De Moderne Tijd - Volume 5, Issue 2, 2021

‘In that city I’m going to see the world’s fair’. The Amsterdam World Exposition of 1895 as an instrument to enhance city promotion

An objective of the Amsterdam World Exhibition of 1895 was to promote tourism. Two elements were central to this: the status of ‘world city’ on the one hand and the emphasis on historical versus modern aspects of the city on the other. Various stakeholders had an interest in the exhibition, which also reflected urban development. The organizing committee ambitiously attempted to promote a broad and modern tourist image, but practical constraints prevented successful image-building. In the end, the well-known image of the city as picturesque was reaffirmed. Nevertheless, the event made clear that Amsterdam was developing towards a world city.

The biography as instrument: patriotic ideals becoming moral positions. C.J. Wenckebach on the ‘murder’ of Leiden’s rector magnificus H.A. Schultens (1749-1793)

In the first half of the nineteenth century, it was policy to remain silent about the revolutionary period in the Netherlands that had led to major political changes in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Around 1850, at the end of his life, political administrator C.J. Wenckebach gently tried to break open this culture of silence. In a biography that has never been published, he shows that his teacher, professor H.A. Schultens, had been a man of high values and moral standards, that his political adversaries incorrectly interpreted as political opinions. In line with this lay the accusations of political activism, but according to Wenckebach those accusations were completely out of thin air. In this article I show that Wenckebach is bending the truth with this defense and with what purposes he does so.

The biography as instrument: patriotic ideals becoming moral positions. C.J. Wenckebach on the ‘murder’ of Leiden’s rector magnificus H.A. Schultens (1749-1793)

A liberal in the footprints of an old Batavian. Paul Strick van Linschoten’s travelogue (1818) and its translation/adaptation by ‘a statesman’ (1855-1856) In 1818, ex-patriot Paul Strick van Linschoten published a three-volume travelogue Vertraute Briefe während eines Durchflugs durch einen Theil der nördlichen Provinzen des Königreichs der Niederlande, in which he critically examined the state of affaires in the newly formed Kingdom of the Netherlands. In 1855-1856, the book was re-edited and translated as Herinneringen van den baron Strick van Linschoten. Naar het Hoogduitsch bewerkt door een staatsman. The anonymous ‘statesman’ who was responsible for this edition, in which several remarkable changes can be found, adapted Strick’s observations to the current political upheaval.