It is the paradox at the heart of the Dutch Republic: how could a state emerge from resistance to political slavery and subjugation by a foreign power, only to become a colonial empire that promoted slavery all over the world? Slavery and the Dutch State shows how the modern Dutch state and its predecessors were complicit in colonial slavery. It describes the roles of various actors, such as enslaved people, administrators and merchants in the Netherlands and the colonized societies. More tha...

Ancient civilizations often developed near major rivers, like in Egypt and Mesopotamia. In Central Asia, the Murghab alluvial fan in southern Turkmenistan was central to the emergence of the Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex (BMAC), also known as the Oxus Civilization, during the third and second millennia BCE. The local alluvial fan was central for the productive agriculture at the basis of the region's urban centers and the wealth that accumulated in these societies.

This volume expl...

This book provides a critical assessment of the broadly held view that states ‘own’ war. The central theme of the book is that the persistence of non-state actors in historical as well as contemporary conflicts challenges this narrative. It takes a multidisciplinary approach to address a host of questions concerning the role of non-state actors, both armed and unarmed, in conflict and their relationship with states. Recurring themes are issues of loyalty, accountability and effectiveness....

Este libro resume seis años de investigación arqueológica en el sitio donde fué fundada la primera ciudad europea en la tierra continental de América, Santa María de la Antigua del Darién. Una experiencia en el noroeste Colombiano que, a una rigurosa investigación arqueológica conducida con el método estratigráfico, une un amplio trabajo con la comunidad y un enfoque multidisciplinario.

Santa María de la Antigua del Darién fue la primera ciudad que los españoles fundaron en la â...

Everyone knows that species go extinct and biodiversity decreases. It seems obvious that this loss might have disastrous consequences. Maybe because of a cascading effect we will end up in a barren moonscape – and if that does not happen, we at the very least remain dependent on biodiversity for food, health and well-being.

This essay tries to remove some fear; there are no reasons to believe that biodiversity loss will cause any kind of disaster. Nature is not like a machine that stalls i...

In archieven, bibliotheken en musea over de hele wereld liggen Nederlandse koloniale bronnen: kilometers aan brieven, verslagen en dagboeken, en depots vol afbeeldingen, kaarten en objecten. Maar de informatie in dit enorme koloniale archief spreekt niet voor zich. Hoe is dit bronnenmateriaal gevormd en welke gevolgen heeft dat voor historisch onderzoek? Hoe ga je als historicus om met racisme, oriëntalisme en eenzijdigheid in koloniale bronnen? En hoe deden historici dat de afgelopen eeuwen?

Dit boek biedt handreikingen aan onderzoekers in drie stappen. Deel I bespreekt de diepe verstrengeling van geschiedschrijving met overzeese handel en koloniaal bestuur, en toont hoe die ook na de formele dekolonisatie nog sporen achterlaat in de historiografie. Deel II richt zich op methodologie. Het behandelt hoe en waarom koloniale bronnen gevormd zijn en biedt aanknopingspunten om die opnieuw, vanuit verschillende perspectieven, te analyseren. Deel III geeft een praktisch overzicht van belangrijke archieven, collecties en typen bronnen: uiteenlopend van overheids- en bedrijfsdocumenten tot mondelinge overleveringen, van kerkelijke rapporten tot scheepsjournalen, en van foto’s tot digitaal materiaal...

The Republic of Turkey was founded a hundred years ago on 29 October 1923. Turkey holds a unique position between Europe and the Middle East. It continues to captivate international attention, evoking hopes and fears in the hearts and minds of contemporary observers. As a critical commemoration of its centenary, this book presents a mosaic of one hundred carefully curated fragments by expert authors, shedding light on politics, economy, society, culture, gender, and arts in a hundred years of...

‘China Under Xi Jinping: A New Assessment’ is one of the first scholarly books on Xi’s China during the Pandemic, which contains several features that are unmatched by existing scholarship. First, all the authors have studied and taught Chinese and American history or politics in both China and the United States for decades. They accordingly are quite familiar with and possess deep understandings of the history, politics, ideology, and society in both countries and therefore their resea...

Increased existential threats demand that Western Democracies and their armed forces can swiftly scale up, rapidly expanding their capabilities to deter potential adversaries and defend borders effectively. The principle of scaling also applies to crisis response systems in general; the larger the disaster scope, the more crucial scalability becomes to alleviate suffering. From a multidisciplinary viewpoint, this book introduces fresh insights into the concept of scaling by examining scalabil...

By applying a fieldwork-based, geoarchaeological approach, Tourloukis examines in this study the evidence from Greece within the framework of the earliest occupation of Europe. Although the Greek Peninsula lies within a core area of early hominin movements between Africa and Europe but also within Eurasia itself, the Lower Palaeolithic record of Greece remains as yet extremely poor.

Choosing the scanty Greek record as a case-study, Tourloukis elaborates on a hitherto largely overlooked subjec...