This thesis revisits the Japanese student delegation of 1863, which was sent by the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Netherlands. The thesis concentrates especially on the journey of Nishi Amane and Tsuda...Show moreThis thesis revisits the Japanese student delegation of 1863, which was sent by the Tokugawa Shogunate to the Netherlands. The thesis concentrates especially on the journey of Nishi Amane and Tsuda Mamichi, who studied Western academic disciplines with Leiden University professor Simon Vissering between 1863 and 1865 and introduced this knowledge to Japan for the first time in history. The thesis revisits the case in Chapter 1 from the perspective centered around Nishi, Tsuda, and Vissering, who were long thought to be the most important characters of this trip. In chapter 2, with the help of previously unmentioned primary sources, the thesis revisits the case from the Dutch perspective, a perspective never taken by previous historians. By analyzing these new sources in a broader context, the thesis discovers numerous new insights. The most important insight was the pivotal role of Johannes Josephus Hoffmann, the professor of Chinese and Japanese studies at Leiden University and the translator of the Netherlands Indies Government, within this study trip. This thesis finds that Hoffmann was essential for this historical event to happen, due to his envisioning actions to persuade both the Japanese and the Dutch decisionmakers to conduct this event in the way they did. In addition, the thesis finds that Hoffmann was the central figure in preparing, receiving, optimizing, and coordinating the trip. Therefore, this thesis argues that the current public and scholarly attention, as well as the historical recognition granted to Hoffmann, are remarkably inadequate.Show less
Master thesis | Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology (MSc)
closed access
Using the Disabilities studies and Anthropological method of entangled ethnography, this research found thatsome disability experts and parts of Leiden University aim for more explicit, systemic...Show moreUsing the Disabilities studies and Anthropological method of entangled ethnography, this research found thatsome disability experts and parts of Leiden University aim for more explicit, systemic framing towards seeing studying with disabilities and dyslexia though the social model of disabilities. However, Leiden University has predominantly used an individualistic framework in keeping with the medical model of disabilities. Any changes or aims for the university usually occur also within the individualistic framework. Further, a possible culture of constructivism at LIACS aligns to the individualistic framing of LU to further put the blame and burden of studying with dyslexia onto the individuals with it. Although studying with a disability like dyslexia at LU isa centralised system and has many great experts working on it, there is an absence of knowledge on and education about studying with a disability and dyslexia in staff and students. This might have led to dyslexia primarily being dealt with using extra-time adjustments. A strategy of avoidance is highlighted as a way some students at LIACS deal with the barriers of studying with dyslexia. Overwhelmingly, even if some parts of LU wish for change towards the social model or beyond model of disability, LU currently operates with a medical model of disability in practice. Until active steps are taken to move past the medical model of disability at the university, it will be difficult to see what advantages might lie beyond.Show less
Customary law in South Africa was transformed by its incorporation into the colonial and later Apartheid state. In this regard, the work of colonial administrators and scholars were important as...Show moreCustomary law in South Africa was transformed by its incorporation into the colonial and later Apartheid state. In this regard, the work of colonial administrators and scholars were important as their visions of idealised ‘tribal’ society and chiefly rule with despotic and patriarchal qualities were often largely reproduced in official state policy, and served to legitimate white minority rule. Literature on this subject has tended to either be situated within a national narrative, or largely focus on British policies of indirect rule. Tracing the career and thought of F.D. ‘Frits’ Holleman in the first half of the 20th Century, as he moved from judicial and scholarly appointments in the Netherlands East Indies (NEI), to posts at Leiden University in the Netherlands and ultimately Stellenbosch University in South Africa, allows for a more explicitly global approach to the subject. It also demonstrates an insufficiently-acknowledged transfer of Dutch colonial expertise and experience from an established body of Indonesian adat law scholarship, originating at Leiden University, to an emerging field of customary law scholarship in the strongly Afrikaner Nationalist environment of Stellenbosch. While Holleman’s work on South African customary law was in some ways distinct from what he had worked on before, many of the concepts and characteristics he ascribed to African societies were straightforwardly transposed from his work on adat law, which stood within a tradition of scholarship that demonstrated both paternal/empathic concern for protecting non-Western law, and a strong essentialising impulse, leading to broad and enduring generalisations about supposedly ‘primitive’ societies. Beyond Holleman’s own trajectory, this study holds broader significance in the way it demonstrates the spread of theories of adat law far beyond their place of origin, and their influence on South African thinking about customary law. Moreover, the structural factors which allowed Holleman and his ideas to travel, suggest connections far deeper than a single individual; Holleman’s case has implications for how we think about the ongoing relationship between the Netherlands and South Africa, and indeed a triangular relationship between the Netherlands, Indonesia and South Africa. It may also offer a new lens with which to view the revival of traditionalist politics in both South Africa and Indonesia.Show less
The seventeenth century is special for the Dutch for many reasons. Both Arabic studies in Leiden University and the trade in the Middle East reached their height in the seventeenth century. This...Show moreThe seventeenth century is special for the Dutch for many reasons. Both Arabic studies in Leiden University and the trade in the Middle East reached their height in the seventeenth century. This thesis studies to what extent the intensified contacts with the Middle East had an impact on seventeenth-century Dutch Arabic studies. It indicates that the building of the network of people, as a result of the ever-growing contacts, changed the essence of Arabic studies from a study of the Arabic language to a study covering different subjects about the Arabic world. The development of Arabic studies in Leiden later interacted the production of knowledge in other academic fields in Europe and arguably contributed to the Enlightenment.Show less
This study investigates two different type of indigenous students from Indonesia who earned their degree from Faculty of Law Leiden University in the late colonial period. Their family background,...Show moreThis study investigates two different type of indigenous students from Indonesia who earned their degree from Faculty of Law Leiden University in the late colonial period. Their family background, academic support in Leiden, nationalist movement and also the different life that they must encountered in the Netherlands shifted their choice once they came back to the colony. The first type of Leiden graduate associated themselves with the colonial legal system in order to sustain colonial authority in Indonesia. The second type was them who decided to either work under the colonial administration but showing nationalistic stance or them who stood against colonial authority by opening law firms independently and joining political activities. The main focus of this thesis is to explore more on some cases which portrays the outcome of these Leiden graduates and their involvement in colonial legal system in the Dutch East Indies.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
This thesis focuses on the proficiency in the English language of Hendrik Albert Schultens (1749–1793), a third-generation Dutch scholar in oriental languages of Leiden University who travelled to...Show moreThis thesis focuses on the proficiency in the English language of Hendrik Albert Schultens (1749–1793), a third-generation Dutch scholar in oriental languages of Leiden University who travelled to England in 1772 for scholarly purposes. I reconstructed Schultens's social network and investigated his proficiency in English on two points: his use and non-use of the auxiliary 'do' and his use of participial -ing clauses. The thesis contains an edition of thirty-eight eighteenth-century English letters, both received from Schultens's British acquaintances and sent by Schultens himself, the whole of which was transcribed to serve as the corpus of my thesis. I also reflected on the potential reason for Schultens to be interested in learning the English language when, in eighteenth-century Europe, French and Latin were still the two major languages in international contacts. I believe it to be due to the fact that there were so few scholars working in the field of oriental languages and that he wished to exchange information on an international level. In search of potential peers, he was not only prepared to look overseas, but also to immerse himself into the study of his peers’ language and culture for a better exchange of knowledge. When it comes to Schultens's English, he proved to have obtained the level of a near native when he left England. A remarkable achievement after only nine months. Of course he might have studied the English already in the Netherlands, potentially individually. From his first letter on he mastered the use op auxiliary 'do', despite the fact that a similar periphrastic construction does not exist in Dutch. On the other hand, his first two English letters contain errors in his use of participial -ing, or to be more exact: in his use of 'being'. In Dutch 'zijnde' (the Dutch equivalent of 'being') may be used in subordinate clauses to reduce relative clauses (i.e. to make sentences shorter). In English this type of usage of 'being' does not exist. In his first two letters, Schultens still had to figure this difference out. However, by staying long enough in the country of the goal language and leading an active social life among native speakers of English he evidently managed to get a grip on its right usage after all.Show less
