Four years of protracted negotiations and bitter warfare passed between the declaration of Indonesian independence on 17 August, 1945, and the official transfer of sovereignty on 27 December, 1949. Whereas the newly proclaimed Republic of Indonesia rejected the colonial regime and hence any attempt at ‘recolonization’ by the Dutch after the Japanese occupation (1942-1945), the Dutch framed their return to the archipelago as a mission to restore ‘order and peace’. These wildly contrast...

200 years have passed since the founding of the Leiden Print Room, incorporated today into Leiden University Libraries. In celebration of that long, rich history this wide-ranging new publication presents a complete and varied survey of the Leiden collections, starting with rare drawings from the early sixteenth century and ending with recent acquisitions from just this past decade. From Jan Gossart and Barend van Orley to Carel Visser and Emo Verkerk, this work encompasses the history of two...

De Commissie voor Geschied- en Oudheidkunde is de oudste Commissie van de Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde en telde in de loop der tijd vele kleurrijke leden; historici van allerlei soort alsmede archeologen. Het doel van de Commissie was vanaf het begin in 1841 het stimuleren en faciliteren van onderzoek, in het bijzonder van de vaderlandse geschiedenis.

In het kader van het 250-jarig jubileum van de Maatschappij heeft Nicolette Mout de soms woelige, soms kalme, geschiedenis van de C...

Leiden University was founded as an institution that would embody a particular set of academic ethics that sought to improve society through the acquisition of knowledge. In this book, author Willem Otterspeer draws on the idea of Leiden as 'a “bastion of liberty”' and proposes that concepts such as 'equilibrium' and 'scale' are key to understanding the university as an institution, ultimately showing how universities are a form of social capital, one of Western society’s answers to the...

The Leiden Lectures on Arabic Language and Culture were initiated in 2013 on the occasion of the 400-year anniversary of the founding of the chair of Arabic at Leiden University. Each year an outstanding scholar in the field is invited to present a lecture on the rich and enjoyable variety of classical Arabic texts and their significance and relevance for today's world.

This book contains the first three lectures delivered by Petra Sijpesteijn, James E. Montgomery and Geert Jan van Gelder. F...

Over the past decade the Middle East has undergone huge geopolitical shifts, including widespread war and violence, the collapse of numerous regimes, a changing American role, a restored Russian presence, and the emergence of ISIS. In this book Graham Fuller addresses the character of these shifts and how they will shape the future of this tumultuous region as well as the role of major outside powers.

Fuller firstly focuses on Shari'a law and its appropriate role, if any, in the politics and g...

Het Academiegebouw is het hart van de Universiteit Leiden. In dit boek horen we het in elke ruimte kloppen. Soms krachtig, als het gaat over de Verlichting of verdediging van vrijheid, over helden in de wetenschap of de stencilmachines waarmee studenten in 1969 hun ‘aktie’ voor democratisering aanslingerden. Voor andere verhalen legde Dorrit van Dalen haar oor tegen de muren van het gebouw: kleine verhalen over de tekeningen op de trap, een pedel met de slappe lach, de klokkenzolder als ...

In de negentiende eeuw, toen de centrale culturele, politieke en financiële instituten van Nederland tot stand kwamen, was slavernij nog altijd deel van het wereldrijk. Nederlandse families, instellingen en overheden zijn tegenwoordig steeds vaker geïnteresseerd in de rol die hun rechtsvoorgangers hebben gespeeld in het koloniale- en slavernijverleden. Dit boek is een geschiedenis van De Nederlandsche Bank waarin de auteurs bijzondere aandacht schenken aan het verband met slavernij, zowel a...

In the nineteenth century, when the principal cultural, political, and financial institutions of the Netherlands were established, slavery was still very much part of the nation’s global imperial structures. Dutch families, institutions, and governments are increasingly interested in the role their predecessors played in this history of colonialism and enslavement.

This book is a history of De Nederlandsche Bank in which particular attention is paid to its links with slavery, both as a fac...