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
Research master thesis | Asian Studies (research) (MA)
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This thesis analyses the development of Ryukyuan narratives of political legitimacy under the influence of the imperial Chinese tributary system. For centuries, the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was...Show moreThis thesis analyses the development of Ryukyuan narratives of political legitimacy under the influence of the imperial Chinese tributary system. For centuries, the Ryukyu Kingdom, which was annexed by Meiji Period Japan in 1879 and is today divided among Japan's Okinawa and Kagoshima Prefectures, formed an important linking bridge between China and Japan, East Asia's two dominant political entities. Based on a close reading and partial translation of relevant passages from several historical documents, most notably the kingdom's two official histories Chūzan Seikan and Chūzan Seifu, the thesis investigates the socio-political shift in succeeding conceptualisations of Ryukyuan kingship, the monarch's political legitimacy, and the country's state doctrine that occurred from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Show less
This paper sheds light on the fallacies and deficiencies underlying historicist methodology in the field of historiography. Through a case study of the canon of East African colonial history it is...Show moreThis paper sheds light on the fallacies and deficiencies underlying historicist methodology in the field of historiography. Through a case study of the canon of East African colonial history it is demonstrated that historicists methodology, which takes written documentation as the prime source of historical evidence, fails to adequately reconstruct a truthful, multifaceted and inclusive picture of East African colonial history as much of East African history is transmitted orally rather than in print. The historicists' erroneous claim to objectivity, scientific predictability and universal truths based on findings in written primary sources, is deconstructed by use of an alternative historiographical methodology: New Historicism. This paper shows how oral sources can be adequately historicised through a New Historicist lens, thus granting more complete narratives of East African colonial history. In short, it will be argued that the existing documentation of East African colonial history fails to adequately historicise the narratives of local subjectivities (the actual people who experienced colonial oppression) due to Eurocentric overemphasis on the appropriation of written sources rather than incorporating and establishing the value of the many ‘local subjective narratives’ preserved in oral traditions.Show less
Er wordt onderzocht hoe de Nederlandse politieke historici Henk te Velde en Piet de Rooy in hun respectievelijke boeken 'Stijlen van Leiderschap: Persoon en politiek van Thorbecke tot Den Uyl' en ...Show moreEr wordt onderzocht hoe de Nederlandse politieke historici Henk te Velde en Piet de Rooy in hun respectievelijke boeken 'Stijlen van Leiderschap: Persoon en politiek van Thorbecke tot Den Uyl' en 'Ons stipje op de waereldkaart: De politieke cultuur van modern Nederland' tot een sterke waardering komen van de relevantie van Guillaume Groen van Prinsterer voor de Nederlandse politieke geschiedenis van ongeveer 1848 tot en met 1870. In deze beschouwing worden enkele publicaties van de negentiende-eeuwse politieke commentator Johannes Theodoor Buys in het tijdschrift 'De Gids' meegenomen. De analyse wordt geplaatst in het historiografische debat over het recente internationale verloop van de politieke geschiedschrijving.Show less
Abstract in Dutch: In de negentiende eeuw speelden (wetenschappelijke) deugden een grote rol in het leven van wetenschappers zoals de kerkhistoricus Johannes Gerardus Rijk Acquoy en de Historicus...Show moreAbstract in Dutch: In de negentiende eeuw speelden (wetenschappelijke) deugden een grote rol in het leven van wetenschappers zoals de kerkhistoricus Johannes Gerardus Rijk Acquoy en de Historicus Robert Fruin. Deugden zoals onpartijdigheid, waarheidsliefde en ijver golden als belangrijke karaktereigenschappen en werden door leerlingen en collega’s geroemd, onder andere in necrologieën. Deze deugden droegen bij aan de vorming van de geesteswetenschappen in de negentiende eeuw omdat zij een kader vormden waarin wetenschappers houvast vonden terwijl de manier waarop zij werkten veranderde. Het cultiveren van bepaalde (epistemische) deugden stelde hen er toe in staat als waardevolle wetenschappers te functioneren. De scriptie onderzoekt welk ideaalbeeld van Fruin en Acquoy hun deugden, epistemisch, moreel, politiek en anders, er gevonden kan worden in de necrologieën geschreven door hun collega’s en leerlingen kort na hun overlijden en wát dit zegt over manier waarop we de functie van deze verschillende deugden, epistemisch en anders, zien binnen de wetenschappelijke wereld van de geesteswetenschappen in de tweede helft van de negentiende eeuw. In tegenstelling tot Herman Paul zijn suggestie dat deugden als onpartijdigheid, waarheidsliefde en ijver deel uitmaakten van een geleerdenethos, stelt deze scriptie dat de geleerde deugden niet alleen in wetenschappelijke context functioneerden, maar ook en juist, werden ingezet buiten die context. De scriptie stelt bovendien dat deze deugden, die zo’n belangrijke plaats innamen in de verwetenschappelijking van de geesteswetenschappen, niet alleen buiten een wetenschappelijke context functioneerden maar daar mogelijkerwijs ook oorspronkelijk gecultiveerd waren; in de burgerlijke wereld van de negentiende eeuw.Show less
