourse developed throughout 1790 and 1792 and how colonial events were shaped in the narratives of the Revolution. By reconstructing this colonial debate in the press, this thesis argues that the colonial question became an essential part of revolutionary and counterrevolutionary ideologies throughout the years 1790-92. In these two years, revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries appropriated the colonial issue in their developing political identities. Questions of colonial reform changed from pragmatic considerations in 1790 to an ideological struggle between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries in 1792. The integration of the colonial question in revolutionary narratives was stimulated by domestic developments and by the complex connection between metropole and colony. The discourse in the press showed how much the colonies affected the development of ideologies and narratives in the French Revolution and how the colonial issues were appropriated in pre-existing discourses in France. Despite recent attention to the impact of the Haitian Revolution, little is known about the French reaction to the events on France’s most important colony. However, as this thesis argues, the colonial debate was essential to the experience of Revolution.Show less
Through a comparative approach, this thesis investigates nightlife in Berlin and London around 1900 by examining both its concrete manifestation as well as its imaginative potential. In doing so,...Show moreThrough a comparative approach, this thesis investigates nightlife in Berlin and London around 1900 by examining both its concrete manifestation as well as its imaginative potential. In doing so, it aims to work out various reasons for similarities and differences between these two metropoles. While there is no lack of literature on metropoles and their entertainment culture, urban nightlife still remains largely untouched even though it is precisely the city at night that marks a different access to various areas of life and, therefore, bares great potential for historical research. This thesis aims to use this potential and tries to show that the insights gained from a topic that at first glance may seem rather mundane can be quite profound. With a focus on the years between 1900 and 1910, the first chapter examines external as well as internal factors of urbanisation as an imperative prerequisite for the emergence of metropolitan leisure industries that created the conditions for new forms of night-time pleasures in the first place. Through a close reading of sources that transgress the line between artistic invention and sociological study, the second chapter discusses entertainment districts at night in both cities as a very specific setting for social encounters by using the concept of heterotopias. The last chapter will work out who the various actors were that tried to shape the contemporary discourse with political or moral agendas.Show less
This thesis examines the tradition of the Great American Novel (GAN). Against current academic trends, this literary canon is not understood to safeguard conservative hegemonies. Here, it is rather...Show moreThis thesis examines the tradition of the Great American Novel (GAN). Against current academic trends, this literary canon is not understood to safeguard conservative hegemonies. Here, it is rather studied as an ongoing discourse that has questioned ostensible certainties in American national identity throughout the twentieth century. A select number of GANs are shown to have survived in the canon for decades, and to share an even more select number of archetypes which the novels consistently problematise. The continued resonance of these narratives is argued to be indicative of inherent ambiguities that fester on in American identity as cultural unfinished business. An added relevance is the fact that those uncertainties cropped up precisely during periods when US nationalism seemed to peak, a pattern that forms a surprising, alternative cultural history. The term “Great American Novel” was coined in 1868 by John William DeForest, who called for realist American novels to equal European ones, and to present an imagined US community that overcame post-Civil War regional divisions. Ever since, the tradition has been alluring to American authors seeking to establish their cultural weight. Yet the canon as we know it today only took shape after the confidence-boosting outcome of the First World War, when critics and academics renounced the European, realist ideals of their predecessors in favour of “Romance”, a symbolical style which they claimed had always been the basis of literary American exceptionalism. Retroactively, The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick and Huckleberry Finn were canonised as the Romance-edifice, as if they had always been just that. Their archetypes, namely individualism, the American Dream and the frontier spirit, together became a national mythology of sorts, so successful was this invented tradition. Soon it was so familiar, that subsequent authors who sought to reflect on American identity could do so by alluding to those three ultimate GANs. The canon thus became an ongoing discourse, a cultural conversation in which a limited set of rules and clichés were contemplated as national roots. Authors from the Great Depression were the first to demonstrate this. They took the three tropes mentioned, and superimposed them onto topical stories of economic hardship. GANs from the era thus romanticised the canonical archetypes as the eternal foundations of American exceptionalism, precisely by linking their betrayal to contemporary, “un-American” injustices. The years following the Second World War, by contrast, saw such a boost to national confidence that they were named a “Golden Age.” Yet a new generation of authors showed its teeth by digging up GAN-archetypes and weaponizing them, especially those related to frontier-adventurism, against contemporary ideals of dull material comfort. Indeed, the canon’s role as underminer of cultural certainties became fixed in these years. Hence the nadir in GAN-output amid the blows to American superiority of the 1960s and 1970s: the eras of Vietnam and Watergate required no reminding of American problems. The Reaganist 1980s did, however. Especially black authors began to attack Americans’ sense of innocence regarding their history, by again returning to the GANs’ archetypes: taken as the roots of US exceptionalism, they were rewritten as shared traumas. Far from weakening the canon’s position, this attack on its traditions actually revitalised its function as ongoing discourse. Consequently, the 1990s saw more (critically acclaimed) GAN-attempts than any other decade. Within them, authors indicated how the end of the Cold War not only boosted American exceptionalism, but also left it without a signifying Other, and thus without direction and narrative. Again, cultural confidence in the wake of a victory in a major global conflict was being undermined by GANs’ exposing hidden ambivalences in national mythology. The GAN’s imagined community has always destabilised American certainties. The canon forms a surprising, alternative cultural history, in which anxieties invisible in other histories come to the fore, precisely when one would least expect them to. Understanding canons as mere conservative bastions is thus argued to be highly reductive, and damaging to their rich analytical promise in cultural analysis. NB: Dubbelscriptie t.b.v. de opleidingen MA Literary Studies en MA GeschiedenisShow less
This thesis attempts to come to a better understanding of the internal functioning of the Centre Movement and its attempts to mobilise support through communication strategies. Furthermore, it...Show moreThis thesis attempts to come to a better understanding of the internal functioning of the Centre Movement and its attempts to mobilise support through communication strategies. Furthermore, it seeks to clarify the movement’s failure to break out of the political margins at a time when conditions in the Netherlands were favourable for the emergence of an anti-immigration party.Show less
This thesis analyses British Holocaust memorialization from the 1980s to today, through case studies on the Hyde Park Holocaust Memorial, the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum and the...Show moreThis thesis analyses British Holocaust memorialization from the 1980s to today, through case studies on the Hyde Park Holocaust Memorial, the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum and the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre. This thesis shows how the concept of the Holocaust evolved from being relatively ignored, to being a key subject in twentieth century British history. The first hypothesis underlying this research is that whereas earlier attempts at British Holocaust memorialization predominantly focused on the historical uniqueness of the genocide, later initiatives place greater emphasis on its universal significance. This hypothesis is confirmed by the three case studies. After the end of the Cold War the universal lessons of the Holocaust are increasingly addressed, visible in the Holocaust exhibition in the IWM and the Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre. Nevertheless, the uniqueness of the Holocaust remains important in all three of the case studies. The second hypothesis reads that whereas earlier attempts at British Holocaust memorialization tend to lack critical self-reflection, later initiatives show more willingness to explore Britain’s sense of guilt. The two latest initiatives, both created after 1989, do address the more negative aspects of Britain’s role in the war. Yet, the hypothesis cannot be confirmed for a greater willingness to explore these controversial issues does not seem to be present. Rather, the third initiative seems to prioritize the traditional heroic story of Britain’s relation to the Holocaust. Scholarship on Holocaust memory in Britain has evolved into a field in its own right, with key contributions of Tony Kushner, Andy Pearce, Dan Stone and David Cesarani. The field is intrinsically interdisciplinary, therefore this thesis necessarily draws upon literature from the fields of British History, Cultural Studies and Memory Studies. It builds upon primary material kept by the Imperial War Museum Archive and the London Metropolitan Archive, as well as materials found online and in the libraries of the University of Leiden and the University of Oxford.Show less
In political debates and academic literature, the French and Haitian Revolutions have often been presented as separate or even conflicting historical events. The emerging global historiography of...Show moreIn political debates and academic literature, the French and Haitian Revolutions have often been presented as separate or even conflicting historical events. The emerging global historiography of the Age of Revolution increasingly brings to light the many links that connect these revolutions and render their dichotomization illegitimate. This thesis simultaneously draws on and contributes to this historiographical development by experimenting the methodological approach of Atlantic intellectual history from below. Focusing on the perspectives of the French sans-culottes and the insurgent slaves of Saint Domingue (colonial Haiti), it explores how these revolutionary groups’ exposure to a transatlantic flux of ideas and developments impacted their views on the slavery system between 1789 and 1794. The thesis reconstructs these views through a myriad of primary sources reflective of public opinion, such as French revolutionary newspapers and eyewitness accounts of the insurgent slave armies’ internal debates. In line with Homi Bhabha’s theoretical proposition that concepts have no ‘primordial fixity’ and can therefore be ‘translated and read anew’ in different ideological environments, it finds that the introduction of news and ideas from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean generated abolitionist popular mentalités among both the sans-culottes and the insurgent slaves. While the former came to conceive of themselves as slaves rebelling against their aristocratic masters and thus developed a view of Saint-Domingue’s slaves as natural allies, the latter fused French revolutionary rights-based discourse with originally West-African political culture to produce a syncretic political vision which rendered abolition imaginable and, therefore, attainable. The convergence of these distinct, yet ultimately commensurable, popular mentalités facilitated the general emancipation of Saint-Domingue’s enslaved population by the French colonial authorities in August 1793, followed by the formal abolition of slavery by the French National Convention in February 1794. The interwoven abolitionist history of the sans-culottes and the insurgent slaves presented by the thesis brings to the fore the commonalities, rather than the conflicts that characterized the connected French and Haitian Revolutions: it offers a mode of telling that might be hopeful and helpful in our own times.Show less
