Hybrid ambitions : science, governance, and empire in the career of Caspar G.C. Reinwardt (1773-1854)

The German chemist-apothecary Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt (1773-1854) offers a fascinating window on Dutch culture and society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By providing an in-depth analysis of his multi-faceted career in the Netherlands and the Malay Archipelago, this study sheds light on the co-evolutionary character of science, governance, and empire. It argues that seeds of Reinwardt’s professional flexibility lay in his practical training in one of Amsterdam’s chemical workshops and his socialization in a broader cultural context where the improvement of society and economy played a crucial role.LEI Universiteit LeidenColonial and Global Histor

Hybrid ambitions : science, governance, and empire in the career of Caspar G. C. Reinwardt (1773-1854)

The life of the German chemist-apothecary Caspar Georg Carl Reinwardt (1773-1854) offers a fascinating window on Dutch culture and society in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By providing an in-depth analysis of his multi-faceted career in the Netherlands and the Malay Archipelago, this study sheds light on the co-evolutionary character of science, governance, and empire. It argues that the seeds of Reinwardt's professional flexibility lay in his practical training in one of Amsterdam's chemical workshops and his socialization in a broader cultural context where the improvement of society and economy played a crucial roleDissertati

Antilliaans erfgoed 1: toen en nu

Dit tweedelige boek, geschreven door een team van Antilliaanse en Nederlandse wetenschappers, biedt een staalkaart van reflecties op het culturele erfgoed van Aruba, Bonaire en Curaçao en van de Antilliaanse diaspora in Nederland. In het eerste deel, Toen en nu, wordt onderzocht hoe in het koloniale verleden werd aangekeken tegen de lokale culturen en hoe die culturen zich langzamerhand min of meer emancipeerden. In het tweede deel, Nu en verder, staan vragen centraal over de uitdagingen waarvoor deze culturen zich vandaag gesteld zien, in hun staatkundig ambivalente situatie als deel van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden, de vroegere kolonisator, en gezien de grote invloed van migraties en de sterke afhankelijkheid van toerisme. Een rode draad die door beide bundels loopt is hoe opvattingen over cultureel erfgoed verbonden waren en zijn aan uitdagingen van natievorming en nation branding

Banggaisch adatrecht

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Bevolkingsrietcultuur in Nederlandsch-Indie : een landbouweconomische studie

The origin and history of sugar-cane in the Dutch East Indies were described and consecutive phases of development of Indonesian agriculture were suggested. Cultivation and processing of native sugar-cane in the 1920's and some data on trade in sugar lumps were examined.The importance of native sugar-cane as a cash crop was stressed and needed encouragement rather than discouragement. There was some conflict between the native sugar industry in its infancy, still modest in size and technique, and the economically powerful Dutch sugar concerns with their elaborate plantations and factories. In close agreement with the Western sugar interests the Government policy favoured the status quo, both thwarting the extension of native enterprise and preventing any form of co-operation. The thesis condemned this policy and saw the common interest as the only safe solution in the future. A gradual transition was needed to a system where the local cane-growers could supply the large factories with cane for refining.</p

In Leijdeckers voetspoor

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De bewogen verzamelgeschiedenis van de West-Centraal-Afrikaanse collecties in Nederland (1856-1889)

The 1850s, the discovery of new regions of Africa gradually brought the western world knowledge of the African peoples inhabiting them, and of their cultures. Increasing attention was given to objects used by these Africans in their everyday life, and the relatively short period from 1855 to c. 1880 saw a remarkable development in this respect. Soon, it was impossible to imagine travel books without their illustrations showing articles of use from the newly opened West Central African region, and ethnographical museums had begun collecting these objects. Dutch museums also participated in these acquisitions. This research describes the growth of ethnographic interest as shown in international accounts of travel in foreign parts. The fascination with indigenous objects as described in travel accounts - especially where cult statues were concerned - constitutes a gauge of the extent to which people were becoming interested in the ‘morals and customs’ of African peoples. Then follows a description of the Dutch museums’ policy on the acquisition and documentation of objects, which was partly based on the travel accounts mentioned above.We shall recount how, during the last days of the slave trade, many thousands of objects flowed into Dutch museums from the extensive coastal region of West Central Africa. After the Colonial Museum in Haarlem and the Royal Cabinet of Curiosities (Koninklijk Kabinet van Zeldzaamheden) in The Hague had led the way in 1876 and 1877 respectively, halls and depots in the ethnological museums in Leiden, Rotterdam (the Diergaarde) and Amsterdam (‘Artis’) were gradually filled with these African ethnographic items, the collection and description of which had begun to be carried out in a scholarly manner. At that time virtually all the international accounts written about travels in Africa were in the possession of the Dutch ethnological museums. The attention of museum curators was thus drawn to these ethnographic items, and on several occasions curators utilised the descriptions and illustrations published in the travel accounts as guide books for their own procedures. The collections included objects that illustrate daily life: household articles, hand weapons, throwing weapons, chiefs’ headdresses, masks for members of secret societies, (gun)powder holders, ornaments, bags, footwear, decorated ivory derived from elephant and hippopotamus teeth, and especially various cult statues. The Afrikaansche Handels Vereeniging (AHV, the African Trading Association), later to become the Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handels Vennootschap (NAHV, the New African Trading Society) after 1880, played a key role in the transportation of these objects. With the assistance of good will from the boards of directors for the AHV and NAHV, the museums were successful in winning company agents to their collecting cause, and these agents tried their best in far-away Africa to gain a name as donators of objects to the Dutch museums. While a good deal of distaste for, and criticism of the ‘morals and customs’ of ‘the negro’ was still to be read in the scholarly literature (which at that time included travel accounts), the passion for collecting took possession of the ethnographic museums. The correspondence we encounter in museum archives provides a picture of the competition between institutes, occasionally engaging in skirmishes on the subject of collecting objects deriving from this African heritage. These disputes concerned African objects that appeared to run counter to the westerners’ view that ‘the negro’ civilization was inferior to their own. However, there was no conflict between this underestimation and the passion for collecting. The last section of this investigation concentrates on the views of that period on the way in which these West Central ethnographic objects could be fitted into a survey of more or less evolved ‘races, species and peoples’. The main question here concerns the extent to which indigenous objects, and especially cult statues (minkisi) collected in the West Central coastal area, were supposed to support the western belief that Africans were less civilized in comparison with other ‘races’. With the aid of sources deriving from the history of these Dutch collections, we will show the way in which these objects were used in order to demonstrate the ‘African’s’ superstition and lack of artistic sensibility, and thus his lower level of civilization. The ethnographic museums in Leiden, Rotterdam and Amsterdam exhibited their African collections together with the clear message that African material culture represented an inferior civilization. Nonetheless there was also space for a certain value placed on some objects, where these were regarded as rare and exotic. Just as in previous centuries, objects made of basketwork or decorated ivory were prized as beautifully made and beautifully shaped curiosities. Other research was needed to support and underpin this view of ‘inferiority’. For example, the State Ethnographic Museum in Leiden (which later became the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde) collected ‘negro skulls’ as well as articles of use, in the interest of craniology with its measurements of skulls, a wide-spread branch of physical anthropology in that period. The results of these investigations were intended to link the physical characteristics of ‘the negro’ with the ethnographic collections, in order to show what ‘the negro’ represented in the cultural sense as well.LEI Universiteit LeidenCultuur en ontwikkeling in Afrika, Politiek-economische veranderingen en de dynamieken van Afrikaanse culture

Het Sultanaat Palembang 1811-1825

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Gewapend met kennis : 500 jaar militaire boekcultuur in Nederland

Het idee dat oorlogvoering niet alleen een praktisch vak is, maar ook een goede theoretische onderbouwing nodig heeft, ontstond al aan het eind van de vijftiende eeuw. Daarbij speelde de boekdrukkunst als nieuw communicatiemiddel een cruciale rol, want juist via het gedrukte woord konden kennis en informatie op krijgskundig gebied gemakkelijk en breed worden verspreid. Aan dit aspect is tot nu toe nauwelijks aandacht besteed en er bestaat van geen enkel land een algemene studie over militaire boekcultuur. Gewapend met kennis presenteert een eerste overzicht van de rijke Nederlandse militaire boekcultuur: van de eerste militaire vakbibliotheek, in 1600 ontstaan aan de Leidse universiteit, tot de eerste druk van het bekende Handboek voor de soldaat uit 1933. De eerste werken werden gedrukt door Christoffel Plantijn in Antwerpen, maar al snel werden Den Haag en Amsterdam het centrum van de Nederlandse militaire publicistiek. Tot in de achttiende eeuw was de Nederlandse Republiek zelfs internationaal een belangrijke producent van militaire literatuur. De auteur had voor zijn onderzoek toegang tot het omvangrijke en unieke historisch boekbezit aanwezig in het cultureel erfgoed van Defensie. Gewapend met kennis bevat een schat aan materiaal voor onderzoekers, geïnteresseerden en erfgoedinstellingen, en geeft de militair een ander gezicht.LEI Universiteit LeidenSponsors uitgave proefschrift: J.E. Jurriaanse Stichting Stichting Fonds voor de Geld- en Effectenhandel Stichting dr Hendrik Muller's Vaderlandsch Fonds, Frederik Mullerfonds Mevr. I. de la Fontaine Verwey-le Grand Anonieme schenkerMedieval and Early Modern Studie

Deelbouw in Nederlandsch-Indie

Scheltema described extensively the manifold terms in share-tenancy encountered in the Netherlands East Indies and reviewed share-tenancy in the world. Legal, economic and social aspects of share-tenancy in the Netherlands East Indies were thoroughly discussed. The descriptions and considerations showed, that the aspects of share-tenancy were of considerable complexity.In general share-tenancy was an obstacle to technical improvement, but served mobility of the production factor land, and to some extent regulated the wages in agriculture and in other occupations, especially in purely farming communities. The author considered that legal control of share-tenancy was not desirable.<p/