Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Volume 137, Issue 1, 2024

Mission and imperial culture. Three Khoekhoe Christians as colonial spectacles in the early nineteenth century

In 1803 three converted Khoekhoe Christians named Johannes, Maria, and Martha travelled with the Dutch missionary Johannes Jacobus Kicherer from the Cape Colony to Europe, where they were presented to the Dutch public as the first missionary success of the Dutch Missionary Society. The promotional tour of the three Khoekhoen through the Netherlands was part of a broader attempt by the missionary society to mobilize public support for their ‘civilizing mission’ among the Khoekhoen. The case study of Kicherer, Johannes, Maria, and Martha sheds new light upon the role of missionary societies in informing and engaging a wider public in Dutch colonialism. This article examines the role of the Dutch Missionary Society in creating a Dutch imperial culture in the early nineteenth century, focusing on how they informed the Dutch public about their missions, disseminated representations of the colonial other, and created a public that was interested in and felt connected to their mission in the Cape Colony.

Weather talk. The public breakthrough of weather forecasts in the Netherlands, 1930-1950

When did weather forecasts become a part of everyday life? In this paper I argue that the period from 1930 to 1950 was crucial in the development of public weather forecasts in the Netherlands – more than half a century after the introduction of scientific weather forecasts c.1880. This period saw a change in the scientific foundation of the forecasts, as well as a new public-oriented communication approach. I argue that weather reports were an integral part of the new radio-centered media culture, and that they played an important, if inconspicuous, role in postwar scarcity management and reconstruction efforts. This paper is based on rich archival research, including a collection of unique letters from radio listeners from 1947.

Our Sasha is gone. The loss of a promising prince during the Year of Revolution, 1848

Prince Alexander (1818-1848) was the second son of King Willem II of the Netherlands and younger brother to King Willem III. Commonly believed to have suffered from poor health for most of his life, he succumbed to tuberculosis at the tender age of 29. Or so the story goes. As it turns out, Alexander was much more than an insignificant weakling who happened to die at a time when his country was too preoccupied with constitutional reform and revolutionary threat to spare his loss much thought. This article, based largely on never-before publicised documents such as Alexander’s personal correspondence and journals, tells the untold tale of a promising prince, a cherished son, and a beloved brother. It shines a new light on Alexander’s life, his fatal illness, and the void his death left at the heart of the Dutch Monarchy during a time of great political upheaval.