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Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 22 (2015)

Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis. Jaargang 22

(2015)– [tijdschrift] Jaarboek voor Nederlandse Boekgeschiedenis–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

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Djoeke van Netten
Propaganda, public and pamphlets in the Dutch Golden Age - what else is new?

No less than 37,253 ‘period documents’, also known as ‘topical texts’ are to be found in the Short Title Catalogue, Netherlands.1 Roughly 34,000 Dutch pamphlets from the Knuttel collection, supplemented with some 2,800 pamphlets from the Van Alphen collection are digitally available on tempo: The Early Modern Pamphlets Online.2 On the Delpher-website, millions of pages from Dutch newspapers from 1618 onwards are searchable on word level.3

For anyone interested in propaganda and politics in the Dutch Golden Age, the source material is overabundant. This has not stopped, or possibly this has encouraged, the ever increasing flood of new books about these subjects. In the last few years alone we have seen the PhD-theses of Roeland Harms about pamphlets and public opinion (2011), of Ingmar Vroomen about patriotic retorics in Dutch pamphlets (2012), Monica Stensland's Habsburg communication in the Dutch Revolt (2012), Michel Reinders' Printed pandemonium about popular print and politics (2013) and Femke Deen about public debate and propaganda (2015).4 With the exception of Vroomen, these books actually are commercial versions of their PhD-theses. Stensland for example submitted her thesis in Oxford as early as 2008 and in the same year Reinders defended his PhD in Rotterdam. He published a more popular Dutch version of his book as Gedrukte chaos (‘printed chaos’) in 2010.5

However, not only relatively young and upcoming scholars are expanding this field. Recently we also saw Donald Haks' Vaderland en vrede (‘fatherland and peace’, 2013), analysing publicity about the Dutch Republic at war and Jeroen Salman's Pedlars and the

popular press (2014).6 These books are supplemented by two collections of articles. Of course in some cases these edited volumes are not supplementing but repeating, since the same above-mentioned usual suspects contributed to them. Pamphlets and politics in the Dutch Republic (2011) was edited by Deen, Reinders and David Onnekink and in 2013 Not dead things by Harms, Salman and Joad Raymond appeared, subtitled The dissemination of popular print in England and Wales, Italy, and the Low Countries, 1500-1820 in order to emphasize its international scope.7

In this article I review these books, their most important conclusions and their methodologies. I will give explicit attention to book historical perspectives. Using printed or manuscript sources does not automatically imply that a scholar is contributing to the historiography of authorship, reading and publishing. To what extent do these authors writing about propaganda, public and pamphlets use or yield book historical insights?

First I should state something about the spatial and temporal scope of the subject. Harms, Raymond and Salman in their introduction convincingly argue the advantages of an international and transnational focus and the benefits of a long time span.8 Both edited volumes and the work of Salman cover the whole early modern period, Salman even reaching as far as the mid-nineteenth century. For the sake of feasibility most PhD-projects are a little more chronologically confined and the books under scrutiny here neatly cover the whole Dutch Revolt and beyond. Whereas Deen concentrates on Amsterdam in the first years of the revolt (1566-1578), Stensland examines the rebellion from the perspective of the Habsburg authorities from 1567 till the Twelve Years' Truce in 1609. Harms starts his research with the disputes during this Truce (‘bestandstwisten’) and works with pamphlets ranging from 1615 to 1690. Reinders commences with the coup d'état and early death of Stadtholder Willem ii in the 1650s, but writes most extensively about the Year of Disaster 1672. Vroomen covers a somewhat shorter period than Harms, namely 1618-1672. Haks' book can be seen as chronologically following Vroomen, both writing about the notion of ‘fatherland’, whereas Haks researches the years from 1672 until the Peace of Utrecht in 1713.

The geographical focus of these books is on the Dutch Republic. Deen's local focus on Amsterdam is exceptional; she states that only by zooming in, it is really possible to show the mutual influence of politics and public debate.9 Without acknowledging it, in fact also Harms applies local perspectives, since all his cases are geographically confined. Furthermore Harms and Salman explicitly compare their Dutch findings with the English situation.10 In Not dead things many Italian and English examples are to be found.

Although Harms, Raymond and Salman rightly state that print distribution cannot be understood solely in today's national contexts and that international networks and transnational movements were integral to dissemination,11 most books under review adopt a national point of view, writing about ‘the Dutch’ and ‘the Dutch Republic’. Especially when examining printed material, this in fact means a focus on a few cities, for the greater part in the province of Holland. Only Salman gives more than passing attention to rural areas.



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Figure 1. R. Harms, J. Raymond e.a. (eds.), Not dead things. Leiden/Boston 2011


Even Not dead things itself does not escape the national paradigm, once and again stressing the particularity of the Dutch Republic.12 Traditionally Holland in the seventeenth century is seen as an intellectual entrepot, where more printed books were produced than anywhere else.13 The prosperity of the Dutch Republic is not just explained

by trade and warfare, but also by its position as an information hub and a crossroads of cotnmunication.14 Reinders elaborates most on the exceptionality of the Dutch Republic, pointing not only at its economic growth and strong fleet, but also at urbanisation, high literacy rate, relative press freedom, many printers, fierce competition and the small distance between politicians and the citizens they governed.15 In pamphleteering, public debate and many other respects the Dutch Republic is seen as the ‘experimental garden’ of Europe.16

This is not a plea for national, let alone patriotic, historiography of politics, propaganda and news. I merely notice the fact that most studies still respect national boundaries. This is very much enhanced because most online initiatives, like the stcn and the Knuttel-catalogue forming the basis of tempo, are national projects. However, nowadays this can in some cases be complemented with the use of Early English Books Online (eebo) and the still in some ways limited but ever-expanding Universal Short Title Catalogue (ustc).17 Several contributions in Not dead things still respect nowadays national boundaries, but on the other hand for example Alberto Milano's article about ‘Italian pedlars travelling through Europe’ shows the benefits, but also some difficulties, of crossing borders.18

Writing about pamphlets

Pamphlets are not the only, but certainly the best known and most used sources in these recent studies about propaganda and public opinion. The theses of Reinders, Harms and Vroomen are based exclusively on pamphlets, although Reinders also uses handwritten materials such as diaries and letters to investigate the reception of certain pamphlets.19 Salman's book about pedlars and Not dead things are about ‘popular print’. This does not mean pamphlets per se, although pamphlets are always seen as popular print.

The Dutch historiography on pamphlets before the 21st century is quite scarce, but goes back a long time. As early as the 19th century pamphlets were catalogued, with the - now digitised - collection of W.P.C. Knuttel (1854-1921) as the most outstanding exam-

ple. An important scholarly contribution was P.A.M. Geurts' De Nederlandse Opstand in de pamfletten (‘the Dutch Revolt in the pamphlets’) from 1956.20 In 1987 Craig Harline's modern classic Pamphlets, printing, and political culture in the early Dutch Republic was published.21 When almost two decades later, in 2006, the collection of articles Het lange leven van het pamflet (‘the long life of the pamphlet’) appeared, the blurb on the back cover claimed that ‘pamphlets finally get the attention they deserve’.22 Even though Geurts and Harline were exceptional in the times they wrote, they should have been given a little more credit. Likewise in Pamphlets and politics and in for example the work of Harms and Stensland, the ‘old historiography’ is accused of having neglected pamphlets and then Geurts and Harline are put away in a footnote as ‘notable exceptions’.23 Reinders does the same by staring that earlier pamphlets were just seen as illustrative.24 Most book historians, especially those working on the early modern period, will know that this is certainly not a new strategy. As always books are presented as more innovative than they actually are.



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Figure 2. D. Haks, Vaderland & vrede 1672-1713. Hilversum 2013




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Figure 3. M. Reinders, Printed pandemonium. Leiden/Boston 2013




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Figure 4. J. Salman, Pedlars and the popular press. Leiden/Boston 2014


An important question in all studies about pamphlets is a very basic definition problem: what is a pamphlet? In the preface of Het lange leven van het pamflet the editors quote George Orwell stating that pamphlets are like dogs: they can bite, they exist for a long time, there are many varieties, everyone can imagine one, but still it is very difficult to find a suitable definition.25 To this problem different solutions are to be found in the literature. Paul Dijstelberge in this same edited volume of 2006 suggests the simplest and at the same time most unsatisfactory definition by stating a pamphlet is what is found in pamphlet catalogues like Knuttel's. Dijstelberge furthermore wants to skip the definition question and just ask which pamphlets are interesting.26

Meijer Drees proposes to take a function criterion: pamphlets influence readers.27 Reinders in 2010 in his Gedrukte chaos does the same. He states that pamphlets are mostly anonymous, short, Dutch commentaries on current events, but form, content and length differ too much and consequently are unusable for a definition. His solution is also to look at function: pamphlets are printed works reacting negatively or positively on recent events that were relevant at the time of appearance.28 Possibly ‘were relevant’ should be

replaced with ‘seemed relevant’. In Pamphlets and politics, Deen, Onnekink and Reinders in their introduction mention even fewer restrictions: ‘a pamphlet is a topical publication’, to which they add a persuading or convincing function. Even simpler, quoting A.J.P. Taylor, they state ‘a pamphlet is argument’.29 With this also printed resolutions, petitions, plays, poetry and letters become pamphlets.



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Figure 5. M. Stensland, Habsburg Communication in the Dutch Revolt. Amsterdam 2012


In his Printed pandemonium of 2013, Reinders takes a step from function to audience as determining factor. Following Reinders, this pamphlet-audience is popular, urban, civic and middle-class. He calls the Dutch Republic ‘a genuine pamphlet state’.30

Habermas, thick description and crises

It is difficult to discern theory and methodology behind this recent research into pamphlets, popular print, politics and propaganda. What various authors present as ‘method’ or theoretical framework will certainly not be perceived as such by scholars more inclined to the social sciences. Reinders, Harms and Deen amongst others more or less obligatorily mention Jürgen Habermas' ideas about the ‘public sphere’. Often Habermas is reduced to just this concept, without all the nuances he himself presented. In all instances Haber-

mas is called very inspiring, then objections to his notions are presented, before partly or totally discarding the term ‘public sphere’ in its Habermassian form.31

Some authors propose to cast away ‘public sphere’ altogether and even come up with something to use instead. Reinders' alternative reads as follows: ‘popular political culture wherein government used propaganda to influence the (civic) audience but wherein government was also itself influenced by public opinion that was constructed by this audience’.32 Whereas this definition is certainly more suitable and more nuanced than Habermas' (caricatured) term ‘public sphere’, it is also more unwieldy. It is not very likely to replace ‘public sphere’ in its everyday scholarly usage. Possibly a little more promising is Deen's suggestion to use the more neutral term public debate, which she sees as more aptly describing political communication in early modern period.33

A related term concerning pamphlets and their function of influencing people is ‘propaganda’. Deen defines propaganda as ‘(conscious) efforts to influence individuals or groups through public expressions in favor of the opinion of the sender’ and simply states that all early modern political communication had a propagandistic aim.34 Deen does not problematise the term propaganda as she does with public sphere. On the other hand Stensland proposes not to use the word propaganda at all, because the term is not neutral; the modern negative connotation, evoking manipulation, ‘fits badly with early modern practices and reality’.35 Stensland replaces propaganda by ‘public communication’. The question is whether discarding every difficult concept and finding neutral terms as substitutes will make modern historiography more understandable.

It becomes very clear from these recent studies that the public and public opinion are at the heart of research.36 Interestingly, there are no sensational differences between books that start from the perspective of the authorities and propaganda (in particular Stensland, Deen) and those which seem to carry out their analysis from the opposite side, namely the public (notably Harms). Surprisingly only Haks problematises ‘public opinion’, he looks for ‘public support’ instead.37

Several of the aforementioned authors try to get to the ‘ordinary people’, for whom ‘popular print’ was produced.38 It is important to realise that these ordinary people were

mostly not just the rabble, but consisted of citizens, ‘burghers’, often literate to a certain extent.39 Especially when only examining pamphlets, there still is a large part of the population left out.

A little more about methodology. In his more popular Gedrukte chaos Reinders calls his method ‘chronological-contextualised’, which is presumably what many historians apply, be it without using this term.40 Harms stresses his interdisciplinary approach. Whereas in Het lange leven van het pamflet the contributions are divided into book-historical, political-historical, literal-historical and art-historical chapters, Harms states that he combines these perspectives to see coherence.41 Somewhat later in his introduction he calls his method ‘thick description’.42 Deen also explicitly mentions this approach, borrowed from the anthropologist Clifford Geertz.43 In historical research, this term is more often used than understood. Deen studied anthropology and gets the benefit of the doubt, Harms does not even refer to Geertz. In both cases it is tempting to see ‘thick description’ as an excuse to just tell an interesting story in a Rankean ‘wie es eigentlich gewesen’ manner. It is interesting that just telling interesting stories apparently has to be covered with a not really elaborate theoretical veneer. Vroomen in his thesis does not go to any lengths to explain his method: he ‘manually’ analysed his corpus of pamphlets looking for the words vaderland, patriot, natie and patria.44

Of course, besides pamphlets, many other communication possibilities existed in the early modern period, not all necessarily printed. Several of the authors under scrutiny here help us to realise that pamphlets were not the only and sometimes not even the most important vehicles for political propaganda. Haks for example uses sermons, songs, poems, prints, paintings and coins besides pamphlets and newspapers.45 Stensland calls her method a ‘multimedia approach’ and tries to demonstrate how ‘different genres of pamphlets and other oral, performative and visual media worked together’.46 Deen explicitly wants to nuance existing ideas about print importance. She reinvigorates Harold Love's concept of ‘scribal publications’ to show that also certain manuscript sources were meant for a bigger public.47 Pamphlets were not even the only important printed mass media; from the second quarter of the seventeenth century, ever more newspapers appeared. The articles of Raymond and Joop Koopmans in Not dead things remind us to the importance of news periodicals.48

Another well known ‘method’ in historiographical circles is the use of case studies or benchmark years. Deen and Stensland both have chronologically ordered chapters (1567-1572, 1572-1576 etc.) but more or less cover the whole period they want to examine. Vroomen on the other hand focuses on the pamphlets of the crisis years 1618-1619, 1650 and 1672.49 Harms does exactly the same, with the addition of 1690 and the English Civil war in the 1640s.50 Reinders' Printed pandemonium also treats a crisis, ‘the Year of Disaster’. He states that in 1672 ‘more than 1600 different pamphlets were published... which meant that between one and two million [copies] were circulating in the Republic’.51 Unfortunately he nowhere underpins these figures, presumably based on Harline's estimates. Also in some other instances Reinders presents some numbers without firm ground in the primary sources.52

Reinders regards 1672 as ‘an early modern laboratory of political action that was made possible by this unique combination of events’.53 The metaphor is tricky, because laboratories are mostly not established to create uniqueness and analyze exceptions. In his article in Pamphlets and politics Harms gives a more convincing justification for his focus on crisis years. He states that the interactions between protagonists becomes more visible during conflicts. The possibilities of authors, printers, booksellers and politicians increased.54 He concludes that during crises printed news transformed and the function of pamphlets changed, not just representing but also creating news.55

Book historical insights

Research into pamphlets and other early modern (printed) communication seems book historical by definition. However, sometimes this research is not as book historical as book historians might hope for. An important point is the problematization of authorship. The introduction of Pamphlets and politics explicitly stresses questions as ‘who is behind a pamphlet’? They elucidate that ‘producers’ of pamphlets can be individuals, collectives, printers or booksellers. They can be known or unknown, writing or publishing anonymously or pseudonymously and they are definitely impossible to generalise.56 Regrettably this awareness is not to be found in all individual articles in the volume. Not dead things aims to complicate the traditional book historical triade of production-distribution-reception, especially by widening ‘distribution’ into ‘dissemination’. The editors succeed in exposing the problematic aspects

of Darnton's communications circuit - already thirty years old but still much referred to.57



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Figure 6. F. Deen, Publiek debat en propaganda in Amsterdam tijdens de Nederlandse Opstand. Amsterdam 2015


It is striking how little attention there is for pamphlets from a bibliographical perspective. In their respective articles in the book historical section of Het lange leven van het pamflet Piet Verkruijsse and Paul Dijstelberge argue for more research into the form and typography of pamphlets.58 Both present promising examples to invigorate their claims.59 Verkruijsse asks for systematic analysis of typographical information, to get more insight into the relationships between form and content. Dijstelberge proposes his database, which later came to be known as Ursicula, to attribute anonymously published pamphlets to their printers.60 Dijstelberge ends his article with an explicit invitation to the reader to check out and use his database. There has been surprisingly little follow up on this. Harms in his research mentions the book historical approach, he even

refers to Dijstelberge and Verkruijsse, and he announces that he will look into the content and form of pamphlets.61 However, he does not define form in the same way as Verkruijsse. For Harms form is more or less synonymous with genre, like poem, letter or newsbook. This is something quite different than typographical form including aspects like type, book format or pagination.

Especially with all the current digital possibilities and the recent attention for digital humanities, discourse analysis like Vroomen's should not be done only ‘manually’. The problem is that, while newspapers and books in Delpher are searchable on word level so - ideally - data mining and topic modelling approaches can be applied, tempo cannot be searched full-text. More digitisation projects are necessary to answer potential new and bigger questions, for example about the production process, form developments and discourse. With all the new developments concerning Delpher and Google Books, possibly this pie in the sky will be edible earlier than expected.

All these books on sixteenth and seventeenth century propaganda in the Dutch Republic show that it was not always an orchestrated top down affair; politics and the public influenced each other. However, like today, early modern political communication and public debate were not conducted through one channel, but different voices could be heard via many different means of communication. Focussing on more than pamphlets alone, and examing different media of (political) communication seems to be the most promising direction of research. Deen calls this a music score, although in some cases cacophony would be a more suitable term.62

These studies confirm recent ideas about the importance of money over morals in the history of the book. Take for example Harms' repeated stress on the fact that regarding pamphlet production, saleability was more important than ideology.63 Although this seems to be more and more taken into account within the book historical community, outside it there still is a general tendency to see books as transparent objects conveying the ideas of the author and overlook the influence of the commercial aspects of the book production and book trade. On the other hand, Salman and others show that saleability was not always all-important. We also have to take into account patronage and modes of distribution that were not aimed at the (free) market.64

The most important realisation is the fact that books are ‘not dead things’, that they ‘preserved a potency of life’.65 The receiving end of propaganda strategies did not consist of passive consumers without possibilities. Harms echoes McLuhan and Eisenstein by staring text is not just the result of context, but text also affects context.66 Pamphlets and other printed and manuscript media could be political events themselves with far reaching implications.67 They can be viewed as historical actors.

Notwithstanding these recent readable, broad and detailed studies, pamphlets and other early modern popular media are not yet overused in historical research. Especially the areas outside urbanised Holland and the times in between crises deserve more attention. There are still many not so well-known and unknown pamphlets, within and outside the Knuttel-catalogue, waiting to become part of historical investigations. Hopefully bookhistorians will feel stimulated to approach these sources from new angles, to problematise - but not discard - given concepts and to use - but view suspiciously - new digital possibilities. Possibly analytical bibliographers can do some counting, analyze typography and identify anonymous printers. Ideally their findings should be integrated in the broader political and cultural history of the Dutch Golden Age. The books under review here show that there are many interesting stories to teil, and leave ample room for adjustments, complements and news.68


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