Painstaking research in Dutch and Portuguese archive materials, so far poorly assessed on the topic of social relations, reveals intense and intricate associations between different European... Show morePainstaking research in Dutch and Portuguese archive materials, so far poorly assessed on the topic of social relations, reveals intense and intricate associations between different European individuals both in terms of ethnicity and social strata. Despite their supposed "nationality" and religion, Dutch and Portuguese colonists were able to accommodate linguistic differences, engaged in inter-confessional marriages and illicit liaisons and, together with French, German and English individu-als, served in the colony’s militia. Economical interactions between Dutch and Portuguese preceded the formation of Dutch Brazil since agents were involved in an array of material exchanges in Europe and in Portuguese America. After 1630, this did not change much. On a daily basis, historical actors extended credit, borrowed money, operated in retail trade, the sugar and dye wood industries, as well as in the slave trade. Long before Dutch rule in Brazil, individuals were able to exploit Dutch and Portuguese legisla-tion to defend their interests. Following the conquest of Recife, the WIC succeeded in imple-menting Dutch legislation in the colony, enforcing Dutch laws and legal procedures. Dutch and Portuguese alike were able to resort to courts of law to solve their disputes and faced judg-ment under the different codes after breaking the law. Show less
'The Party. The political life in the early SDAP' describes and analyses the origins and the first fifteen years of the Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Netherlands (SDAP) from a new... Show more'The Party. The political life in the early SDAP' describes and analyses the origins and the first fifteen years of the Social Democratic Workers' Party in the Netherlands (SDAP) from a new perspective. Where most studies on political parties focus on what members mean to their parties, this book reverses the question and asks: what did the party mean to its first members? By taking regular local party members as the starting point for a party history, this book contributes to both the historiography of the SDAP and that of the emergence of political parties in the Netherlands. First and foremost, this ‘member perspective’ shows that the functioning of parties was not only shaped through the development of ideology, organizational structures, and leadership, but also by the need for sociability, local traditions, and several other social and cultural factors. By seeing the party as an association and seeing its members as members of a socialist family this book helps to understand the member’s manners, party leadership and the way the party functioned in politics. Although the SDAP is the focus here, it is likely that this approach would be fruitful for other parties too. Show less
