Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 131, Issue 4, 2018

Black Pete, a blackface character: a century of blackface amusement in the Netherlands

In 1847 the Ethiopian Serenaders successfully introduced American blackface minstrelsy to a Dutch public. A few years later the publication of the Dutch translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853) and the subsequent ‘Tom-play’ led white Dutch actors to perform in blackface. Blackface performances functioned not merely as entertainment, but perpetuated a stereotypical white image of black people. During that same period the ­Amsterdam-based teacher Jan Schenkman published a children’s book including a black servant (St. Nikolaas en zijn knecht, 1850). The servant was known as Black Pete and became established in the Saint Nicolas tradition. In the years to come, Black Pete, generally a white person wearing a blackface mask, leaned heavily on the same elements that made the blackface minstrel dandy type a success: edified clothing, a blackface mask, and anti-­emancipation humour.

Queen of Peace. Emperor Wilhelm II, Queen Wilhelmina, and the End of the First 
World War

A hundred years ago, on 10 November 1918, Emperor Wilhelm II fled occupied Belgium, in the face of a revolution and impending civil war in Germany. The Dutch government has always claimed a complete lack of pre-knowledge, and surprise at the Emperor’s arrival in the Netherlands. On the basis of newly found documents this article argues that in the summer of 1918 Queen Wilhelmina and Emperor Wilhelm II had engaged in considerable correspondence, via their courts and diplomats, to explore the possibility of organizing a peace conference in The Hague and a lobby for a Verständigungsfrieden. When this option was blocked by the military, the Emperor came to the Netherlands as a last resort and in search of refuge. This article showcases the historical importance of studying the relations between belligerents and neutrals in key moments such as the end of a war, the many hidden layers of diplomacy, and the role befriended royals could still wield within the (constitutional) restraints of their office.

Murder in the Wadden Sea. The 1717 Christmas Flood and vulnerability to storm surges

On Christmas Eve 1717 the Wadden Sea was hit by the most deadly storm surge in the history of the North Sea area, claiming between 11,000 and 14,000 victims. In 1570, 1634, and 1686 the same region had also suffered exceptionally high numbers of casualties during storm surges, in striking contrast with other parts of the North Sea area. The lethal character of storm surges in this particular region and period remains to be explained. In this article the social bias among the victims is revealed, with cottagers and labourers being particularly exposed to the deadly impact of the storm surge. Unsafe living conditions, with people settling on low-
lying spots or close to sea-walls, directly exposed people to an untimely death in a flood disaster. However, this article argues that the analysis of vulnerability should not stop there, but rather look for the root causes of vulnerability, which made people ignore obvious risks. In the case of the Wadden Sea flood disasters, social polarization, declining local access to political decision making, and the enclosure of common saltmarshes all contributed to an environment in which killer floods could occur. All too often disaster history fails to pay attention to the social profile of the victims. More attention on disaster victims could significantly improve our understanding of why some natural hazards turned into full-blown disasters, and others not.

Oral history and history education. Current status and new possibilities

Oral accounts have become increasingly popular in the heritage field and in popular culture. The relative lack of engagement with oral history in history education in the Netherlands is therefore surprising. Unlike in surrounding countries, as well as in the Anglo-Saxon world, hardly any attention is given to oral history in history teacher training curricula. Existing initiatives depend entirely on the efforts of individual teachers, and are often isolated from other interview projects, heritage institutions, and the school curriculum. A solid foundation and a sustainable structure are needed to strengthen and expand the important initiatives in the field of oral history in education. These issues are even more pressing against the background of the digital revolution and its effects on oral history. What opportunities are there for oral history in the classroom, and (how) can digitization strengthen the practice of oral history in teaching and research? The contributions in this section are based on focus group interviews with student history teachers, questionnaires among teachers and students, and/or literature study. They present multiple opportunities for implementing oral history in history education, as well as suggestions for further research.

Contesting the colonial past. Trauma, collective memory, and the Dutch ‘Imperial History Wars’

This review article discusses three recent books on Dutch colonialism. In De brandende kampongs van generaal Spoor, Rémy Limpach demonstrates how systemic mass violence was part of the Dutch effort against Indonesian decolonization 1945-1949, and thereby questions words like ‘exces’ that are still commonly used to describe these events. In White innocence, Gloria Wekker shows how colonial categories of mind still operate in the Netherlands. Europe after empire, a vast comparative study into five former imperial metropoles by Elizabeth Buettner, makes a claim similar to Wekker’s, but across empires, leading her to conclude that Europe has not come to terms with its colonial past. In this review I argue that these books have more in common than their nominal themes suggest, and point to a future research agenda centered on the formation colonial mentalities across space and time.

Hermeneutical confrontations. The scientific edition of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte

The reissue by the Institut für Zeitgeschichte (Munich/Berlin) of Mein Kampf caused a short but heated international debate. This new confrontation with Adolf Hitler’s text was a hermeneutical challenge for the publishers, a work in which so many historical layers of meaning, such as the original context or the hagiographical position between 1933 and 1945, were present. A conventional and neutral historical edition was an impossible goal. The scientific edition had to navigate between source criticism, textual criticism, and ideological criticism. The choice was made for a normative hermeneutic in which Hitler’s arguments were contradicted as much as possible, but combined with a profound source and text criticism. This ‘critical edition’ is a great achievement of contemporary historical science in Germany. It can also be seen as the conclusion of a long cycle of Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Germany.