Tijdschrift voor Geschiedenis - Current Issue

Continuity at the sanctuary of Asklepios in Epidauros. Exploring ideas of decline after 146 BC

After Rome defeated the Achaean League in 146 BC, Rome’s interactions in Greece changed, with more direct contact with Greek poleis and their sanctuaries. For Epidauros, a polis in the Argolid with a famous sanctuary to Asklepios, it has been argued that this was a period of decline. The sanctuary was in decay, according to some scholars, until the second century AD, when it was saved from decline with the intervention of the emperor Hadrian. This article argues for continuity in cult practice and significant activity in the first centuries BC and AD, without ignoring the evidence commonly presented for decline. It thereby offers a more nuanced picture of the Epidaurian Asklepieion in this period.

‘To get information about the Germans’. Women as spies and messengers in the Flemish Revolt (1488-9)

Women played a crucial role in 1488-9 during the war of the Flemish cities against Maximilian of Austria, the regent of count Philip the Fair. They were key figures in communication networks, carrying letters between different cities and their militias. Moreover, as spies they also provided intelligence on the position of enemy armies. This article shows how various women from Ghent, Ypres, and Bruges travelled almost invisibly, alone or in pairs, between towns, and also inside and outside enemy camps. These towns developed a sophisticated communication network that relied heavily on women as messengers or spies. As a result women played a more important role in such military conflicts than is generally assumed.

The administrative concealment of the fate of the persecuted Jews in the Netherlands

The National Socialist regime abused the existing bureaucracy to register, disenfranchise, and destroy its ideological opponents. The secrecy of this operation concealed the real fate of Jews and political opponents. This article analyses from the victim data perspective the role of those agencies in the occupied Netherlands that processed the personal data of Jews. The method of processing, i.e. registering, concealing, destroying, or deregistering personal data, shows how accurately and willingly each agency carried out its role. A bureaucratic paradox arose because the personal data, which were recorded by order of the occupier, later had to be destroyed or concealed. This article describes how the municipalities, the State Inspectorate of Population Registers, and the Jewish Council administratively supported anti-Jewish measures. How they conducted themselves in relation to the German occupier reveals their level of cooperation with anti-Jewish measures.

What is critical thinking? A research agenda for historians of the humanities

How can historians of the humanities do justice to the complexities of their subject while at the same time contributing to current debate about the future of the humanities? This essay argues that a history of critical thinking, focused on the characteristics of a ‘critical thinker’, may meet both requirements. Drawing on case studies from the nineteenth century to the present, it shows that critical thinking has taken a variety of forms, each of which places different demands on the self. In most cases critical thinking requires not only skills or virtues but also normative attitudes (identifications, dissociations) and a certain ‘transformative capacity’. If such conceptual distinctions help historians understand what critical thinking meant in the past, they are equally applicable to the twenty-first century. This article suggests that historians of the humanities may enrich current debate by showing that the tendency to reduce critical thinking to a set of easily learnable skills fits uneasily into the history of critical thinking. Moreover, if historical research shows that critical thinking has always been a contested ideal, historians may ask what politics or visions of the future are being supported or suppressed today by contemporary models of critical thinking.

The Sixties as turning point in the histoire croisée of the Low Countries

While comparative and transnational approaches are now dominant historiographical trends, there is currently little interest in an integrated approach to the modern history of Belgium and the Netherlands. This is all the more remarkable, since such an integral approach to the history of the Low Countries prevailed until the 1970s, despite the fact that Pieter Geyl’s ideological programme of a Greater Netherlands had fallen into disrepute. Two recent publications suggest a departure from this trend and re-open the debate on how to write an integrated history of the Low Countries, especially for the period after the constitutional division of 1830. Reflecting on these publications, De Haan argues that there are strong historical commonalities between the Belgium and the Netherlands, and that the historiographical trend of increased attention to national specificities must be interpreted as a reflection of the divided impact of the Sixties in the two countries.