This project will establish how and why Dutch entrepreneurs participated in exploiting the English, French and Iberian empires.

What can continuity and change in the manufacturing of locally made ceramics from the early colonials Spanish towns of Concepción de la Vega, Cotuí and Nueva Cádiz (1492-1600) tell us about the choices people made in ceramic production as a reaction the the changing social environment?

This research project is an integral part of its mother-programme NEXUS1492 ERC Synergy Project directed by Prof. Corinne Hofman. Overarchingly, it aims at understanding and bridging from the archaeological perspective the late pre-colonial and early colonial history of the Southeastern Caribbean macroregion…

Investigating epistemic and ethical practices in medical experimentation on humans in the colonial period in Southeast Asia.

This monograph by Robert Ross provides a detailed narrative of the Kat River Settlement in the Eastern Cape of South Africa during the nineteenth century.

Critical Edition, Translation and Commentary

Managing Diversity: Supervising Functions in Managing Colonial Workplaces

What did colonial officials and missionaries think they were doing?

A portrait of the complex historical process of over 500 years of European colonialism in the New World.

Colonialism Inside Out: Everyday Experience and Plural Practice in Dutch Institutions in Sri Lanka (c. 1700-1800)

In October 1740, a tragedy unfolded in Batavia, the Asian headquarters of the Dutch East India Company on the island of Java. Faced with a spontaneous Chinese peasant uprising, Batavia’s vengeful inhabitants carried out a bloody massacre of their fellow Chinese within the city walls. The murderers marched…

Mechanical forces are known to play an important role in bacterial colonies. In this dissertation, we study the self-organization at various stages of growing bacterial colonies, and focus on the mechanical effects of cell growth.

Yearbook of Women's History.

At the heart of this study is a thorough inquiry of categorisations of social identity used in the VOC’s record-keeping bureaucracy. How were service, occupational and caste groups classified and shaped by the VOC?

El Chorro de Maita, Cuba

Carsten Stahn has just published Confronting Colonial Objects: Histories, Legalities and Access to Culture. The book is part of the OUP Cultural Heritage Law and Policy Series.

Investigating the contribution of interpreters, informants, hunters and guides in the making of colonial scientific knowledge.

Pursuing Whiteness in the Colonies offers a new comprehension of colonial history from below by taking remnants of individual agencies from a whiteness studies perspective. It highlights the experiences and perceptions of colonisers and how they portrayed and re-interpreted their identities in Afric…

Unlike most city histories, this book focuses exclusively on the city’s connections with colonialism and slavery.

On 2 Juni 2021, Maarten Manse defended his thesis 'Promise, Pretence and Pragmatism: Governance and Taxation in Colonial Indonesia, 1870-1940'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. R. Arendsen.

Reproducing past, present and future: colonial visions and experience in Asia in the residencies

Investigating the making of knowledge in anthropology and natural history in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia.

This book provides an overview of critical scholarly reflections on the history of Dutch slavery and colonization, as well as how this translates into critical cultural practices.

What was the function of the Dutch Protestant Church in Sri Lankan society? Why did people relate to the Church and how did conversion influence their life course?

The project GRADIENTS investigates what it meant to be European in colonial Africa where identification as European often did not depend on skin colour and was understood on a spectrum with many gradients.

For hundreds of years, the island of Sri Lanka was a crucial stopover for people and goods in the Indian Ocean. For the Dutch East India Company, it was also a crossroads in the Indian Ocean slave trade. Slavery was present in multiple forms in Sri Lanka—then Ceylon—when the British conquered the island…

Subproject of

Doctoral Thesis

How were (post) colonial migrants included in post-war welfare systems?

Since 2014 church organ player Paul Houdijk has been working on his PhD project on the musical and aesthetic developments of the Dutch 19th-century church organ builder Michael Maarschalkerweerd.

This project focuses on Dutch registration of land and people in rural Sri Lanka. How did the practice of “fixating” the fluid social relations and dynamic daily practices into categories affect family strategies of reproduction and survival?

The Lakenhal depot houses three nineteenth-century sample books in which the cotton company De Heyder & Co kept precise records of who placed which orders. History student Marit Scheepsma used them to find out more about the company's colonial contacts.

Shifting the Compass: Pluricontinental Connections in Dutch Colonial and Postcolonial Literature

On 20 September 2023 Mark van de Water successfully defended a doctoral thesis and graduated.

This volume provides one of the most comprehensive overviews of the archaeology of a single Caribbean island yet published. Drawing together scholars from the Caribbean, north America and Europe, all working from a range of disciplines within the broader scope of archaeology, and drawing upon recent…

It was with great sadness that on 17 May 2021 we learned of the death of our dear colleague Paul Valk. Paul died from the consequences of COVID-19, having been diagnosed with coronavirus over three weeks ago. Soon after this he was admitted to intensive care, where he was kept in an induced coma on…

Archaeologist Eduardo Herrera Malatesta reflects on the unfamiliarity with the pre-Columbian past that he encountered during fieldwork in the Montecristi province in the Dominican Republic.

How was time understood during the colonial period by Tlaxcaltecan Naua communities? What is the relationship between time, spirituality and ritual in the present-day Naua community of Santa Catarina? What does this tell us about the strengths and values of Indigenous heritage and about the impact of…

The modern-day Caribbean is a stunningly diverse but also intricately interconnected geo-cultural region, resulting partly from the islands’ shared colonial histories and an increasingly globalizing economy.

Since the emergence of humankind people have maintained social contacts and traveled widely, establishing interaction networks in which goods are traded and ideas are transmitted, increasingly on a global scale.

We welcome Paul Sharp as The Hague Journal of Diplomacy's first Honorary Editor.

Paul Kozowyk has received one of the Archon PhD positions with his research proposal Sticking around: identification, performance and preservation of Palaeolithic adhesives.

On 25 May, Professor Paul Abels retired as professor by special appointment. Abels has been working as Professor by special appointment Governance of Intelligence and Security Services at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs since 2017.

This book reveals how one publishing firm's editorial strategy helped to legitimate European colonialism in the early modern era.

Sex and power are closely linked, and this was certainly true in the former Dutch colonies. PhD student Sophie Rose investigated how sexual and love relationships influenced eighteenth-century power structures there. 'You can see that there was constant fighting over who stood where in the social hi…