A Play of Three Suitors: A Neglected Middle Dutch Version of the “Entrapped Suitors” Story (ATU 1730)

The wide diffusion of the “Entrapped Suitors” story-type has often been observed: examples are found in a remarkable number of literatures, ranging from English, French and Greek in the West, to Persian, Arabic and Kashmiri in the East. However, a text of this type that is often overlooked is the Middle Dutch play Een Speel Van Drie Minners (“A Play of Three Suitors”). This is despite the fact that it represents a highly idiosyncratic variation on the story, as it replaces the central moral with something more scabrous. We offer here a comprehensive discussion of this singular text and its narrative form, with an English verse-translation appended.     

The foundations of modern political thought

This paper aims at setting Montesquieu's 1729 sojourn in the Dutch Republic within its specific Dutch context whilst reconsidering the impact this short period may have exerted on his work. Based on a wide variety of Dutch, English and French sources, the article offers a study of Montesquieu's Dutch networks and contacts, a comparative Franco-Dutch approach to taxation and fiscal policy and an insight into the history of the stadholderate under William IV. The main argument made in the paper is two-fold: first, that the Dutch Republic was a mirror Montesquieu held up to the French monarchy, allowing him to put a number of ideas of government to the test; secondly that, owing to the fluctuating nature of Dutch political events between 1729 and 1748, the Dutch model remained somewhat elusive in Montesquieu's broader understanding of the paradigm of republican regimes.     

The Use of Copper and Lead Sheathing in VOC Shipbuilding

Much has been written on the use of lead and copper sheathing in post mediaeval shipbuilding, yet evidence for such hull protection by Dutch shipwrights in the 17th and 18th centuries has received little attention. A discussion of the archaeological and historical evidence pertaining to the application of copper and lead sheathing by the Dutch long‐distance trading companies outlines the argument for the innovative character, experimental use—on ships’ hulls—and standardization—on sternposts—as early as 1602. Archaeological evidence presented mainly comes from the Dutch East Indiamen Nassau (1606), Mauritius (1609), Batavia (1629), Vergulde Draak (1656), and Buitenzorg (1760).     

The Praelium Nuportanum by Isaac Dorislaus: Anglo–Dutch Relations and Strategic historiography1

This article investigates the Anglo–Dutch scholar and diplomat Isaac Dorislaus's sole published work, Praelium Nuportanum (PN; 1640), on the battle of Newport in 1600. After presenting some new or little known information about the work, it discusses PN's intellectual context and concludes that the work is a reminder of successful Anglo–Dutch cooperation in the past, of Dutch indebtedness to English assistance, and the Republic's importance as an ally for England, all relevant to the negotiations running in 1640 for an Orange–Stuart wedding, and their backgrounds in the British Civil Wars and Anglo–Spanish–Dutch relations at the time. After the troubles ensuing from Dorislaus's Cambridge lectures on Tacitus in 1627, PN shows the author reconciled with the Court and the Laudian faction. With respect to style and content, PN appears clearly Tacitist in style, with many direct quotations from Tacitus, but this Tacitism operates more on a literary than a political level. Much of PN's historical content is a reworking of Francis Vere's Commentaries (published 1657). From the perspective of the Protestant ‘Anglo–Scoto–Dutch public sphere’ recently discussed in the scholarship, PN might perhaps be read as a warning of the gradual emergence of an Anglo–Dutch Calvinist–parliamentarian ‘realm’ as a force opposing the Crown.     

The Norman's Bay Shipwreck,East Sussex,UK: a possible 17th‐century Dutch ship from the Battle of Beachy Head

This report explores a hypothesis that the Norman's Bay shipwreck is the Wapen van Utrecht, a 64‐gun Dutch ship lost during the Battle of Beachy Head in 1690. The shipwreck, found off the Sussex coast, was designated by the Protection of Wrecks Act (1973) in 2006, when it was speculated that the wreck was the English 70‐gun ship Resolution, lost in the Great Storm of 1703. Dendrochronology dates the vessel after the middle of the 17th century AD, however, with timbers from Germany or the Low Countries. Initiatives by the Nautical Archaeology Society to bring the protected wreck to a wide public are also discussed.     

The Dutch social democrats and the South African war, 1899–1902

This article examines the attitude of the Dutch Social Democrats towards the South African War (1899–1902). At the beginning of the war the SDAP (Social Democratic Workers’ Party) had three seats in the Staten‐Generaal (Parliament). By 1902 this had increased to seven. The South African War created a wave of nationalism in the Netherlands. The Boers were of Dutch descent, and the Dutch generally saw the war as their own. As much as it wanted to assist the Transvaal, the Dutch government, however, could not afford to annoy Britain upon whom she depended for commercial protection of her East Indian colonies. In Social Democratic circles there was a mixed reaction to the war, particularly as their enemy, the Dutch bourgeoisie, had taken the side of the Boers. Arguments were raised for and against on the one hand, humanitar‐ianism and the law of nations, and on the other, historic‐materialistic considerations. The organs of the SDAP—De Sociaaldemokraat and later Het Volk—supported the Boer cause. Their internationalism almost compelled the Social Democrats to stand aloof from the chauvinistic Dutch bourgeoisie. They pointed out that the Netherlands, with its policy on Acheh, an independent sultanate on Sumatra, was in actual fact also an imperialistic nation. Anti‐British sentiment among the Social Democrats rose sharply when the Amsterdam diamond cutters also became victims as many lost their jobs in the wake of the war. Chamberlain (the British Colonial Secretary) and Kitchener (British Commander‐in‐Chief) were seen as war criminals. When, towards the end of 1901, the Amsterdam Water Transport Leagues attempted to organise an international boycott of British shipping, the SDAP sympathised with the plan, but did not give its official approval. Nothing came of the attempt. The Dutch Social Democrats reluctantly accepted the peace, feeling that the Boers would in the future be exploited by British capitalism.     

Local Intermediaries? The Missionising and Governing of Colonial Subjects in South Dutch New Guinea, 1920–42

This paper will show that the colonial project in south Dutch New Guinea was a joint project in which evangelisation, education, ‘civilisation’ and ‘pacification’ were taken up by the Dutch Catholic mission in close collusion with the colonial government. This was also a project in which a few Dutch missionaries deployed many goeroes (teachers) from elsewhere in the Dutch East Indies. These goeroes had an important position assigned to them by the Catholic mission and colonial government in the development of the Papuans and the area. This colonial structure utilised by both Dutch colonial administrators and missionaries has been labelled in the literature as a system of ‘dual colonialism’. Drawing on records held in missionary and colonial archives, the paper explores this dual colonial structure by analysing the roles of Catholic goeroes from the Kei and Tanimbar islands. This is done by taking Felix Driver’s concept of local intermediaries as the point of departure. While this concept makes visible the key role of goeroes, it is not without its issues, which will also be explored.     

Spinoza,radical enlightenment,and the general reform of the arts in the later Dutch Golden Age: the aims of Nil Volentibus Arduum

ABSTRACT

The Amsterdam theater society Nil Volentibus Arduum, which was founded in 1669 and remained active for some years, was not just a circle meeting regularly to discuss theater theory and practice, but was devoted to discussion of all the arts as well as language theory in relation to society. As far as the Amsterdam theater was concerned, its main purpose was to try to raise the level and provide more of a moral and socially improving direction to the stage. Arguably, also, it had a certain impact on discussion and theorizing about late Dutch Golden Age painting. Two of its most active members, Lodewijk Meyer and Johannes Bouwmeester, were among the closest friends and allies of Spinoza. Opponents and detractors of the society took to associating it in the public mind with the “atheist” Spinoza. This article seeks to understand the theoretical concerns of the society and assess its relationship to its broader Dutch context and to Spinoza and Spinozism.     

Colonial emulation: sinophobia,ethnic stereotypes and imperial anxieties in late eighteenth-century economic thought

In 1799 Dirk van Hogendorp published a Report on the Current Conditions of Dutch Possessions in the East Indies, a document that has garned comparisons to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776) for its condemnation of the Dutch East India Company and for its insistence on the importance of property rights to economic growth. The text is also an anti-Chinese diatribe, castigating the supposedly inveterate avarice of Java’s Chinese minority. Hogendorp’s advocacy of colonial reform and sinophobia intertwine in his use of the term ijver, then the standard Dutch translation of ‘emulation’, a keyword of eighteenth-century political economy. Read against the status of emulation in European thinking, Hogendorp’s employment of the ijver offers an opportunity to re-examine emulation’s fraught, ambivalent quality, which has been noted by scholars like Istvan Hont and Sophus Reinert concerned primarily with a division between benevolent domestic emulation and dangerous international emulation. The colonial sphere, neither wholly domestic nor wholly foreign, was a discursive site wherein the tensions of emulation were worked out in new ways.     

Anti‐nationalist nationalism: the paradox of Dutch national identity

Academic research on contemporary Dutch nationalism has mainly focused on its overt, xenophobic and chauvinist manifestations, which have become normalised since the early 2000s. As a result, less radical, more nuanced versions of Dutch nationalism have been overlooked. This article attempts to fill this gap by drawing attention to a peculiar self‐image among Dutch progressive intellectuals we call anti‐nationalist nationalism. Whereas this self‐image has had a long history as banal nationalism, it has come to be employed more explicitly for political positioning in an intensified nationalist climate. By dissecting it into its three constitutive dimensions – constructivism, lightness and essentialism – we show how this image of Dutchness is evoked precisely through the simultaneous rejection of ‘bad’ and enactment of ‘good’ nationalism. More generally, this article provides a nuanced understanding of contemporary Dutch nationalism. It also challenges prevalent assumptions in nationalism studies by showing that post‐modern anti‐nationalism does not exclude but rather constitutes essentialist nationalism.     

Breton woodworkers in the immigrant communities of south-west England, 1500–1550

SUMMARY: The paper assembles documentary evidence which shows that there was a substantial community of immigrants in south-west England in the early 16th century. In Cornwall these people came largely from Brittany; in Devon their origins were more varied. They included a surprising number of carpenters and carvers — many Breton, some ‘Dutch’. Various examples of ecclesiastical and domestic woodwork surviving in the region, including some of the finest examples of craftsmanship of the period, are attributed to these immigrants, and stylistic and technical features are proposed for distinguishing their output from local English work.     

From English to British liberty, 1550–1800

This essay was written for a symposium on Dutch conceptual history in a comparative European perspective. The concept in question here is liberty, and the context first English and then (following the creation of the United Kingdom in 1707) British. What follows primarily addresses two themes, both challenging. First, what role did the concept of liberty play over an exceptionally long and turbulent period of English history punctuated by two revolutions? Second, what relationship existed during this period between English and Dutch understandings and experience of this concept?     

Blaming the Medici: Footnotes, falsification, and the fate of the ‘English Model’ in eighteenth-century Italy

Franco Venturi famously emphasised the importance of the ‘English Model’ for Italian reformist culture in his Settecento riformatore. This essay contributes to the history of the development and evolution of the ‘English Model’ beginning with its influential appearance in Antonio Genovesi's 1757–1758 translation of John Cary's 1695 Essay on the State of England. The ‘English Model’ was not a stable concept and, in fact, one tradition inverted the model's meaning, rejecting the need for protectionism and instead embracing a providential faith in laissez-faire. This tradition began with an important, but falsified footnote in Carlo Denina's 1769–1770 Rivoluzioni d’Italia. In this note and the tradition that adopted it, Lorenzo de’ Medici's imagined English wool factories became the locus of this inversion, and, through a reading of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, blaming the Medici as agents of Italy's aberrant historical development became an alternative to blaming English economic imperialism in late eighteenth-century Italy. The narrative of Medici involvement in the decline of Italy was finally realigned with Genovesi's original intention under the auspice of Pope Pius VI in 1794.     

ITALY AND FRANCE IN THE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY STAGE CONTROVERSY

Abstract

Constantijn Huygens (1596-1687) was a notable Dutch statesman who penned over 75,000 lines of verse in eight languages. He made visits to England on no less than seven occasions and wrote a significant body of poetry, primarily in Dutch, but also in Latin, and very occasionally in French and English, during these visits. In this article, a detailed account is given of the poetry, which Huygens wrote in England. It provides a case-study of someone writing Dutch, and indeed Latin, verse in England in the early-modern period. Furthermore, during a time when the fortunes of Britain and the Northern Netherlands were very closely linked, it illustrates how a Dutchman responded in verse to aspects of English social and cultural life, and events such as the execution of Charles I, and the Great Fire of London of 1666.     

Hegel's critique of the enlightenment

Franco Venturi famously emphasised the importance of the ‘English Model’ for Italian reformist culture in his Settecento riformatore. This essay contributes to the history of the development and evolution of the ‘English Model’ beginning with its influential appearance in Antonio Genovesi's 1757–1758 translation of John Cary's 1695 Essay on the State of England. The ‘English Model’ was not a stable concept and, in fact, one tradition inverted the model's meaning, rejecting the need for protectionism and instead embracing a providential faith in laissez-faire. This tradition began with an important, but falsified footnote in Carlo Denina's 1769–1770 Rivoluzioni d’Italia. In this note and the tradition that adopted it, Lorenzo de’ Medici's imagined English wool factories became the locus of this inversion, and, through a reading of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, blaming the Medici as agents of Italy's aberrant historical development became an alternative to blaming English economic imperialism in late eighteenth-century Italy. The narrative of Medici involvement in the decline of Italy was finally realigned with Genovesi's original intention under the auspice of Pope Pius VI in 1794.     

Australia's response to the West New Guinea dispute, 1952–53

In the post‐World War II period, the question of the disposition of West New Guinea developed into a bone of contention between Holland and Indonesia. Because of its geographic contiguity and in recognition of New Guinea's role as a strategic bulwark for its own defence, Australia took a keen interest in the determination of sovereignty over West New Guinea. It opposed the transfer of sovereignty over the island to Indonesia and sided with the Dutch. The period 1952–53 saw Australia taking practical action to bolster the Dutch resolve to retain full sovereignty over western New Guinea and the emergence of Australia and the Netherlands as de facto joint guarantors of half of the island. This paper discusses how Australia responded to the West New Guinea dispute, especially in the period 1952–53, and focuses on why Australia turned its concern over the status of West New Guinea into practical action. The paper argues that Australian action was brought about by the deteriorating internal situation in Indonesia and the consequent Dutch determination to maintain a permanent presence in New Guinea.     

‘Gathered on the Point of a Bayonet’: the Negara Pasundan and the Colonial Defence of Indonesia, 1946–50

ABSTRACT

This article examines the rise of the Negara Pasundan, or Pasundan State: a distinct polity in West Java that was run by the Sundanese - with Dutch consent - during the Indonesian War for Independence (1945–9). The argument engages with several debates connected to decolonisation, examining colonial violence and its perpetrators, loyalty, and the often neglected role of indigenous agency. In contrast with cases where colonial coercion brought local elites and militias to the defence of the European authorities, Sundanese leaders themselves chose to support the Dutch. This support, however, should never be mistaken for loyalty to the Dutch or their empire. Rather, the Sundanese leadership unilaterally renegotiated the Dutch-Sundanese alliance as soon as the fortunes of war shifted. To safeguard the political future of their negara, the Sundanese proved willing to side with the party that initially set out to destroy them and the Dutch: the Republik Indonesia.     

REVIEWS

Dialectic in Practical Religion. Edited by E. R. Leach. The Charter of the Land: Custom and Colonization in Fiji. By Peter France. Aboriginal Advancement to Integration—Conditions and Plans for Western Australia. H. P. Schapper. Aboriginal Settlements—A Survey of Institutional Communities in Eastern Australia. J. P. M. Long. Social Change and the Individual. By Norman Long. Ekagi—Dutch—English—Indonesian Dictionary. By J. Steltenpool. A Subgrouping of Nine Philippine Languages. By Teodoro A. Llamzon     

Masked Popery and Pyrrhonian Uncertainty: The Early Scottish Covenanters on Arminianism

In Jacobean and Caroline Scotland there was little Arminianism to be found, whether in its Remonstrant (Dutch) or Laudian (English) versions. Nevertheless, the representation of this teaching by a few Scottish divines, its more strenuous advocacy in England, and reports of its spread in Europe unnerved those who would lead the covenanting movement after 1638.
Arminianism represented a two-pronged threat to the Calvinist covenanting vision. Its attempt at moderation in the theological strife of the time approximated a compromise with, if not a surrender to, popery. But Arminianism also suffered from an identification with the scepticism then fermenting in European philosophy. The decay of a providential worldview undercut the national self-image of Scotland at the forefront of resurgent Reformed religion. The significance of free will threatened the individual's assurance of election. The loss of certainty about theological authority, accepting the individual's right to interpret the Bible and to express his views publicly, shattered the ideal of a religiously uniform society. Thus considered, the persistent interest in Arminianism provides a useful perspective on the mind of the covenanting movement.