For the first time more than seventy South African women’s voices, from 1652 until today, are collected and published in one volume. Initially we hear their voices in Dutch, then in different varieties of Afrikaans, bearing witness to the fascinating development of a new language. We share the joys and sorrows of these women; their entertaining, sometimes gruesome stories.

The printing press arrived late at the Cape, and when it finally did, it took another century before the first publica...

Wie ‘zeventiende eeuw’ zegt, denkt al snel aan Rembrandt, Amalia van Solms, Huygens, Van Schurman, en Spinoza, aan de VOC en aan pompeuze grachtenpanden vol weelde en schatten. De Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden was in de zeventiende eeuw dan ook een politieke grootmacht, met wereldwijde handelsbelangen en een toonaangevend cultureel leven. Deze Nederlandse 'gouden eeuw' is vaak geroemd vanwege zijn religieuze tolerantie, artistieke creativiteit en economische innovatie. Tegelijkertij...

Towards a Data-Driven Military: A Multi-Disciplinary Perspective assesses the use of data and information on modern conflict from different scientific and methodological disciplines, aiming to generate valuable contributions to the ongoing discourse on data, the military and modern warfare. Military Systems and Technology approaches the theme empirically by researching how data can enhance the utility of military materiel and subsequently accelerate the decision-making process. War Studies ta...

This book analyzes the expansion of the Anatolian livestock trade, focusing on sheep and cattle, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries— a period marked by significant changes in state policies, society and environment. It examines the impact of these changes on both human and non-human actors, maps trade routes and networks, and explores their transformations over time, thereby contributing to the literature on Ottoman environmental and socioeconomic history.

The book identif...

In the past decades, lay Buddhism has increasingly emerged in unexpected places—in the spaces in-between, beneath, above, and beyond conventional conceptions of religious or spiritual life in China. This book explores manifestations of the revival of Buddhism among non-monastic people and communities, building on mixed methods qualitative research. The book wishes to answer the central question: How do Chinese groups and individuals practice Buddhism under the socio-political and cultural c...

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...

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....

‘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...

This volume traces how colonial powers from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century built, adapted, and expanded systems of slave trading and coerced labour across different regions of the globe. Bringing together diverse geographical perspectives and source materials, the contributors investigate how European practices of enslavement—shaped above all by experiences in the Atlantic world—were transferred to, or reshaped by, societies in the Indian Ocean and Asia. In examining the manageme...