Behind every successful scientist…. in colonial Indonesia, were local informants and assistants. They provided information the scientists needed or they collected plants or animals. In this project, the researchers focus on these Indonesian individuals. They show what role Indonesians have played in the making of (scientific) knowledge about nature and culture in colonial and postcolonial Indonesia. This includes their contribution to Western scientific knowledge but also, and more importantly, their influence on local knowledge communities.

Seventeenth-century Dutch imaginations of West Africa were crucial in creating stereotypes of a continent and its inhabitants. This project, combining cultural history and African Studies, examines the interplay of Dutch representations and local knowledge in the creation of ‘Africanity’, which helped to legitimate asymmetric power relations which last until today.

Dutch guest workers in 18th century Spain During the first half of the 18th century many Dutch ‘guest workers’ found work in the newly founded royal textile factories in Spain. Both in Spain and the Netherlands this process has been studied from an economic perspective, but nobody has ever focused on the migrants themselves. The Netherlands were not solely a recipient of immigration. By studying their agency we can analyse how these migrants related to governments, intermediaries and society at large. This research provides a historical mirror for the current migration debate in the Netherlands.

Historians and specialists of international politics often write about how the United States helped to build an international order based on liberal politics and economics after World War 2. But is this what American leaders actually set out to do? This project uses the methodology of intellectual history to show that the commitment of postwar American leaders to liberalism was always mixed with other concerns, like expanding American power or protecting racial inequality at home. Recognizing this makes the simple story of an American-created liberal international order insufficient for understanding either their time or ours.

The proposed study portrays and investigates the life and work of the nationally and internationally acknowledged Dutch orientalist H.A. Hamaker (1789-1835). Hamakers views and ideas are placed within the broader context of the politics, ideologies and educational and scholarly developments of the day. This study tries to establish how far reaching Hamakers influence and that of his field of interest and scholarly discipline of oriental languages was on the formation of ideas within the spheres of society in question in the early 19th century.