The Colonies of Benevolence are seven impressive cultural landscapes in The Netherlands and Belgium. They tell a story that started 200 years ago. It is a story of the greatest ambitions: eliminating poverty, creating a better life for people, cultivating poor soil... The scale on which this took place was unique.

Two centuries later, the Colonies are embarking on a new future. They are globally unique as testimonies of an Enlightened, utopian experiment and of what followed afterwards.

Learn...

For four centuries, people from the Netherlands have gone to America by boat or plane, to explore the country, to trade, to colonise, to settle, to do business, to find a new future or simply to visit the country as a tourist. And for four centuries, Americans, of diverse backgrounds, of native, African or European descent, have come to the Netherlands. These are their stories.

This book begins in the seventeenth century, when settlers commissioned by the West India Company settled on the sou...

The Netherlands and water: a story of conflict and concord, calamity and prosperity. For centuries the Dutch have been masters at controlling the water. They have wrested land from the water and turned Dutch waterworks into a global export product. The knowledge and technology with which the 'Low Lands' deal with water are an inspiration to many countries. Climate change is increasing the threat of both flooding and drought, and the consequences of a potential disaster are incalculable. It is...

Journey to the Horizon is a tribute to aircrew who were force down and evaded capture. It also honours those Who died and those who endured a long time as a PoW.

"World History - A Genealogy" charts the history of the discipline through twenty-five in-depth conversations with historians whose work has shaped the field of World History in various fundamental ways. These conversations, which took place over a period of twenty years in and around Leiden University for its World History journal "Itinerario", cover these historians' lives, their work, and their views of the Academy in general and the field of World History in particular. An extensive intro...

In the historiography of the period of Dutch rule in the Cape of Good Hope, from 1652 until 1795, Cape burghers are represented as the perpetual underdogs bristling against the rule of a restrictive Dutch East India Company (VOC). But was this relationship really so antagonistic?

The author places Cape colonial society in the wider context of the Dutch Republic and, in doing so, compares the political structures, institutions and dynamics of the Republic and its overseas settlement. He shows ...

This new and now unabridged English translation of Huizinga’s Autumntide of the Middle Ages (Herfsttij der Middeleeuwen) celebrates the centenary of a book that still ranks as one of the most perceptive and influential analyses of the late medieval period. Its wide-ranging discussion of fourteenth and fifteenth century France and the Low Countries makes it a classic study of life, culture, and thought in medieval society.

The translation of the original text captures the impact of Huizing...

In October 1740, a tragedy unfolded in Batavia, the Asian headquarters of the Dutch East India Company on the island of Java. Faced with a spontaneous Chinese peasant uprising, Batavia’s vengeful inhabitants carried out a bloody massacre of their fellow Chinese within the city walls. The murderers marched from house to house, looting and pillaging, not even sparing the hospitals and prisons.

How could such a slaughter take place in the prosperous Queen of the East? Drawing on a wealth of Du...