Dat de Nederlanders in de zeventiende eeuw in Azië aan een koloniaal rijk bouwden weet iedereen. Het is veel minder bekend dat hetzelfde ook in het Atlantische gebied gebeurde. In Tussen honger en zwaard laat Wim Klooster zien dat het Atlantische imperium van de Republiek een grote verscheidenheid aan regio’s omvatte: de Afrikaanse Goudkust, eilanden in het Caribisch gebied, een lange strook langs de Noordamerikaanse oostkust en Brazilië. Dit imperium was niet alleen het werk van Nederlan...

During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln’s administration engaged in protracted negotiations with representatives of the Netherlands to aid in the voluntarily colonization of free African Americans to Suriname. Scores of diplomatic letters in Dutch, English, and French, dating to the period 1862 to 1866 attest to the very real possibility that such a migration stream could have become a reality. They also indicate reasons why this scheme failed: it was bogged down by differe...

How Muslims in Indonesia consider their religious practices, politics and culture as Islamic is described in this volume. By examining the various ways Bima Muslims constitute their Islamic identities and agencies through rituals and festivals, this book argues that religious practice is still vigorous in present Bima. It explores the reproduction of religious meanings among various local Muslims and the differences between social groups. Islam is represented as divided between the traditiona...

By the closing decades of the 19th century, photography and postcard-production arrived in British Malaya. The colonial-era postcards that were produced up to the 1940s captured virtually all aspects of life in the British colony and remain as visual testimonies of how the colonial subjects at the time lived and worked, as well as their relationship to the land. And yet, despite the developments in photography and postcard-production, the images that were produced also reiterated and reproduc...

This book provides a fresh reinterpretation of the global spread of modern leisure travel in the middle of the nineteenth century through a critical comparative reading of twenty-two works of popular travel writing from maritime Southeast Asia and Ceylon. The examination of these books reveals a coherent genre that was seemingly frivolous yet in fact intensely political, with shared rules and tropes that served to legitimise colonial rule and codify aspects of colonial culture in the popular ...

For almost half a century, NATO’s armies deterred a Soviet attack on Western Europe. Today, they once again provide a check on Russia's revanchist agenda. As in the Cold War, if Russia’s aggression escalates to armed conflict, the Alliance’s armies will likely bear the brunt of the fighting. Thus, a study of the national armies that comprised NATO during the Cold War has both historical and current relevance.

Each chapter offers an analysis of how the respective constituent NATO army ...

The task of ending famine in India was taken up by many at the beginning of the twentieth century. Only decades earlier, famine in India had been believed to be a necessary evil. Now it was the reason for the increasing activities of doctors, nutritionists, social reformers, agricultural experts, missionaries, anti-colonial activists and colonial administrators, all involved in temporary relief and finding permanent solutions to famine.

Parvin Etesami (1907-1941) is among the few Persian female poets, who has gained nationwide popularity, while her authorship was disbelieved. She is celebrated in a plethora of publications every year in Iran and beyond. Etesami is the only female poet who has remained part of the daily lives of people in her society for about a century. Her poetry appears in school curricula both before and after the Revolution of 1979. People use her poetry on social media, particularly in critical times. I...

Awards shape careers, make research visible, and create role models. They provide evidence of prestige and credit and play a key role in evaluating individual scientists. Nevertheless, the understanding of prize cultures in science has remained surprisingly superficial. This book explores the prize cultures of the most famous scientific award worldwide: the Nobel Prize. It contributes to modern approaches in history and sociology of science that focus on the social context of scientific pract...