John De Witt; or, Twenty Years' Interregnum in the Stadtholdership of the Seventeenth Century

Author(s):  
M. Esquirou de Parieu

The history of the United Provinces, and of Holland especially, from the close of the Spanish rule down to the establishment of the modern monarchy of the Netherlands, is distinguished for its manifestation of a permanent struggle between different opposite principles. Liberty and authority, municipal principle and state principle, republic and monarchy, the spirit of federal isolation and that of centralization, appear to give battle to each other upon a territory itself with difficulty defended from the waves of the ocean by the watchful industry of its inhabitants.

2015 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 24-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Raffe

This article argues that intellectual historians' fascination with a narrative of the emerging Scottish enlightenment has led to a neglect of ideas that did not shape enlightenment culture. As a contribution to a less teleological intellectual history of Scotland, the article examines the reception of the philosophy of René Descartes (1596–1650). Cartesian thought enjoyed a brief period of popularity from the 1670s to the 1690s but appeared outdated by the mid-eighteenth century. Debates about Cartesianism illustrate the ways in which late seventeenth-century Scottish intellectual life was conditioned by the rivalry between presbyterians and episcopalians, and by fears that new philosophy would undermine christianity. Moreover, the reception of Cartesian thought exemplifies intellectual connections between Scotland and the Netherlands. Not only did Descartes' philosophy win its first supporters in the United Provinces, but the Dutch Republic also provided the arguments employed by the main Scottish critics of Cartesianism. In this period the Netherlands was both a source of philosophical innovation and of conservative reaction to intellectual change.


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Javier Díaz Noci

One of the most interesting Spanish-language newspapers of the second half of the seventeenth century was published by a Jewish printer, David de Castro Tartas, and appeared in Amsterdam at least from 1672 and at least until 1702, allegedly with continuity, under the title Gazeta de Amsterdam. It was partially based in translations of news items from other Dutch-language newspapers of its time, but at the same time it included news items presumedly collected in Castro’s (and, in the latest years, Manuel Texeira’s) office and addressed to a community of Jewish who were born as Catholics in Portugal and Spain, emigrated to the Republic of the Netherlands due to religious tolerance. David de Castro Tartas launched another Italian-language newspaper, Gazzetta d'Amsterdam. Since new issues of both newspapers have been found recently, we propose to complete the history of Castro's activity as newspaper editor, not only printer. Using content analysis, we try to underline the importance of this Spanish (and Italian) language printer and editor in the reproduction of material translated and adapted from other newspapers and in the production of news items originally managed in his office.


Author(s):  
C. H. Alexandrowicz

It is generally believed that commercial treaties between European and Asian powers prior to the nineteenth century focused on the establishments and privileges of European traders in Asia. However, there are exceptions where establishments of Asian traders in Europe received the same type of benefits as those enjoyed by European traders in Asia. This chapter focuses on one example, a treaty concluded on 7 February 1631 at The Hague between the King of Persia and the States General of the United Provinces of the Netherlands in which the latter, in return for privileges accorded to the Dutch in Persia, conceded reciprocal benefits to Persian traders in the Netherlands. In terms of international law, the treaty secured national treatment to Persians, granting them the same franchises and rights as those enjoyed by the inhabitants of the Netherlands, even by persons of quality in high positions whenever they engaged in trade.


Itinerario ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
P.J. Marshall

In an essay of extraordinary range and depth, which it is difficult to summarise without distortion, Jacob van Leur is above all making an appeal for the autonomy of Asian history in relation to that of Europe. He was reviewing volume IV by Godée Molsbergen of Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch Indië, which dealt with the eighteenth century. To Molsbergen the activities of the V.O.C. in Asia in the eighteenth century had characteristics distinct from those of the seventeenth-century Company or from what was to follow in Indonesia in the nineteenth century. These characteristics essentially reflected those of the Netherlands during the eighteenth century. Assuming that eighteenth-century European history has unifying characteristics (an assumption that he was inclined to question), Van Leur asked: ‘Is it possible to write the history of Indonesia in the eighteenth century as the history of the Company?’ His answer was a resounding ‘no’. In giving his answer he widened the issue from Indonesia to Asia as a whole. ‘A general view of the whole can only lead to the conclusion that any talk of a European Asia in the eighteenth century is out of the question, that a few European centres of power had been consolidated on a very limited scale, that in general – and here the emphasis should lie – the oriental lands continued to form active factors in the course of events as valid entities, militarily, economically and politically.’ He concluded that diere was an ‘unbroken unity’ of Asian history from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Until well into the nineteenth century Europe and Asia were ‘two equal civilisations developing separately of each other’.


Author(s):  
Giovanni Gellera

The Reformation influenced most aspects of Scottish culture, including philosophy. The Scottish regents produced an original synthesis of scholastic philosophy (especially Scotism) and Reformed views. The synthesis is centred on the relevance of the doctrine of the Fall in epistemology, a ‘Calvinist’ division of science (chiefly, of theology from philosophy), and a reductionist (meta)physics of the Eucharist developed against transubstantiation. Scottish Reformed philosophy was influential abroad via the intellectual network of the Scots working in the Protestant Academies in France, until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685), and in the universities in the United Provinces. The history of Scottish Reformed scholastic philosophy is about its place within the European Reformation, late scholasticism, and the arrival of the ‘new’ philosophies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amélie Couvrat Desvergnes ◽  
Leila Sauvage ◽  
Jan de Hond ◽  
Paolo D’Imporzano ◽  
Matthias Alfeld

AbstractA scrapbook compiled between 1660 and 1687 by Gesina ter Borch (1631–1690), a female artist from the small town of Zwolle in the Netherlands, contains an intriguing painting on paper of a full-length portrait of a young Iranian. Although the figure wears the attributes in vogue at the Safavid court of Isfahan, certain elements seem rather incongruous and peculiar. The general composition appears static and rigid, an impression reinforced by an unusual black painted background. Stylistic differences within the painting were also observed, hinting at alterations to the original painting. To investigate the history of the painting and to reconstruct the original composition and identify the later additions, perhaps made by Gesina herself, the painting was examined with different imaging and analytic techniques available at the Conservation and Science Department of the Rijksmuseum. This allowed the research team to discriminate between pigments used for the original composition and pigments used to conceal damaged areas of the painting and added pictorial elements. After interpreting scientific results, as well as historical findings, it was possible to shed light on the use of specific pigments, namely lead white and smalt, and on the possible misinterpretation of some details, such as the cup held by the young man. The results of macro X-ray fluorescence scanning (MA-XRF) and lead isotope analysis, viewed in the light of information about the economic and cultural exchanges between Iran and the Netherlands in the seventeenth century, fed new theories about the origin and history of this painting. The painting, originally made in Iran in the style of Riza Abbasi, the head of the Emperor Shah Abbas’ library, ended up in Gesina ter Borch's workshop and may have been ‘restored’ by the artist to improve its condition and to match her tastes.


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