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Self-avowedly influenced by the postmodernist critique of nineteenth-century ‘positivism’, Jesse Spohnholz's ambitious and multiple prize-winning 2017 The Convent of Wesel: The Event that Never was and the Invention of Tradition speaks at once to the political and institutional history of the Reformed churches of the Netherlands and northwestern Germany, to the role of archiving practices in shaping historical understanding, and to the nature of historical study. This review offers both an extended synopsis and a critique of the book. While recognizing its considerable achievement, it questions its framing of its findings about the Reformation era with reference to the ‘confessionalization’ debate, its reliance on a prefabricated narrative about archives as instruments of power and marginalization, and its mischaracterizations of post-Rankean historical practice and theory. Implications of the book’s findings for further research into the politics and personalities of the Reformation in the Low Countries are also suggested.

In this discussion of BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review Philip Benedict reviewed Jesse Spohnholz’s book, The Convent of Wesel: The Event That Never Was and the Invention of Tradition (Cambridge 2017). While Benedict praises Spohnholz’s research and contributions as they pertain to the religious history of sixteenthcentury Europe, he criticizes Spohnholz for borrowing from scholarship associated with the ‘archival turn’ and postmodernist critiques of constructivist empiricism. In this response, Spohnholz defends his approach and its relevance for questions about writing the history of the Reformation in the twenty-first century. Spohnholz stresses the shared historical and methodological perspectives between himself and Benedict (and others), comments on the historical significance of his study, and clarifies the book’s intended audiences.

Children were central to Dutch and Belgian colonial projects. Children and youth were the objects of colonial interventions issued by missionaries and officials. However, children could also become actors who produced change in a colonial context. Crucial in colonial policies towards children was the separation of children from their parents, communities and/or culture (‘child separation’) in all kinds of forms – temporary or permanent, far from home or close by, in contact with their own community or cut off from it – and to various degrees of coercion (voluntary, from a situation of dependence, enforced with punishment or violence). Child separation projects could involve adoption, foster parenting, ‘apprenticeships’ serving a household, boarding schools or day schools. It could concern children from the local elite, but also children who ended up on the margins of their own communities or were even bought out of slavery. Child separation was never about education only, but always imposed specific morals and life styles on its subjects as well. It caused profound fault lines in colonised families and communities. For colonial politics, it was key to controlling, influencing and disciplining the colonised population (‘governmentality’). In the case of children of ethnically mixed descent, child separation often involved policing hierarchical racialised boundaries in the colony; in the case of indigenous children, it aimed at transforming the colonised population. Christian missions were pivotal in child separation projects. This special issue, therefore, pleads for a more central place of Catholic and Protestant missions in the analysis of Dutch colonial history, comparable to Belgian historiography. Finally, it is precisely these (missionary) colonial projects, often labeled as ‘soft’ or ‘civilising’, that have passed unnoticed into post-colonial discourses, organisations and practices, such as transnational adoption or surrogacy, and countless development projects in which children, detached from their own family and context, must be ‘saved’. Without proper scholarly attention for Christian missions in colonial history, these traces of the colonial past in the postcolonial present will not be recognised as such. Kinderen stonden centraal in Nederlandse en Belgische koloniale projecten. Kinderen en jongeren waren daarbij het object van koloniaal handelen van missionarissen, zendelingen en ambtenaren, maar zij konden ook zelf actoren worden die in een koloniale context veranderingen veroorzaakten. Cruciaal in deze koloniale projecten was het scheiden van kinderen van hun ouders, van hun gemeenschappen en van hun cultuur (child separation) in allerlei vormen – tijdelijk of voorgoed, ver van huis of dichtbij, in contact met de eigen gemeenschap of volledig daarvan afgesneden – en in diverse gradaties van dwang (vrijwillig, vanuit een situatie van afhankelijkheid, afgedwongen met straffen of geweld). Concreet kon het gaan om adoptie, pleegouderschap, het in huis nemen van werkende ‘leerjongens en -meisjes’, kostscholen of dagscholen. De kinderen zelf waren afkomstig uit de lokale elite, of het waren juist kinderen die in de marge van hun eigen gemeenschappen terecht waren gekomen, of zelfs door missionarissen uit slavernij werden gekocht. De doelstellingen van deze praktijken betroffen nooit alleen onderricht, maar altijd ook het aanleren van een bepaalde levenswijze en moraal. Niet alleen veroorzaakten de scheiding en heropvoeding ingrijpende breuklijnen in gekoloniseerde families en gemeenschappen; voor de koloniale politiek waren deze kinderen de sleutel tot het controleren, beinvloeden en disciplineren van de gekoloniseerde bevolking (governmentality). In het geval van kinderen van etnisch gemengde komaf ging het vaak om het bewaken van de hierarchische geracialiseerde grenzen in de kolonie; in het geval van lokale kinderen meer om het transformeren van de gekoloniseerde bevolking. Van veel instellingen voor opvoeding en onderwijs van deze kinderen vormden christelijke missie- en zendingsorganisaties de spil. In en met dit themanummer wordt daarom ook een lans gebroken voor de integratie van missie en zending in het analyseren van de Nederlandse koloniale geschiedenis, in navolging van de Belgische historiografie. Tot slot zijn het juist deze vaak als ‘zacht’ of ‘civiliserend’ aangemerkte koloniale projecten die ongemerkt zijn overgegaan in postkoloniale discoursen, organisaties en praktijken, zoals transnationale adoptie of draagmoederschap, en talloze ontwikkelingsprojecten waarin kinderen, losgezongen van hun eigen familie en context, ‘gered’ moeten worden. Zonder gedegen wetenschappelijke aandacht voor de rol van christelijke missie- en zendingsorganisaties in de koloniale geschiedenis zullen deze sporen van het koloniale verleden in het postkoloniale heden niet als dusdanig worden herkend.

Porezni popis iz 1598. je važan izvor za socio-ekonomsku povijest Slavonskog Kraljevstva. Prikupljajući podatke iz popisa i analizirajući ih, moguće je odrediti ekonomske i demografske promjene tijekom osmanskih ratova. Godine 1598., na području Slavonskog Kraljevstva, je živjelo oko 100.000 ljudi. Kraljevstvo je bilo podjeljeno na tri županije. Najnapučenija je bila Varaždinska, slijedila ju je Zagrebačka, a najmanje je stanovnika imala Križevačka županija. Osmanske provale i pljačke bili su glavni razlozi za manju napućenost Zagrebačke i Križevačke županije, s obzirom da su se obje nalazile na samoj granici s Osmanskim Carstvom. S druge strane, Varaždinska je županija bila donekle zaštićena te je bila gušće napućena i imala bolje ekonomske uvjete u ranom novom vijeku. Različite su društvene kategorije naseljavale Slavonsko Kraljevstvo, ali su koloni i inkvilini bili kvantitativno dominantni. Dok su inkvilini bili dominantna društvena kategorija Varaždinske županije, u ostale dvije županij tu su poziciju zauzimali koloni. Većina ostalih društvenih kategorija živjela je na području Varaždinske županije te je ista bila svojeversni ekonomski raj u Slavonskom Kraljevstvu. Pozicija žena ovisila je o njihovom društvenom statusu. Dok je skoro svaki četvrti vlastelin bila žena, u nižim kategorijama su žene činile manji udio kućedomaćina, odnosno svaki deseti kućedomaćin bila je žena. Većina su bile udovice, koje su iostale s maloljetnom djecom ili su njihova djeca već formirala svoje zasebne obitelji. Oko 75% naselja Slavonskog Kraljevstva postoje i naseljana su i danas. Najveći gubitak naselja primjetan je na području oko Sv. Ivana Zeline i porječju Kupe. Najviše su na to utjecale osmanske provale i pljačke. Gubitak naselja u Varaždinskoj županije posljedica je drugačijih zbivanja, a najvažniji razlog je preseljenje stanovništva s brda u nizine. Kvaliteta tla u nizinama je također bila ključna za povećanje stanovništva, pa je tako Varaždinska županije u isto vrijeme imala povećanje stanovništva, ali i gubitak starih naselja. Tax conscription of Slavonian Kingdom from 1598 is an important historical source for the social and economic history of the Slavonian Kingdom. By collecting data from the source and analyzing them, it is possible to determine the economic and demographic changes during the Ottoman wars. There were approximately 100.000 people living in 1598 on the territory of the Slavonian Kingdom. The kingdom itself was divided in three parts called counties (županija). The most populous was the Varaždin County, followed by the Zagreb County and the Križevci County. Ottoman attacks and looting were the key reason for the lesser density of Zagreb and Križevci County, since they were situated on the border with the Ottoman Empire. On the other hand, Varaždin County was somehow protected and had, therefore, higher density of population and better economic conditions during early modern period. There were numerous social categories living on the territory of the Slavonian Kingdom, with serfs (colonus) and inquilinus as dominant. While two of the counties had higher population of serfs, the category called inquilinus was dominant social category in the Varaždin County. Most of other categories also lived in the said county, which had become the economic safe haven within the Slavonian Kingdom. Position of women varied according to their social status. While approximately every fourth noble owner was a female, in lower social categories less women were counted as homeowners as every 10th homeowner was a female. Most of them were widows, who were either left with underage children, or were old and their children had already formed independent families. Approximately 75% of settlements in Slavonian Kingdom still exist and are inhabited. The most apparent loss of settlements was experienced around Sveti Ivan Zelina and river Kupa valley. It was mostly the consequence of Ottoman raids and attacks. The loss of settlements in Varaždin County had other reasons, and the most important was the resettling of population from hills to the valleys. The soil in valleys was of better quality which was essential for the growth of population. Thus, while experiencing population growth, Varaždin County had at the same time lost a number of its ancient settlements.

L’article présente une réflexion critique sur l’historiographie dédiée aux relations familiales en Italie au xxe siècle, dans le but de tracer un nouvel agenda de recherche capable d’aller au-delà des résultats obtenus lors de la saison productive des années 1980. À la lumière de l’histoire culturelle et du genre, l’article propose d’adopter une perspective moins centrée sur les reconstructions linéaires et plus attentive à éclairer les conflits sociaux qui traversent la définition même de la famille et de l’intimité. À partir de deux thèmes emblématiques, les pratiques de consommation et les comportements reproductifs, l’article aborde ensuite la question d’ordre méthodologique posée par l’affaiblissement progressif de l’histoire sociale et souligne la nécessité d’une imbrication étroite entre le « social » et le « culturel ». The article proposes a theoretical reflection on historiography dedicated to family relationships in XX century Italy with the aim of tracing a new research agenda, capable of going beyond the results obtained in the fertile season of the 1980s. In the light of cultural and gender history, the article argues the need to take a perspective less centered on linear reconstructions and more careful to illuminate the social conflicts that cross the very definition of family and intimacy. By focusing on two emblematic themes, consumption practices and reproductive behaviors, the article then deals with the methodological question posed by the progressive weakening of social history and supports the need for an intertwining between the ‘social’ and the ‘cultural’. L’articolo propone una riflessione teorica sulla storiografia dedicata alle relazioni familiari nell’Italia del XX secolo con l’obiettivo di tracciare una nuova agenda di ricerca, capace di andare oltre i risultati ottenuti nella fertile stagione degli anni Ottanta. In particolare, alla luce della storia culturale e della storia di genere, l’articolo argomenta la necessità di assumere una prospettiva meno centrata su ricostruzioni evoluzioniste e più attenta ad illuminare i conflitti sociali che attraversano la definizione stessa di famiglia e di intimità. A partire da due temi emblematici, le pratiche di consumo e i comportamenti riproduttivi, l’articolo affronta poi la questione metodologica, posta dall’indebolimento progressivo della storia sociale e sostiene la necessità di un intreccio tra questa e la prospettiva culturale.

This article examines practices of child separation in South Dutch New Guinea during the first two decades of colonial administration and missionary presence, spanning the years 1902-1920. By examining the ways in which the Dutch Catholic missionary priests and brothers of the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (Missionnaires du Sacré Coeur – MSC) sought to ‘civilise’ the Marind-anim and reconfigure Marind society, I argue that this ‘civilising’ project concentrated on the management, control and transformation of bodies and bodily practices – especially those of children. This project only appeared to be feasible in what I define as ‘spaces of transformation’, constituted by the mission’s boarding schools and new model villages, in which missionaries could establish some degree of authority. Designed specifically to separate Marind youth and socialise them in a manner distinct from that undergone by their parents, these institutions enhanced missionary efforts to transform Marind society by interrupting the transmission of knowledge and practice from one generation to the next. Dit artikel onderzoekt praktijken die erop gericht waren kinderen uit hun oorspronkelijke milieu te verwijderen in het zuidelijke deel van Nederlands Nieuw-Guinea tijdens de eerste twee decennia van het koloniaal bestuur en de katholieke missie van 1902-1920. De analyse van de manieren waarop Nederlandse katholieke missionarissen en broeders van de Missionaires du Sacré Coeur (MSC) de Marind-anim en hun samenleving wilden hervormen toont aan dat dit ‘beschavingsproject’ zich concentreerde op het controleren en transformeren van lichamen en lichamelijke praktijken, met name op die van kinderen. Dergelijke ‘beschavingspraktijken’ werden alleen uitvoerbaar geacht in die ruimtes waar de Nederlandse priesters en broeders een zekere mate van gezag konden uitoefenen. Kostscholen en modeldorpen, die in dit artikel als ‘spaces of transformation’ worden gedefinieerd, werden speciaal opgezet om Marind kinderen en jongvolwassenen tijdelijk aan hun oorspronkelijke omgeving te onttrekken, zodat de overdracht van kennis en praktijken van de oudere generatie op de jongere generatie onderbroken werd. De missionarissen beschouwden dit als de enige mogelijke werkwijze om de kinderen te socialiseren op een manier die wezenlijk verschilde van de opvoedingspraktijken van hun ouders.

While in the social sciences everyday mobility and street use are seen as central to the understanding of urban societies, in the work of historians these phenomena only play a limited role. Building upon methods from related fields and using digital tools, this article proposes a new methodological approach to study historical mobility and street use. This ‘snapshot approach’ facilitates intercultural comparability and creates possibilities for systematic spatial analyses. We propose it forms an important tool to enhance our understanding of gendered urban experience in the past.

Purpose. The article presents a brief overview of the 30-year period of the development of Russian gender studies and reviews the state of gender studies in Siberia in the last decade. Results. The authors came to the conclusion that the gender approach in Russia was very successful in the field of historical disciplines, especially in historical feminology and women’s studies. The authors analyze the emergence of various areas within this issue, the key topics and approaches that have been developed in the Russian humanities. The main directions were reflected in the anniversary collection digest on gender history and anthropology “Gender in the focus of anthropology, family ethnography and the social history of everyday life” (2019). Conclusion. The authors describe the current position of Siberian gender studies and conclude that gender issues in Siberia are less active in comparison with the European part of Russia. In recent years, Siberian researchers have increasingly replaced the category of “gender” with neutral categories of “family research”, “female”, “male”, and so on. More often researchers choose “classical” historical problems raised in historical science before the “humanitarian renaissance”, which began in the 1990s in Russia. In modern gender studies in the Siberian region, the capabilities of critical feminist optics and gender methodology are rarely used, and queer-issues are not developed.

What is Work? is a hugely impressive and important contribution to the fields of labour history, gender history and social history and one which should remain an essential text for some time to com...

Paula Thiede war die erste Frau, die die Leitung einer Gewerkschaft übernahm. Möglich wurde dies durch die Handlungsmacht der gut organisierten Hilfsarbeiterinnen im Druckgewerbe. Gemeinsam mit solidarischen Kollegen entwickelten sie Strategien, um die Anliegen von Gleichberechtigung und Gewerkschaftsarbeit zu verbinden und ihre Interessen erfolgreich zu vertreten. Uwe Fuhrmann geht dieser bislang unbekannten Geschichte einer außergewöhnlichen Gewerkschaft im Deutschen Kaiserreich nach. Die Buchdruckerei-HilfsarbeiterInnen um Paula Thiede demonstrieren die vergessenen Möglichkeiten einer ganzen Epoche - eine Geschichte, die auch heute erstaunlich aktuell ist, wenn es um die Frage nach Gleich- und Ungleichbehandlung im Sinne der Emanzipation geht.

Anorexia nervosa appeared as a newly named disorder in the 1870s in Britain, leading historians and other scholars to pinpoint this as the origin point of a medicalised understanding of female food refusal. An abiding interest in locating the historical roots of this contemporary disorder has led scholars to emphasise the ways in which anorexia nervosa is therefore an historical and not merely a ‘modern’ disorder. It has also resulted in a body of scholarship that emphasises continuity over discontinuity in anorexia nervosa’s medicalised history. This has meant that scholars have neglected to ask why after its introduction into the medical lexicon, anorexia nervosa failed to become established as a credible, universally recognised and endorsed, and utile diagnostic category. This thesis is therefore concerned with two intertwined curiosities about anorexia nervosa’s appearance in this period. It on the one hand explores the conditions within the medical profession that facilitated anorexia nervosa’s identification and influenced the form in which it was articulated. It then pivots away from its emergence to show that this new disorder failed to make inroads into either the medical community or into late Victorian society and culture more broadly. The thesis argues that following its identification, anorexia nervosa failed to achieve supremacy within the medical profession and further failed to either reflect or influence women’s social reality or align neatly with the anxieties encoded within cultural discourses about young women’s health. As a result, and complicating the notion of a binary between continuity or discontinuity, it concludes that although the creation of anorexia nervosa as a new and distinct clinical syndrome in the late nineteenth century does indeed represent the origin point of a medicalised understanding of female food refusal, anorexia nervosa’s early history can be most aptly characterised as a ‘false start’ for what would become, much later, an enduring, troubling and highly visible psychiatric disorder.

This article provides an overview of the social-historical methodology, highlights relevant scholarship on this approach, and offers specific examples of studies on the Reformation period in Europe that use the social-historical method. I begin by explaining how the social-historical methodology, otherwise known as new social history, originated from the historical method. While highlighting key scholarship on this approach, I outline how the social-historical method differs from the historical method. I also present two essential methodological features of social history, including using sources in new, more analytical ways. I conclude by presenting specific examples of how historians of the early modern period, such as Kirsi Stjerna and Merry Wiesner-Hanks, apply the social-historical method in their own studies. This last section focuses on works that explore women’s history, family life, work, and witchcraft, primarily during the Reformation period in Europe. My goal is to provide a resource for emerging young scholars, such as undergraduate students and newly admitted graduate students, who are interested in strengthening their own work by better understanding the social-historical research method and how it is used in the study of history and religion.

The sheer variety and size of Dutch scientific collections of Indonesia’s flora and fauna are unique in the world. Gathered over the last two hundred years, they represent a shared European legacy of natural historical research and its colonial context. To understand how the entanglement of transnational and trans-imperial networks and actors within the field of natural history shaped the study of nature, this essay focuses on the history of the Natuurkundige Commissie voor Nederlandsch-Indië (Committee for Natural History of the Netherlands Indies), one of the main state-funded collecting enterprises in the early nineteenth century world. Similar to other colonial powers, the Dutch made extensive use of local informants and naturalists from other European countries. By studying the Committee’s fieldwork, this essay contributes to an entangled history of natural history and collecting in the emergent Dutch empire. De enorme verscheidenheid en omvang van Nederlandse wetenschappelijke collecties op het gebied van flora en fauna in Indonesië zijn wereldwijd ongeëvenaard. Deze collecties, die in de afgelopen tweehonderd jaar werden samengesteld, belichamen een gemeenschappelijk Europees erfgoed op het gebied van natuurhistorisch onderzoek en de koloniale context waarin dit ontstond. Om een goed begrip te krijgen van de wijze waarop de verstrengeling van transnationale en transimperiale netwerken en actoren op het gebied van de natuurhistorie het natuur-wetenschappelijk onderzoek bepaalde, richt dit artikel zich op de geschiedenis van de Natuurkundige Commissie voor Nederlandsch-Indië, een van de belangrijkste door de staat gefinancierde, negentiende-eeuwse instellingen die zich op collectievorming richtten. Net als andere koloniale machten maakten ook de Nederlanders op grote schaal gebruik van de kennis van natuuronderzoekers uit andere Europese landen en van lokale informanten in de kolonie. Met deze analyse van het veldonderzoek van de Commissie toont dit artikel aan hoezeer de geschiedenis van de natuurgeschiedenis en van collectievorming vervlochten is met de geschiedenis van het Nederlandse kolonialisme. This article is part of the special issue ‘The Dutch Empire and Europe. Demands and Opportunities’. Dit artikel maakt deel uit van het themanummer ‘The Dutch Empire and Europe. Demands and Opportunities’.

Internationally, the 1980s marked a shift in economic policy. In the Netherlands, it was the decade of the supposedly moderate neoliberal turn and of the first round of flexibilization. Nowadays, the degree of flexibility of the Dutch labour market is exceptionally high compared to neighbouring countries. This article examines how the trade union movement in the 1980s responded to increasing flexibilization, which strategy was used, and how this contributed to early Dutch flexibilization. In contrast to the literature with an institutional perspective, this article analyzes the trade union movement from a social-historical perspective and as a social movement organization. As a result, it argues that the effects of rising flexibilization were signalled very early on within the trade unions. Be that as it may, both the priorities that followed from the agreements with employer organizations and the internal dynamics, were decisive for the trade union movement’s relatively late and unassertive responses towards the flexibilization of labour in the 1980s.