A gripping royal tragedy set against a portrait of a world in turmoil

Stranded at Schiphol airport, Ben Coates called up a friendly Dutch girl he'd met some months earlier. He stayed for dinner. Actually, he stayed for good.In the first book to consider the hidden heart and history of the Netherlands from a modern perspective, the author explores the length and breadth of his adopted homeland and discovers why one of the world's smallest countries is also so significant and so fascinating. It is a self-made country, the Dutch national character shaped by the on...

The terrorist attacks that have been haunting European capitals show us that counterterrorism is necessary and essential in modern day society. The intelligence services and other organisations active in the field of counterterrorism are faced on a daily basis with the question of how extensive and intrusive their actions can be. What are the limits? Which actions are ethical? And most importantly: how do the professionals themselves deal with these - often complex - dilemmas? In Ethics of Co...

Hongarije vormt het onbekende sluitstuk van de lange destructieve politiek van nazi-Duitsland. Vanwege de olievelden ten zuiden van het Balantonmeer bracht Hitler zijn beste troepen in Hongarije op het slagveld. Sepp Dietrich, de commandant van het 6e SS Pantserleger, wilde Hitler voor zijn verjaardag de olievelden van het Roemeense Ploesti aanbieden. Het liep allemaal anders. Aan de oevers van de Donau vond een vreselijke krachtsmeting plaats. Na een titanenstrijd van tien dagen startte op 1...

This book is devoted to the collection of old printed books housed in the Supreme Court’s library. This collection came into being in 1795 when the libraries of the Court of Holland and Zeeland and the Supreme Court of Holland and Zeeland were joined. A number of books from this collection were handed over to the Provincial Court of Zeeland in 1803, and in 1856 a large number of archivalia and non-legal volumes were transferred to the National Archives. This book describes the history of the...

In modern Japan, anti-establishment ideas have related in many ways to Japan’s capitalist development and industrialisation. Activist and intellectual Ishikawa Sanshirō exemplifies this imagination, connecting European and Japanese thought during the first decades of the twentieth century. This book investigates the emergence of a strand of non-violent anarchism, reassessing in particular the role of geographical thought in modern Japan as both a vehicle of political dissent and a basis fo...

Little is known about the African women who came to Europe from the 1870s onwards, nor do we dare to imagine them as wealthy, elegantly dressed individuals with refined tastes and fluent in several languages. The Krio Fernandino represented a multisited, multilocal, transnational, transcontinental and Afropolitan community that lived between Africa and Europe from the late 19th century onwards. This book explains how the Krio Fernandino, and particularly their women, transcended the barriers ...

Indonesia declared its independence on 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese capitulation that marked the end of World War II in Asia. Refusing to recognize Indonesian independence, the Netherlands attempted to gain control over the decolonization process by force, leading to four years of arduous negotiations and bitter warfare.

In 2005, the Dutch government declared that the Netherlands had been ‘on the wrong side of history’ and should not have engaged in this war. However, to th...

Hungary rose as a nation state after the First World War, from the ashes of the Dual Monarchy. State regent and admiral without a fleet, Miklós Horthy, played a crucial role herein. The path to independence was far from simple for the Hungarians. Shortly after the First World War the communists staged a coup and the Entente Powers, and in particular the Pan-Europeans amongst them, tried thereafter to reinstate the Habsburg Empire.

This put Horthy, as former wing adjutant of the Austro-Hunga...

Ten Days That Shook the World is John Reed’s eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution. A contemporary journalist writing in the first flush of revolutionary enthusiasm, he gives a gripping record of the events in Petrograd in November 1917, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks finally seized power. Containing verbatim reports both of speeches by leaders and the chance comments of bystanders, set against an idealized backcloth of the proletariat, soldiers, sailors, and peasants uniting to throw...