TSEG - The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History

Changing the Narrative, Again

2021-12-16T14:49:48+01:00

In this article I argue that the development of postmodernism and the return of the narrative in the1970s did not just happen for internal scientific reasons but were a reaction to the societal developments and theories at the time. To this end I use the contemporary criticism concerning postmodernism by Beck and Giddens. In the second part I highlight three monographs to argue that social science history in recent decades also renewed itself against this background, thus helping us to understand our contemporary world in which questions of transitions and transformations are central. They use history to inform and diagnose our current situation, which they therefore need to understand as an ongoing process, though not necessarily a continuing one.

Peer Vries and Annelieke Vries, Atlas of Material Life. Northwestern Europe and East Asia, 15th to 19th Century

2022-02-04T14:16:30+01:00

Lotte Jensen (ed.), Crisis en catastrophe. De Nederlandse omgang met rampen in de lange negentiende eeuw

2022-02-04T14:46:08+01:00

Christopher W. Close, State Formation and Shared Sovereignty. The Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch Republic, 1488-1696

2022-02-04T16:37:22+01:00

Kees Boterbloem, The Dirty Secret of Early Modern Capitalism. The Global Reach of the Dutch Arms Trade, Warfare and Mercenaries in the Seventeenth Century

2022-02-07T15:52:36+01:00

Jean-Claude Daumas (ed.), Les révolutions du commerce. France, XVIIe-XXIe siècle

2022-02-07T16:38:06+01:00

Craig Lukezic and John P. McCarthy (eds.), The Archaeology of New Netherland. A World Built on Trade

2022-02-10T13:03:53+01:00

J. van Bourgondiën et al., Sporen van Six in Lisse. De voetafdruk van een Amsterdamse familie op een dorpsgemeenschap in de jaren 1640-1763

2022-02-04T14:32:33+01:00

Valentijn Paquay, De Sint Nicolai Broederschap in Arnhem. Gasthuis, preuven en passende hulp sinds 1351. Johan Carel Bierens de Haan (red.)

2022-02-04T14:57:06+01:00

Tom Naegels, Nieuw België. Een migratiegeschiedenis 1944-1978

2022-02-04T15:51:18+01:00

Bruno Yammine, Fake news in oorlogstijd. Duitse mediamanipulatie en de Flamenpolitik (1914-1915)

2022-02-04T16:12:24+01:00

Daniel Bellingradt, Vervlechting van de papiermarkt. De Amsterdamse papierhandel in de achttiende eeuw

2022-01-25T15:54:14+01:00

Sven Ringelberg, De Nederlandse aardgastransitie. Lessen voor de energietransitie van de 21ste eeuw

2022-01-25T16:23:46+01:00

Bert de Vries, Ontspoord kapitalisme. Hoe het kapitalisme ontspoorde en na de coronacrisis kan worden hervormd

2022-02-11T08:02:25+01:00

Ivo Zandhuis, Dwarsliggers. Stakers bij de Centrale Werkplaats in Haarlem in 1903

2022-01-25T16:14:00+01:00

Plantation Women and Children

2021-01-07T14:12:33+01:00

In the period 1870-1940 over a million Javanese labourers travelled to Sumatra hoping for a better life. Although the literature focuses on the labour activities, working conditions, and wages of male workers, especially from 1900 onwards a substantial part of the hired labourers were women and children. This paper argues that in the late colonial period attempts were made to improve the conditions for family life on the plantations. These policies were aimed at creating a stable pool of workers in a context of widespread labour scarcity. However, improvements were slow, and when a labour surplus occurred during the Great Depression, women's wages and contracts were affected most, which shows the gendered labour policies on the plantations were very much driven by an economic rationale.

The Flemish and German Nation of Seville

2022-01-11T14:44:08+01:00

This article studies how northern European migrants adapted their collective strategies to Seville’s institutional framework in the last third of the sixteenth century and how these strategies shaped the emergence of the so-called Flemish and German nation. It analyzes the group’s motivations to refuse the creation of a particularized commercial institution, as well as the alternative institutional mechanisms they developed to organize themselves in southern Spain. The article sheds light on the role of open-access institutions in Spain to facilitate long-distance trade and gives a new insight into the evolution of the commercial connections between the Spanish monarchy and the Dutch Republic during the Eighty Years’ War.

Beer and Taxes

2022-01-18T13:48:31+01:00

Beer taxes were long a significant source of government revenue in northern Europe. In Holland the income from beer taxes went into long-term decline from 1650 onward. In England the take remained more stable. In both, beer produced a falling share of total revenue as expenses increased in an era of frequent and increasingly costly wars. The fiscal policies pursued in reaction to beer contributing a declining share of total government income led, by 1800, to policies that made the tax burden more broadly shared in the Netherlands than it was in Great Britain. The failure of beer to support the states, as the drink had previously, was less important to fiscal health than more general developments in population and in the economies of the two.