scholarly journals Magie en wetenschap in de spektakelcultuur van de negentiende eeuw

2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Kurt Vanhoutte ◽  
Nele Wynants
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Complex Relationship ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
International Mobility ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
World’S Fairs ◽  
The Masses ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Scientific Learning

Magic and Science in the Nineteenth-century Culture of Spectacle: Henri Robin in the Low Countries. The theatre of modernity served to illuminate scientific insight and discovery in a spectacular way. Astronomy, physics, and experiments with electricity were at the heart of a popular genre that became known as ‘physiques amusantes’ (amusing physics). These shows occupied a middle ground between entertainment and science, between showing and doing. They were often staged by magicians, who presented themselves as ‘professors’ and awed audiences at local fairgrounds, world’s fairs, and popular theatres. One such figure was Henri Robin (1811–1974). Reviews and images dating from Robin’s time in Belgium and the Netherlands and his own memoirs of his time in Paris reveal that he found himself at the crossroads of a number of key developments. In particular, Robin’s theatre practices shed light on the changing nature of spectacle in the latter half of the nineteenth century. His shows succeeded in maintaining a precarious balance between spectacle-driven entertainment and scientific learning, between visually-oriented fairground amusement for the masses and educational fare for the new bourgeoisie. This article will discuss the complex relationship between aesthetic and didactic concerns in Henri Robin’s theatre shows, their remarkable blend of science and magic, and their effect on audiences. At the same time, we will demonstrate that the spectacle of modernity in the Low Countries resulted in part from the international mobility of showmen such as Robin.

Historical Fiction, Cultural Transfer and the Recycling of the Black Legend between the Low Countries and Britain: A Nineteenth-Century Case Study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphaël Ingelbien
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Cultural Transfer ◽  
Liberal Politics ◽  
Dutch Revolt ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Black Legend

This chapter compares Henri Moke’s Le Gueux de Mer (1827) and Thomas Colley Grattan’s The Heiress of Bruges (1830), two historical novels set at the time of the Dutch Revolt and written in the final years of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands. The comparison provides insights into the respective priorities of British and ‘Netherlandic’ writers who dealt in images of Spain in the early nineteenth century. Beyond some clear differences in the ideological urgency of their work, the authors’ liberal politics, their sympathy towards Catholicism and the influence of Romantic Orientalism create important nuances in their versions of the Black Legend, which are ultimately denunciations of bigotry and tyranny rather than expressions of wholesale Hispanophobia.

The Low Countries

2021 ◽  
pp. 680-696
Author(s):  
Arie L. Molendijk
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Early History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Final Note ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The 1960S

Notwithstanding certain similarities, Belgium and the Netherlands have different national histories. Keeping this in mind, this chapter is divided into four sections: early history, pillarization, secularization, and Islam and new developments. From its foundation in 1830, Belgium has been predominantly Catholic, whereas the Netherlands claimed to be a Protestant nation, despite a large minority of Catholics. In the late nineteenth century, self-contained worlds (‘pillars’) emerged in both countries. Catholics, and in the Netherlands orthodox Protestants as well, used their many-branched pillars of societal organizations to emancipate and mobilize their constituencies. In the 1960s, the pillars started to crumble and the number of non-affiliated rose to 42 per cent in Belgium, and 68 per cent in the Netherlands. Notwithstanding the immigration of significant groups of Christians and Muslims and a flourishing market in spirituality, both countries have become very secularized. A final note summarizes the situation in Luxembourg.

scholarly journals Of Church Orders and Postmodernism

2021 ◽  
Vol 136 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-77
Author(s):  
Philip Benedict
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Historical Study ◽  
The Political ◽  
Historical Understanding ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
History Of

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.

Editorial Introduction

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Editors of the JIOWS
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Fourth Volume ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Complex Relationships ◽  
Indian Ocean World ◽  
Shed Light

The editors are proud to present the first issue of the fourth volume of the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies. This issue contains three articles, by James Francis Warren (Murdoch University), Kelsey McFaul (University of California, Santa Cruz), and Marek Pawelczak (University of Warsaw), respectively. Warren’s and McFaul’s articles take different approaches to the growing body of work that discusses pirates in the Indian Ocean World, past and present. Warren’s article is historical, exploring the life and times of Julano Taupan in the nineteenth-century Philippines. He invites us to question the meaning of the word ‘pirate’ and the several ways in which Taupan’s life has been interpreted by different European colonists and by anti-colonial movements from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. McFaul’s article, meanwhile, takes a literary approach to discuss the much more recent phenomenon of Somali Piracy, which reached its apex in the last decade. Its contribution is to analyse the works of authors based in the region, challenging paradigms that have mostly been developed from analysis of works written in the West. Finally, Pawelczak’s article is a legal history of British jurisdiction in mid-late nineteenth-century Zanzibar. It examines one of the facets that underpinned European influence in the western Indian Ocean World before the establishment of colonial rule. In sum, this issue uses two key threads to shed light on the complex relationships between European and other Western powers and the Indian Ocean World.

Veiling Esther, Unveiling Her Story

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam J. Silverstein
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Religious Background ◽  
Literary Context ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Selection Of

This book examines the ways in which the biblical book of Esther was read, understood, and used in Muslim lands, from ancient to modern times. It zeroes-in on a selection of case studies, covering works from various periods and regions of the Muslim world, including the Qur’an, premodern historical chronicles and literary works, the writings of a nineteenth-century Shia feminist, a twentieth-century Iranian dictionary, and others. These case studies demonstrate that Muslim sources contain valuable materials on Esther, which shed light both on the Esther story itself and on the Muslim peoples and cultures that received it. The book argues that Muslim sources preserve important, pre-Islamic materials on Esther that have not survived elsewhere, some of which offer answers to ancient questions about Esther, such as the meaning of Haman’s epithet in the Greek versions of the story, the reason why Mordecai refused to prostrate himself before Haman, and the literary context of the “plot of the eunuchs” to kill the Persian king. Furthermore, throughout the book we will see how each author’s cultural and religious background influenced his or her understanding and retelling of the Esther story: In particular, it will be shown that Persian Muslims (and Jews) were often forced to reconcile or choose between the conflicting historical narratives provided by their religious and cultural heritages respectively.

New Sources for Social and Demographic History: The Belgian Population Registers

1978 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Myron P. Gutmann ◽  
Etienne van de Walle
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Demographic History ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Population Register ◽  
Exact Match ◽  
German States ◽  
Belgian Population

In 1853, the First International Statistical Congress unanimously voted a resolution recommending the establishment of population registers in every country: It is indispensable to establish in each commune a population register. Each household will occupy one page. The first inscriptions will be entered according to the information provided by the general census, and all mutations that will occur in the composition of households will be noted successively and in order. Administrative measures will provide for the assessment of changes in legal residence, in order that there may be an exact match between the persons crossed out and the new inscriptions.Such a register has existed in Belgium since 1846. No other country except Sweden, Finland, and Hungary had much experience with such documents in 1853. The resolution was nevertheless ratified in successive International Congresses, but there was no rush to implement it. Several European countries followed suit, including small German states, the Netherlands in 1856, and Italy in 1864. According to a recent United Nations survey, eleven European countries have population registers that trace their origins to the nineteenth century or before: Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland.

Hong Kong's Eurasian “Web” Viewed through the Lens of Inter-Asian Studies: Comments on Engseng Ho's “Inter-Asian Concepts for Mobile Societies”

2017 ◽  
Vol 76 (4) ◽  
pp. 943-951
Author(s):  
Emma Teng
Keyword(s):  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Asian Studies ◽  
Intermediate Scale ◽  
The Social ◽  
Static Models ◽  
China Studies ◽  
History Of ◽  
Shed Light

Engseng Ho proposes that “the study of Asia, thought of as an Inter-Asian space, and smaller than the whole globe, can provide tractable concepts for a new round of research to shed light on the social shapes of societies that are mobile, spatially expansive, and interactive with one other.” Moving us away from more static models of China studies, Japan studies, etc., the concept of “inter-Asian”—where I take the “inter” to stand for inter-national, inter-regional, inter-faith, inter-racial, and inter-ethnic—offers a productive framework for examining histories that have been previously marginalized in dominant historical narratives: for example, the history of colonial Hong Kong's Eurasian community. In such a case, where the scope of inquiry is neither fully global in scale nor strictly local, the inter-Asian framework provides a middle ground and intermediate scale that brings this history into focus.

DRIEDIMENSIONAAL NIEUWS

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 128-152
Author(s):  
Tessel X. Dekker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Mass Medium ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Visual Medium ◽  
The Public ◽  
Wax Models

THREE-DIMENSIONAL NEWS The Amsterdam wax museum as a competitor of the illustrated newspaper, 1882-1919 The nineteenth-century wax museum can be viewed as a contemporary mass medium that showed people scenes from the news. The Nederlandsch Panopticum was the first of its kind in the Netherlands, located in Amsterdam between 1882 and 1919. As an informative visual medium, the Panopticum had to compete with other media, like the illustrated newspaper, for the attention of the public. At the same time, the wax museum also depended on photographs published in these same papers: wax models were often, and in the course of time almost exclusively, modelled after photos. This reciprocal relationship can be seen as an example of ‘intermediality’. In the end, the wax museum lost ground, foremost, to the new mass medium of the time, cinema, which took over both as an urban attraction and as a popular visual medium.

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