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Summaries
The shape of the city. An evaluation of recent historical studies on Dutch towns. Pim Kooij
Urban history in the Netherlands started roundabout 1970. It was initially promoted by mainly economic and social historians who used concepts derived from geography which centred on town and country relations, urban networks, and migration. The spatial factor was considered to be a core feature, also inside the towns and cities. An alternative view, however, argued that a completely introspective urban history, focussing on one city, would result in more integration. This hypothesis has been proved in a number of recent, more or less integral urban histories, commissioned by several independent municipal authorities in individual cities. They show that a combination of internal and external elements offers the best results with regard to integration.
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‘Heroism, marital fidelity and women's honour’. Bakhuizen van den Brink and the ‘diligent housewife’. Brecht Proosten († circa 1592). Els Kloek
‘Heroism, marital fidelity and women's honour’ is an account of the quest for Brecht Proosten, a ‘diligent housewife’ and contemporary of the Dutch writer Vondel, who was praised by the historian Bakhuizen van den Brink, in his famous article ‘Vondel met Roskam en Rommelpot’(Gids, 1837), though he failed to explain why she was so exemplary. The story is all about the wife of Kies, Mayor of Haarlem who hid her husband in the family home during the wave of religious persecutions under the reign of the Duke of Alva. She almost gave her husband away by becoming pregnant, but rather than betray him she sacrificed her reputation instead by telling the sheriff that the child could have been fathered by almost anyone. Bakhuizen must have read this story in Hooft's Histoorien (1642). In another publication (1843) Bakhuizen praised her for not mincing her words, however, not all of his contemporaries agreed with him on this point. During the first half of the 19th Century the story of Brecht Proosten's marital fidelity was frequently recounted, though it was noticeable that most authors only dared to write about it in covert terms. When Bakhuizen's ex-fiancée, the famous author Truitje Toussaint, removed the ‘sting’ from the tale in 1850 by leaving out the episode about the questionable fatherhood and her willingness to sacrifice her reputation, Brecht Proosten finally fell into oblivion.
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Irony, nationalism, and the Oera Linda book. Goffe Jensma
The Oera Linda book is a curious enigma which came to light in the Dutch town of Den Helder in 1867. It is an ambiguous literary text which can be read in two different ways: On the one hand as a nonsensical parody on the tradition of Friesian fantastic historiography, and on the other as a much more serious allegory of the nineteenth-century conflict between liberal | |
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theological modernism and orthodoxy. The attribution of this anonymous text to the Minister/Poet François HaverSchmidt (1835-1894) subsequently shows how an ironic style of thinking and writing can be a by-product of modernisation. In the case of HaverSchmidt and his Oera Linda book, this irony is working in two spheres, viz. that of regional identity and that of religion. In both cases, HaverSchmidt's irony is the result of a strongly felt tension between tradition and modernity, between the desire to believe in a fantastic, non-critical nationalist historiography or in the existence of a wonder-working God on the one hand, and on the other a commitment to the knowledge that such things can no longer exist in a modern world.
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Internal rules or external circumstances? Wantje Fritschy
While De Vries and Van der Woude scorned ‘institutional economics’ in favour of the Annalesschool of thought in their The First Modern Economy on the period 1500-1815, Van Zanden and Van Riel paid lip service to North's new ‘institutional economics’ in their book on Dutch social-economic history during the period 1780-1914. However, their attempt to link developments in the structure and growth of the Dutch economy with consecutive Dutch constitutional law is not that convincing. Oddly enough, the figures of the National Accounts database, which lies at the very heart of their book, do not corroborate their thesis of a modern economic development in the first half of the 19th Century concomitant with the ‘modern’ constitution of 1815. The fact that the Netherlands was no longer a force to be reckoned with on the international stage, either economically or politically, during the second half of the 18th Century, was evidently more due to the growing protectionism of the other countries and the small domestic market of the Netherlands than to an institutional structure which, by the way, had not altered since the ‘successful’ first half of the 17th Century. Nevertheless, their analysis of the influence of the ‘arena of collective action of pressure groups’ on economic development is are certainly convincing, even brilliant, and makes this book a definite ‘must’.
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Taking Stock. The Dutch economy in the Nineteenth Century. Richard T. Griffiths and Jurriën de Jong
The publication entitled Nederland, 1780-1914. Staat, Instituties en Economische Ontwikkeling [The Netherlands, 1780-1914. The State, Institutions and Economie Development] is the culmination of a large-scale project called the Reconstruction of the Dutch National Accounts. The analyses are based on new data generated by the project. The results confirm firstly the occurrence of economic growth during the first half of the 19th century and, secondly, that the process of modem economic growth originated around 1860. Furthermore, the book stands out for its analysis of the interaction between politics and the economy. However, there are mistakes and inconsistencies in the way the statistics, on which the analyses are based, are presented. Also, the absence of any international comparisons in the book represents a missed opportunity.
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The Human Face of Economic History. Arthur van Riel and Jan Luiten van Zanden
In response to the reviews written about Nederland 1780-1914. Staat, instituties en economische ontwikkeling by Griffiths & De Jong and Fritschy, we have sketched the theoretical framework of the above-mentioned book, and in particular the central role played by New Institutional Economics in developing this framework. We argue that by choosing this framework we have been able to write an economic history with a human face, that is we were able to focus on the role played by the state and by (pressure groups of) entrepreneurs, farmers and labourers in defining the rules of the game, and in steering the process of economic development in this way. A revised version of the book will be published as ‘The Strictures of Inheritance’ by Princeton University Press in 2003.
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