The European Experience: A Multi-Perspective History of Modern Europe, 1500–2000

The European Experience brings together the expertise of nearly a hundred historians from eight European universities to internationalise and diversify the study of modern European history, exploring a grand sweep of time from 1500 to 2000. Offering a valuable corrective to the Anglocentric narratives of previous English-language textbooks, scholars from all over Europe have pooled their knowledge on comparative themes such as identities, cultural encounters, power and citizenship, and economic development to reflect the complexity and heterogeneous nature of the European experience. Rather than another grand narrative, the international author teams offer a multifaceted and rich perspective on the history of the continent of the past 500 years. Each major theme is dissected through three chronological sub-chapters, revealing how major social, political and historical trends manifested themselves in different European settings during the early modern (1500–1800), modern (1800–1900) and contemporary period (1900–2000). This resource is of utmost relevance to today’s history students in the light of ongoing internationalisation strategies for higher education curricula, as it delivers one of the first multi-perspective and truly ‘European’ analyses of the continent’s past. Beyond the provision of historical content, this textbook equips students with the intellectual tools to interrogate prevailing accounts of European history, and enables them to seek out additional perspectives in a bid to further enrich the discipline

Amsterdam Declaration on Funding Research Software Sustainability

The Research Software Alliance (ReSA) and the Netherlands eScience Center hosted a two-day international workshop in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) on 8-9 November 2023 to set the future agenda for national and international funders to support sustainable research software. As the importance of software in research has become increasingly apparent, so has the urgent need to sustain it. Funders can play a crucial role in this respect by ensuring structural support. Over the past few years, a variety of methods for sustaining research software have been explored, including improving and extending funding policies and instruments. During the workshop, funding organizations joined forces to explore how they can effectively contribute to making research software sustainable. In preparation of the workshop, a draft of a future international declaration, titled "Amsterdam Declaration on Funding Research Software Sustainability" was created by the Research Software Alliance, the Netherlands eScience Center and with input from stakeholders in the field

Over historische excuses, morele genoegdoening en verzoening

On Historical Apologies, Recognition and Reconciliation Making historical apologies involves notions of forgiveness, recognition, reconciliation and compensation. Ethical beliefs, religious convictions and legal principles come into play, as do politics and emotions like grief, greed and generosity. As historians, we are apt to ask questions of origin. From where does the recent culture of apologies for historical wrongdoings stem? Is it really a post-national phenomenon? Next, we can discern many contexts of making apologies. Claimants might be individual victims or highly organised caretakers. The institutions they address range from national governments to churches, private associations and small communities. In the precarious process of reconciliation we see two rival mind-sets at work, that of the ethics of conviction contrasting with that of the ethics of responsibility. Combining these two attitudes and styles often results in disappointments in actual cases of demanding, offering, granting and accepting apologies. Het aanbieden van historische verontschuldigingen is verweven met begrippen van vergeving, verzoening en genoegdoening. Ethische opvattingen, religieuze overtuigingen en rechtsregels spelen een rol, net als politiek en emoties als rouw, hebzucht en generositeit. Historici stellen vragen naar de oorsprong van verschijnselen. Waar komt de recente excuuscultuur vandaan? Is het echt een post-nationaal fenomeen? Voorts spelen verontschuldigingen zich af in sterk uiteenlopende omstandigheden. De eisers kunnen individuele slachtoffers zijn, of goed georganiseerde groepen van belangenbehartigers. Het palet van instellingen dat zij aanspreken, loopt van nationale overheden tot kerken, particuliere verenigingen en kleine gemeenschappen. In het fragiele proces van verzoening treden twee conflicterende denkwijzen op, die van de overtuigingsethiek tegenover die van de verantwoordingsethiek. De combinatie van deze twee houdingen en stijlen leidt maar al te vaak tot teleurstellingen in specifieke gevallen van het vragen, aanbieden, toekennen en accepteren van verontschuldigingen

The incapacity to work as moving target.: Exploring the possibilities of praxiography for analysing realities of disability in history

While acknowledging the discursive meaning of bodies, both gender and disabilities scholars try to overcome a strict nature-culture or medical model-social model divide. This article explores the possibilities of praxiography for disability history, to overcome this divide. Praxiography as introduced by Annemarie Mol, approaches the body and gender as something that is made up in encounters between people, objects and practices. Mol has shown that although a singular term may suggest there is coherence, this coherence is managed in practice. This article provides a practice focused analysis of appeal cases in which incapacity to work was contested in the context of the first disability benefit act in the Netherlands (1901-1921), and shows how incapacity to work was made up as incapacity to earn a living and shifted to meticulous descriptions of the functioning of individual body parts. Although the topic of power remains to be explored, by looking at incapacity to work as a site of interaction we can challenge perceptions of disability and gender as a biological or a cultural truth, and incorporate matter into historical analysis of the making of social categories

Expertise en de moderne samenleving: Een ambivalente relatie

Kerstin Brückweh e.a. ed., Engineering society. The role of the human and social sciences in modern societies, 1880-1980 (Palgrave Macmillan; Basingstoke 2012) 336 p., €65,- ISBN 978023027907

Wiedza, formacja społeczna i recenzje książek: The Literarisches Centralblatt as arena and meeting place

Book reviews serve multiple functions. They are not only used to assess the merit of individual books but also contribute to the creation and maintenance of scholarly communities. This paper draws on nineteenth-century book reviews to outline three of their features that contributed to the self-definition of such communities: the assessment of books, the assessment of authors, and the use of positive and negative politeness strategies to address individual authors as well as a broader audience. The analysis will be based on the book reviews of the German Semitist Theodor Nöldeke and the experimental psychologist Wilhelm Wundt in the Literarisches Centralblatt in the eighteen-seventies. In their book reviews they both criticized and praised their peers, which turned review journals like the Centralblatt in arenas for polemic debate as well as meeting places for like-minded scholars. To be more precise, book reviews were used to communicate standards of scholarly excellence, expectations of the character and skills of scholars, and the acknowledgement of the value of the continued existence of aims and interests shared among a large group of academically educated and employed scholars. By contributing to the establishment and maintenance of scholarly peer groups with shared values, book reviews also reinforced the dividing line between academic researchers and lay contributors to their fields