A small group of freethinkers from the Dutch Republic played a key role in the major intellectual changes of the Early Enlightenment (1640–1720). In the wake of Cartesianism, their rationalist ideas transformed debates about science, theology, medicine, and political theory. This book studies the position of four translators in these debates on the ‘New Philosophy’: Jan Hendriksz Glazemaker, Pieter Balling, Abraham van Berkel, and Stephan Blankaart. It presents a comparative history of ...

In this book, Henk van Rinsum provides an in-depth description of the colonial past of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, from its foundation in 1636. He describes the development of (scientific) knowledge and knowledge transfer about and in the Dutch colonies, especially in the Dutch East Indies. The central theme of his book is the idea of Western superiority – the assumption that we are ‘developed’ and therefore modern, while those in the colonies are ‘not (yet) developed’ an...

In the rolling hills of Limburg, near Margraten, they slowly loom up, row after row: the thousands of white marble crosses and Stars of David. They mark the final resting place of nearly 8,300 American soldiers who died during World War II. While the headstones provide us with the names of the mostly young men involved in the liberation of the Netherlands, they do not tell us who the soldiers were and who they left behind. Moreover, the peace and quiet at the only American war cemetery in the...

The Hollandsche Schouwburg is a former theatre in Amsterdam where, during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, tens of thousands of Jews were assembled before being deported to transit and concentration camps. Before the war, the theatre had been an example of Jewish integration in the Netherlands, and after the war it became a memorial for the Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. This book is the first international publication to address all the historical aspects of the site, putting it ...

Prometheus was punished by the supreme god Zeus for giving to mankind the Olympic fire with which they learned to think and feel. He was chained to a cliff in the Caucasus, where, to make matters worse, he was visited daily by an eagle who ate part of his liver. At night, however, his liver grew back. We now know that the liver can regenerate, but were the ancient Greeks aware of this quality?

The myth of Prometheus has been a source of inspiration for many visual artists over the centuries....

Below the famously flat surface of the Netherlands lies a fascinating world of buried mountains and valleys, which can only be unraveled with drillings, geophysical techniques and geological understanding.

Thorough exploration for hydrocarbons, groundwater and minerals produced a wealth of data and knowledge about the Dutch subsurface and its various uses. The second edition of this book, originally published in 2007, provides access to that wealth with a thoroughly revised and updated descri...

This is a book about some of the unexpected people and places involved in cultivating knowledge of the natural world and mastery of scientific apparatus around 1800, taking readers across continental Europe from the Enlightenment to the onset of academic professionalisation. The authors widen the horizon of inquiry by looking beyond the scientific elite of academies and prestigious science sponsored by princely courts, the focus of previous major studies of this time period. They consider peo...

This book provides a thorough revision of the image of the public church under the Dutch Republic after the Peace of Westphalia and before the onset of the ‘high Enlightenment’. Traditional church history considers the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries a period of decline. Yet this was the high tide of Dutch expansion when Dutch society was extremely rich. In its five universities and its highly literate population internationally acknowledged scholarship, arts and sciences flowered. D...

This encyclopedia documents the presence and impact of nationalized cultural consciousness in European nationalism. It tracks how intellectuals, historians, philologists, novelists, poets, painters, folklorists, and composers, in an intensely collaborative transnational network, articulated the national identities and aspirations that would go on to determine European history and politics, with effects that are still felt today. This new revised edition includes more than 100 additional artic...