Hasil untuk "History of Low Countries - Benelux Countries"

Nina Lamal, Lieke Van Deinsen, Feike Dietz

Introduction to the special issue 'Towards a Multifaceted History of Early Modern Women in the Low Countries'

Marion Pluskota

This response to Marjolein ’t Hart’s Oorlog en ongelijkheid reconsiders her argument about the indirect benefits of war for women by focusing specifically on those engaged in sex work. It argues that although urban sex workers initially profited from the booming wartime economy, the subsequent professionalization of the military and the rise of moral and legal reforms ultimately undermined these gains. It shows that the economic opportunities during war were tempered by harsher scrutiny, prosecution, and cultural marginalization that eroded the legitimacy of sex work. Immediate monetary benefits came at the cost of long-term social and legal disadvantages for these women.

Bruno Blondé, Ive Marx

In 2013, Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten Van Zanden published an all-encompassing synthesis on the economic history of the Netherlands following the “Polder-model-theory”, in itself a variant of the “Rhineland model”. In their opinion, relatively low levels of inequality, a consensus model, and a strong civil society were cornerstones that accounted for a different pathway to capitalism. This review engages hesitantly with this comparative perspective, especially in regard of the history of present-day Belgium.

Maïka De Keyzer

Joost Welten

Klaas van Berkel

Gert van Klinken

Feike Dietz

Maria-Theresia Leuker, Charlotte Kießling, Anjana Singh

Books such as Het Amboinsche Kruid-boek by Georgius Everhardus Rumphius and Oud en Nieuw Oost-Indiën by François Valentyn were pivotal works in the early modern world that contributed to natural-historical knowledge production. Post-colonial historiography has stressed the role of non-European actors in the process of creating knowledge on nature in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Research on spaces of knowledge creation, actors, networks, and mediality have received attention in recent historiography. Individual initiatives and cross-cultural contacts and networks facilitated dissemination of knowledge. This is particularly true for knowledge from the colonies that travelled long distances. The East India companies provided a conduit for the movement of people, books, plants, and animals between Asia and the Low Countries. Knowledge depended on the media of its representation that were often subject to change. Print media played an important role in the preservation and circulation of knowledge. By re-reading the texts of Rumphius and Valentyn through post-colonial perspectives and through new archival research, the articles of this special issue shed new light on networks, actors, spaces, and modes of representation in knowledge production in the early modern world.

Herman Van der Wee

René de Preter, De onzichtbare hand boven België. Een economische geschiedenis. De invloed van liberalisering, globalisering en Europeanisering (Antwerpen/Apeldoorn: Garant, 2016, 408 pp., isbn 978 90 441 3357 8).

Bert De Munck

In this review of the book Nederland en het poldermodel [The Netherlands and the Polder Model], the idea that the ‘polder model’ dates from the medieval principalities in the Low Countries is qualified. It is argued that the coupling of the plea for continuity and the focus on one area causes problems. First, the exact differences between the Netherlands and other regions with a strong civil society and tradition of negotiation and power sharing appear hard to pinpoint. The endeavours to do so are often artificial and ignore broader developments of which Dutch history is a part. Secondly, the continuity thesis is not made credible (especially with respect with the transition to the nineteenth century) and injustice is done to the contingency and unpredictability of historical developments. The result is a teleological narrative and a missed opportunity for a critical reflection on nationalistic ideas.   This review is part of the discussion forum 'Nederland en het poldermodel' (Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden). Veranderingen in het poldermodel. Kritische reflecties op ‘exceptionalisme’ en continuïteit in de Lage Landen In deze review van het boek Nederland en het poldermodel wordt de idee dat het poldermodel stamt uit de middeleeuwse vorstendommen in de Lage Landen kritisch tegen het licht gehouden. Er wordt geargumenteerd dat de koppeling van het pleidooi voor continuïteit aan de focus op één regio voor problemen zorgt. Enerzijds blijkt het heel erg moeilijk om de vinger te leggen op de precieze verschillen tussen (het huidige) Nederland en andere regio’s met een sterke civiele maatschappij en onderhandelingstraditie; dit gaat gepaard met kunstgrepen en het negeren van bredere ontwikkelingen waarvan de Nederlandse geschiedenis deel uitmaakt. Anderzijds wordt de continuïteit (voornamelijk in de overgang naar de negentiende eeuw) helemaal niet hard gemaakt en wordt onrecht gedaan aan de contingentie en onvoorspelbaarheid van historische ontwikkelingen. Het resultaat is een teleologisch beeld en een gemiste kans voor een kritische reflectie op nationalistische ideeën.   Deze recensie maakt deel uit van het discussiedossier 'Nederland en het poldermodel' (Maarten Prak and Jan Luiten van Zanden).

David Barnouw

Els Witte

‘Benelux must be brought into the Heart and Mind’: The Cultural-Political View of the Benelux in Post-War Belgium (1944-1955) Benelux was a construction that came into being only with considerable difficulty and the first decade of its existence (1944-1954) was no easy beginning. Consequently, the Belgian political promotors of Benelux found it useful to publicise it on the cultural-political level, using their own networks and their publications. They also obtained help from the staff of the Belgian-Dutch Cultural Agreement and from academic historians and the international movement for textbook revision. In this article Els Witte analyses the texts of publications, reports and works that are concerned with this political-cultural approach. On one hand it appears that in no sense was there a streamlined, enthusiastic pro-Benelux discourse. Too much attention was given to controversies for this and the approach was used chiefly to strengthen the position of Belgian domestic policy. On the other hand the discourse fitted in with a new system of representation in which pluralism, the idea of cooperation with the Netherlands and West-European integration – with the Benelux in the vanguard – played a part.

E. van Gelder

E. H. Kossmann

A.H. Huussen jr.

A. Deprez

B.J. ter Haar

F.R. Postma

Albert Clement