In the end, we always have to call institutions to account

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 285-297
Author(s):  
Looi van Kessel ◽  
Fleur van Leeuwen
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Public Library ◽  
The United States ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Lgbt History ◽  
Lgbt Activism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Black Queer ◽  
Archival Practices

Abstract This year’s pride season marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, an event that, while not the beginning of the Gay Rights Movement in the United States, should at least be viewed as one of the first major milestones in the movement’s history. In the Netherlands, too, the history of LGBT activism has been commemorated in the recent exhibition ‘With Pride’, organised by IHLIA LGBT Heritage (see the review by Michiel Odijk in this issue). After its first successful run at the Amsterdam Public Library, the exhibition toured the Netherlands and opened in Utrecht during its annual pride festivities on June 3. While praised for its thorough documentation of 40 years of Dutch queer resistance, there was also critique. A number of activists and scholars pointed to a lack of inclusivity and representation, which they argued compromised the exhibition’s validity.Wigbertson Julian Isenia and Naomie Pieter, founders of Black Queer and Trans Resistance Netherlands (BQTRNL) and Black Queer Archive, represent two of these critical voices and address the structural exclusion of queers of colour in history writing and archival practices in their work. Julian co-edited the previous issue of Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies (vol. 22(2): ‘Sexual Politics Between the Netherlands and the Caribbean: Imperial Entanglements and Archival Desire’) and, together with Gianmaria Colpani, Julian and Naomie organised the roundtable ‘Archiving Queer of Colour Politics in the Netherlands’ (Colpani, Isenia, & Pieter, 2019). In response to the IHLIA exhibition, they proposed an exhibition under the title Nos Tei (Papiamentu/o for ‘We are here’ or ‘We exist’), which is to serve as an addition to the original ‘With Pride’ exhibition and ran independently from 11 July until 4 September 2019. We were very happy that both agreed to an interview for this thematic issue on ‘narratives of LGBT history in the Netherlands’ to discuss their views on archival practices and the exclusion of queer of colour perspectives from mainstream exhibition and archival spaces.

HURRICANES, CROPS, AND CAPITAL: THE METEOROLOGICAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF AMERICAN EMPIRE IN THE WEST INDIES

2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 418-445 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie L. Pietruska
Keyword(s):  
West Indian ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Empire ◽  
The West ◽  
Knowledge Infrastructure ◽  
Military Security ◽  
Symbolic Extension ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Weather Service

This article examines the mutually reinforcing imperatives of government science, capitalism, and American empire through a history of the U.S. Weather Bureau's West Indian weather service at the turn of the twentieth century. The original impetus for expanding American meteorological infrastructure into the Caribbean in 1898 was to protect naval vessels from hurricanes, but what began as a measure of military security became, within a year, an instrument of economic expansion that extracted climatological data and produced agricultural reports for American investors. This article argues that the West Indian weather service was a project of imperial meteorology that sought to impose a rational scientific and bureaucratic order on a region that American officials considered racially and culturally inferior, yet relied on the labor of local observers and Cuban meteorological experts in order to do so. Weather reporting networks are examined as a material and symbolic extension of American technoscientific power into the Caribbean and as a knowledge infrastructure that linked the production of agricultural commodities in Cuba and Puerto Rico to the world of commodity exchange in the United States.

Teaching and Researching the History of Sexual Politics at San Francisco State, 1969–1970

2021 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 2-29
Author(s):  
Marc Stein
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Third World ◽  
Sexual Politics ◽  
History Teachers ◽  
Lgbt History ◽  
The Third ◽  
Collaborative Authorship ◽  
Lgbt Activism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Third World

This essay summarizes the methods and results of a collaborative student-faculty research project on the history of sexual politics at San Francisco State University. The collaborators collected and analyzed 160 mainstream, alternative, student, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans) media stories. After describing the project parameters and process, the essay discusses six themes: (1) LGBT history; (2) the Third World Liberation Front strike; (3) feminist sexual politics; (4) the history of heterosexuality; (5) sex businesses, commerce, and entrepreneurship; and (6) sexual arts and culture. The conclusion discusses project ethics and collaborative authorship. The essay’s most significant contributions are pedagogical, providing a model for history teachers interested in working with their students on research skills, digital methodologies, and collaborative projects. The essay also makes original contributions to historical scholarship, most notably in relation to the Third World Liberation Front strike. More generally, the essay provides examples of the growing visibility of LGBT activism, the intersectional character of race, gender, and sexual politics, the complicated nature of gender and sexual politics in the “movement of movements,” the commercialization of sex, and the construction of normative and transgressive heterosexualities in this period.

Locating the Black archive

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-218
Author(s):  
Hannah Ishmael ◽  
Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski ◽  
Kelly Foster ◽  
Etienne Joseph ◽  
Nathan E. Richards
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
Archival Science ◽  
Archival Practice ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Archival Practices

This chapter takes the concept of ‘living heritage’ as a starting point to show the ways in which focusing on tangibility and intangibility, the formal and the informal, can be used to stretch the concepts of archival practice. It highlights the cultural and intellectual traditions, tangible and intangible, found within the Caribbean, Africa, and across the Diaspora. Accordingly, the institutions, organisations, concepts, and practices discussed here have a ‘pre-history’ both internationally and in the UK — a prehistory inseparable from the development of the intellectual and cultural history of African and Caribbean communities in the Diaspora. Despite this, an archival science capable of dealing with these complexities has yet to be developed. The chapter thus considers the ways in which Black-led archival practices in the UK have historically sought to both disrupt and define heritage practices. It makes a claim for the active, political and cultural incursions, disruptions, and interventions in the heritage sector by Black-led archives and heritage practitioners.

Caribbean Organization

1965 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 1070-1073
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Puerto Rico ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
French Guiana ◽  
The United States ◽  
Virgin Islands ◽  
British Virgin Islands ◽  
Netherlands Antilles ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The Caribbean

The Caribbean Council held its fifth and last meeting in Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, from November 30 to December 4, 1964. Attending the meeting were delegates from France on behalf of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, and Martinique; the Netherlands Antilles; Surinam; the British Virgin Islands; the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico; and the United States Virgin Islands. Representatives of Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, and St. Vincent, countries enjoying special observer status, attended the meeting. Also at the meeting were observers from the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Conjuring Futures

2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-104
Author(s):  
Chelsea Schields
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
World Order ◽  
Cultural Institutions ◽  
National Sovereignty ◽  
Netherlands Antilles ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean

This article explores the history of the Foundation for Cultural Cooperation between the Netherlands, Suriname, and the Netherlands Antilles (Sticusa), asking how cultural institutions partook in the process of decolonization. Analyzing the perspectives of Sticusa collaborators and critics in the Caribbean, I argue that cultural actors saw decolonization as an opportunity to reorient cultures toward an emergent world order. In this process, they envisioned a range of horizons, from closer integration with Europe to enhanced affinity with the broader Americas. By the 1970s, however, these horizons narrowed to the attainment of national sovereignty, and Sticusa’s cultural experiment ended as a result.

Book Reviews

1990 ◽  
Vol 64 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 149-208
Author(s):  
Redactie KITLV
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Trinidad And Tobago ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Economic Research ◽  
Royal Institute ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
The University

-Mohammed F. Khayum, Michael B. Connolly ,The economics of the Caribbean Basin. New York: Praeger, 1985. xxiii + 355 pp., John McDermott (eds)-Susan F. Hirsch, Herome Wendell Lurry-Wright, Custom and conflict on a Bahamian out-island. Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1987. xxii + 188 pp.-Evelyne Trouillot-Ménard, Agence de Cooperation Culturelle et Technique, 1,000 proverbes créoles de la Caraïbe francophone. Paris: Editions Caribéennes, 1987. 114 pp.-Sue N. Greene, Amon Saba Saakana, The colonial legacy in Caribbean literature. Trenton NJ: Africa World Press, Inc. 1987. 128 pp.-Andrew Sanders, Cees Koelewijn, Oral literature of the Trio Indians of Surinam. In collaboration with Peter Riviére. Dordrecht and Providence: Foris Publications, 1987. (Caribbean Series 6, KITLV/Royal Institute of Linguistics anbd Anthropology). xiv + 312 pp.-Janette Forte, Nancie L. Gonzalez, Sojouners of the Caribbean: ethnogenesis and ethnohistory of the Garifuna. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1988. xi + 253 pp.-Nancie L. Gonzalez, Neil L. Whitehead, Lords of the Tiger Spirit: a history of the Caribs in colonial Venezuela and Guyana 1498-1820. Dordrecht and Providence: Foris Publications, 1988. (Caribbean Series 10, KITLV/Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthropology.) x + 250 pp.-N.L. Whitehead, Andrew Sanders, The powerless people. London and Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1987. iv + 220 pp.-Russell Parry Scott, Kenneth F. Kiple, The African exchange: toward a biological history of black people. Durham: Duke University Press, 1987. vi + 280 pp.-Colin Clarke, David Dabydeen ,India in the Caribbean. London: Hansib Publishing Ltd., 1987. 326 pp., Brinsley Samaroo (eds)-Juris Silenieks, Edouard Glissant, Caribbean discourse: selected essays. Translated and with an introduction by J. Michael Dash. Charlottesville, Virginia: The University Press of Virginia, 1989. xlvii + 272 pp.-Brenda Gayle Plummer, J. Michael Dash, Haiti and the United States: national stereotypes and the literary imagination. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988. xv + 152 pp.-Evelyne Huber, Michel-Rolph Trouillot, Haiti: state against nation: the origins and legacy of Duvalierism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990. 282 pp.-Leon-Francois Hoffman, Alfred N. Hunt, Hiati's influence on Antebellum America: slumbering volcano of the Caribbean. Baton Rouge and London: Louisiana State University Press, 1988. xvi + 196 pp.-Brenda Gayle Plummer, David Healy, Drive to hegemony: the United States in the Caribbean, 1898-1917. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. xi + 370 pp.-Anthony J. Payne, Jorge Heine ,The Caribbean and world politics: cross currents and cleavages. New York and London: Holmes and Meier Publishers, Inc., 1988. ix + 385 pp., Leslie Manigat (eds)-Anthony P. Maingot, Jacqueline Anne Braveboy-Wagner, The Caribbean in world affairs: the foreign policies of the English-speaking states. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1989. vii + 244 pp.-Edward M. Dew, H.F. Munneke, De Surinaamse constitutionele orde. Nijmegen, The Netherlands: Ars Aequi Libri, 1990. v + 120 pp.-Charles Rutheiser, O. Nigel Bolland, Colonialism and resistance in Belize: essays in historical sociology. Benque Viejo del Carmen, Belize: Cubola Productions / Institute of Social and Economic Research / Society for the Promotion of Education and Research, 1989. ix + 218 pp.-Ken I. Boodhoo, Selwyn Ryan, Trinidad and Tobago: the independence experience, 1962-1987. St. Augustine, Trinidad: ISER, 1988. xxiii + 599 pp.-Alan M. Klein, Jay Mandle ,Grass roots commitment: basketball and society in Trinidad and Tobago. Parkersburg, Iowa: Caribbean Books, 1988. ix + 75 pp., Joan Mandle (eds)-Maureen Warner-Lewis, Reinhard Sander, The Trinidad Awakening: West Indian literature of the nineteen-thirties. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1988. 168 pp.

What Price Sugar? Land, Labor, and Revolution

2008 ◽  
Vol 81 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79-84
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Littlefield
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Spanish American ◽  
Sugar Production ◽  
American Empire ◽  
Chapel Hill ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Eighteenth And Nineteenth Centuries

[First paragraph]Sugar, Slavery, and Society: Perspectives on the Caribbean, India, the Mascarenes, and the United States. Bernard Moitt (ed.). Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2004. vii + 203 pp. (Cloth US $ 65.00)Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450-1680. Stuart B. Schwartz (ed.). Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. xiii + 347 pp. (Paper US $ 22.50)These two books illustrate the fascination that sugar, slavery, and the plantation still exercise over the minds of scholars. One of them also reflects an interest in the influence these have had on the modern world. For students of the history of these things the Schwartz collection is in many ways the more useful. It seeks to fill a lacuna left by the concentration of monographs on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, suggesting that we know less about the history of sugar than we thought we did. Perhaps in no other single place is such a range of information on so wide an area presented in such detail for so early a period. Ranging from Iberia to the Caribbean and including consumption as well as production of sugar, with a nod to the slave trade and a very useful note on weights and currencies, this volume is a gold mine of information. It considers (briefly) the theoretical meaning as well as the growing of this important crop, contrasting its production in Iberia with that on the Atlantic islands of Madeira and the Canaries, colonized by Iberian powers, and continuing the contrast with São Tomé, off the coast of Africa, and on to Brazil and the Spanish American empire before ending with the British in Barbados. In the transit, it of necessity considers and complicates the meaning of “sugar revolution” and shows how scholars using that term do not always mean the same thing. John McCusker and Russell Menard, for example, tackling a cornerstone of the traditional interpretation of the development of sugar, argue that there was no “sugar revolution” in Barbados; economic change had already begun before sugar’s advent, though sugar may have accelerated it, and yet sugar production was transformed on the island. They also undercut, without quite denying, the significance of the Dutch role in the process. Schwartz, while questioning, lings to the traditional expression if not the traditional outlook, seeing in Barbados “the beginning of the sugar revolution” (p. 10).

scholarly journals De BMGN als platform voor vernieuwing van de politieke geschiedenis

2021 ◽  
Vol 136 (2) ◽  
pp. 136-149
Author(s):  
Dirk Jan Wolffram
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Political History ◽  
The Political ◽  
Young Generation ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Dutch Politics ◽  
Cultural Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
History Of

De politieke geschiedenis van Nederland en België zoals bestudeerd in de BMGN had verschillende gezichten. Aanvankelijk domineerde een zekere traditionele geschiedschrijving over beide landen, die als een steeds dunner wordende rode draad door de inhoud van de afgelopen vijftig jaar loopt. Vanaf het midden van de jaren tachtig verschoof de nadruk naar de geschiedschrijving over de Nederlandse politiek, en ontwikkelde de BMGN zich tot platform voor de vernieuwing van de politieke geschiedenis van de moderne tijd. Deze politieke-cultuurbenadering manifesteerde zich vanaf het midden van de jaren negentig in een aantal baanbrekende artikelen en bracht ook de moderne Belgische politieke geschiedenis opnieuw onder de aandacht. In het afgelopen decennium ontpopte de BMGN zich tot podium voor een jonge generatie politieke historici. Studies of the political history of the Netherlands and Belgium as examined in the BMGN had various manifestations. Initially a somewhat traditional historiography about the two countries dominated, surfacing in the content of the past fifty years, albeit progressively less pronounced. From the mid 1980s the focus shifted to the historiography of Dutch politics, and the BMGN evolved into a platform for innovating political history writing of the modern period. This political-cultural approach manifested from the mid 1990s in several pioneering articles and restored interest in modern Belgian political history. In the past decade the BMGN has become a platform for a young generation of political historians.

scholarly journals The slippery paths of commemoration and Heritage tourism: the Netherlands, Ghana, and the rediscovery of Atlantic slavery

2008 ◽  
Vol 79 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 55-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gert Oostindie
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
American Slavery ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Atlantic Slavery ◽  
Dutch History

Reflects upon the commemoration of the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery. Author describes how the slave trade and slavery was recently "rediscovered", as a part of Dutch history, and he compares this to the attention to this history in other European countries once engaging in slavery. He argues that despite the fact that the history of the slave trade and slavery is worthy of attention in itself, contemporary political and social factors mainly influence attention to the slave trade and slavery, noting that in countries with larger Afro-Caribbean minority groups the attention to this past is greater than in other once slave-trading countries. He further deplores the lack of academic accuracy on the slave trade and slavery in slavery commemorations and in the connected search for African roots among descendants of slaves, and illustrates this by focusing on the role of Ghana, and the slave fortress Elmina there, as this fortress also has become a much visited tourist site by Afro-Americans. According to him, this made for some that Ghana represents the whole of Africa, while African slaves in the Caribbean, also in the Dutch colonies, came from various parts of Africa. Author attributes this selectivity in part to the relatively large Ghanaian community in the Netherlands.

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