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- Volume 132, Issue 3, 2019
Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 132, Issue 3, 2019
Volume 132, Issue 3, 2019
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Vrienden van vroeger
By Jos GabriëlsAbstractTime-honoured friends. French influence on the formation of the princely court of Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland
In 1806, at Napoleon’s behest, Louis Bonaparte suddenly became the foreign king of a former republic. Confronted with the problem of finding competent and trustworthy senior court dignitaries in this alien environment, he initially resorted to appointing French friends and confidants. Louis’ choice was far from unique: his crowned relatives elsewhere, by necessity, opted for the same solution. This article reconstructs the early household composed by Louis and compares it to the households in the other satellite states. The juxtaposition not only highlights Napoleon’s constant interference in nominations, but also reveals some inconsistencies in the Emperor’s attitude. In addition, it emphasizes the marked impact of local conditions. Contrary to the situation in the other Napoleonic kingdoms, no Frenchmen entered the government posts in Holland, yet they dominated in senior court office. The comparison also helps to explain the remarkably rapid disappearance of French court dignitaries from Holland, prompting the ‘Dutchification’ of the king’s entourage familiar from earlier historiography.
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Een koloniale cultuur langs de Zaan
By Miel GrotenAbstractA colonial culture along the Zaan. Rice mills and the imagination of an imperial space, c. 1870-1914
This article argues that the extensive rice milling industry that thrived in the Zaan region around 1900 contributed to a Dutch colonial culture, by presenting itself as part of a natural division of labour between colony and metropole that rested on European colonial rule. Processing large amounts of Javanese and Burmese rice, the millers deliberately exploited the colonial origins and exotic associations of this commodity to present themselves and market their product, explicitly relating their factories to the Southeast-Asian production areas in advertisements and anniversaries. In doing so they propagated their role as meaningful places in a transnational trade network that constituted an imperial space.
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Een duffen politieken strijd
More LessAbstractA dull political battle. An analysis of the political news coverage in De Telegraaf, 1902-1914
In 1893, De Telegraaf was founded as a response to the ‘boring news coverage of the bourgeois press’. As a self-declared neutral newspaper, inspired on the emerging Anglo-American mass press, the young daily was the odd one out in the Dutch bourgeois-journalistic landscape. This contribution shows how De Telegraaf, as one of the largest newspapers of this period, reported about Dutch politics in the first decades of the twentieth century. Its reporting shows that the newspaper considered politics with a certain distance: as a game with accompanying rules. The most effective political strategy was that of authenticity: sincere politicians who sought to connect with their voters were praised by the newspaper. This contribution shows that research on the crossroads of political culture and media can shed a new light on the political form changes around the turn of the century. The popular press played a crucial role in shaping the new politics.
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Het huis van Europa?
By Bart ZwegersAbstractThe House of Europe? Aachen’s Carolingian heritage and the German collective memory
Due to its history as the centre of the Carolingian Empire and the coronation city of the Holy Roman Empire, Aachen’s heritage was appropriated by nineteenth and twentieth century German nationalists. It was used by the Wilhelminian and the National-Socialist regime as a symbol of German pride. After the Second World War, this image became untenable. In this period Aachen’s Carolingian heritage was stripped of its nationalist connotations and became a symbol of European integration and a UNESCO world heritage site. The transition of Aachen Cathedral from a symbol of the German nation to a symbol of international peace and solidarity exemplifies a broader trend of internationalization of Germany’s heritage that must be seen against the backdrop of the German government’s ambition to play an active role in the process of European integration and a general shift in Germany’s collective memory.
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Een niet geringe zaak
By Remko MooiAbstractNo small affair. The Netherlands and the declaration of human rights, 1948-1957
The 1970s have often been indicated as the decade when human rights rose to significance in the international arena. In the period before, states supposedly showed little genuine interest in them. In this article, it is shown that the Dutch government was already committed to establishing a far-reaching, binding human rights regime during the first post-war decade. Whereas the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has traditionally been critiqued for shying away from establishing legal obligations, the Netherlands and other states in fact expected a binding treaty to follow swiftly. International supervision to compliance was deemed important too. Already during the 1950s the Netherlands and various other countries allowed individuals to file applications against states under the European Convention on Human Rights. This period should therefore not be overlooked when studying the origins of our modern day human rights system.
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De geboorte van het concept duurzaamheid
More LessAbstractThe Birth of Sustainable Development: Towards a History of Sustainability
Sustainable development is one of the key political issues on the international agenda. The concept emerged in the 1970s and was shaped by nature conservation experts who worked for international organisations like IUCN and UNESCO. These experts developed and introduced three influential albeit different interpretations of sustainability – focusing on the preservation of ecosystems, social equity and participation, and the conservation of biodiversity. In the 1980s and 1990s, these competing definitions struggled for hegemony and, in due course, all found their way to the international agenda. This article shows that the sustainability concept as we know it today is not stable, but rather the result of a complex evolution and a decades-long struggle.
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