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
Henriëtta Geertruij Knip (1783-1842) who descended from a humble background and lived in a time of great political upheaval and limited possibilities for women to establish a professional career as...Show moreHenriëtta Geertruij Knip (1783-1842) who descended from a humble background and lived in a time of great political upheaval and limited possibilities for women to establish a professional career as a painter, managed to do just that. She was part of the Knip family, a dynasty of painters that started of with her father Nicolaas Frederik Knip (1741-1808). She was not the first in the tradition of women painters in the Netherlands. The seventeenth and eighteenth century had offered chances, provided that there was an artistic or educated background. This was still the same at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Only through schooling by her father and thanks to the favourable connection with Gerard van Spaendonck (1756-1839) could a professional career as a painter be possible for a woman like Henriëtta Geertruij Knip. Apart from proven talent, there was financial necessity to train as many family members as possible, in case support was needed. This was the reason the Knip relatives worked together. It was possible for Henriëtta Geertruij Knip to travel to Paris by herself because two of her brothers were already there and she could stay in Maison Buffon under the supervision of Gerard van Spaendonck. She was probably financially supported by her older brother Josephus Augustus Knip (1777-1847), who was also a painter. Although Van Spaendonck had several women pupils, Henriëtta Geertruij Knip was the only one Dutch. She started out with botanical drawings and flower and fruit still lifes in water colour but after 1822 she would paint in oil paint. For this she was schooled in Paris again, this time by Jan Frans van Dael (1764-1840). She was trained in a traditional eighteenth century style but later works show elements of Romanticism when bouquets contained less different types of flowers and were placed in a more natural setting. Thirty-two works have been found that could have been made by Henriëtta Geertruij Knip but only ten are signed and dated and six are signed. If this number should prove to be true this means she produced less than one work per year during the estimated fourty-four years of her working life. This would mean that the money she generated from teaching made up the larger part of her income. However, it is more likely the location of many works is unknown or that works got lost. When looked at the careers of fellow women pupils of Gerard van Spaendonck and Jan Frans van Dael it is clear that these women took their painting very seriously and made it into their formal careers even though some may not have depended on the income. This having been her example it is no surprise that Henriëtta Geertruij Knip took part in the very first Tentoonstelling van Levende Meesters that was held in 1808 in the Netherlands. She was the only woman who did so together with her then sister-in-law Pauline Knip-Rifer de Courcelles (1781-1851). Henriëtta Geertruij Knip took part ten times and always together with relatives, like her older brother Josephus Augustus Knip, nephew Augustus Knip (1819-1859/1861) and/or her niece Henriëtte Ronner-Knip (1821-1909). Until 1821 she took part with water colours and from 1830 onwards she presented herself with oil paintings. Most of the times she participated with less works than her relatives and works were not always for sale. Nevertheless she presented herself as a professional painter with a steady work flow. Although Henriëtta Geertruij Knip had many pupils, the name of only one is still known, Elisabeth Johanna Stapert (1816-1887). The reason could be that she had a career as well. She also generated an income through teaching and taking part in exhibitions but got married later in life, although she did not stop working. Other women artists who came after Henriëtta Geertruij Knip like her niece Henriëtte Ronner-Knip, Sientje Mesdag-van Houten (1834-1909) and Thérèse Schwartze (1851-1918) all had more opportunities to present themselves in art societies like Arti et Amicitiae in Amsterdam and Pulchri Studio in The Hague. These had not been there during Henriëtta Geertruij Knip’s days. By 1871 and 1872 it would even have been possible to receive vocational training at the art academies of Amsterdam or The Hague. All aforementioned women were still trained by their fathers or other painters. The fact that they had successful careers in different genres than flower still lifes with many memberships in art societies and husbands that supported them, does show that opportunities had expanded as the nineteenth century progressed. Nevertheless, at the beginning of the nineteenth century Henriëtta Geertruij Knip seized opportunities like training in Paris, taking part in the Tentoonstellingen van Levende Meesters. She was sensitive to new developments in art, participated in the Knip family and was well able to earn her own income and present herself as a professional artist.Show less
This thesis focuses on the period at the end of the nineteenth century when knowledge of the colonized cultures and their histories became an integral part of European imperial policies. In the...Show moreThis thesis focuses on the period at the end of the nineteenth century when knowledge of the colonized cultures and their histories became an integral part of European imperial policies. In the search for tools legitimizing their overseas venture, architecture turned out to be one of the most visual and lasting tools for boosting such efforts. It is precisely by exploring this aspect of empire-building through architecture that my thesis attempts to redress the lacunae of historical research on colonial architecture as a measure for studying colonial history. Conventional historiography has largely neglected this aspect of empire-building, leaving much of it for architects, urbanists and art historians to deal with. Most of the scholarly contributions to colonial architecture have not yet been able to sufficiently expose the underlying imperial designs or the socio-cultural processes behind such building projects. In this thesis, I have made attempts to trace these processes and examine them from a comparative perspective using Foucault’s power/knowledge dimension. By pitching the three former Asian colonies of British-India, Dutch-Indies and French-Indochina next to each other and analysing the hybrid architecture found in their main public buildings, the ways in which the colonial government tried to impress the people through their building styles can be revealed. They resorted to the incorporation of often randomly mixed local architectural elements into buildings which looked European otherwise. This resulted in buildings depicting hybrid architectural styles. Such designs reflected a self-proclaimed European mastery in managing knowledge of the colonized cultures. In trying to claim their legitimacy as new rulers, colonial governments went to great lengths, using the visual qualities of architecture to shield a relatively weak system. The erection of confident and mighty stone facades, however, did little to bury the lingering orientalist prejudices and the inherent unequal status of the colonizers and the colonized. In fact, the knowledge on local histories generated by the colonizers helped create local identities that gave a boost to the upcoming nationalistic movements. But there were interesting differences among the colonies though, that this comparative exercise laid bare. The nuances manifested in the different colonies in terms of the willingness to spend financial resources, the often conflicting objectives between colonial institutions, the effects of shifting colonial policies and the paradoxical underlying principles that defined those policies, and other contextual factors, led to differences in imperial policies and their consequent architectural plans. By probing into these differences as well as by highlighting the similarities cutting across all the three colonies, my thesis contributes to understanding the varying shades of colonialism through the seemingly silent yet starkly telling structures.Show less
Pieter Albert Bik (1798-1855), a Dutch colonial official, left behind an unpublished manuscript detailing his travels during his career both in Asia, especially in Japan and the Dutch East Indies,...Show morePieter Albert Bik (1798-1855), a Dutch colonial official, left behind an unpublished manuscript detailing his travels during his career both in Asia, especially in Japan and the Dutch East Indies, and in Europe, notably along the Rhine. A close examination of the manuscript suggests that Bik's interpretation of his travel experiences in Europe and overseas were remarkably similar, and that both were influenced by the burgeoning phenomenon of European tourism that was taking root along the Rhine at the time. A close reading of this source, and a brief comparative analysis, show that tourism indeed influenced the discourse of colonial travel much earlier than has so far been acknowledged. An examination of this influence calls to question several conventional presumptions of colonial history, and draws attention to a thus far seldom recognised character: the early colonial leisurely tourist. This analysis, however, requires - apart from primary research - a synthesis of the academic literatures on colonial travel on the one hand, and European tourist culture on the other.Show less
