EnglishThe position of children under the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Sri Lanka has been a hitherto fairly neglected subject in the historiography on the VOC. Recent studies have demonstrated... Show moreEnglishThe position of children under the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Sri Lanka has been a hitherto fairly neglected subject in the historiography on the VOC. Recent studies have demonstrated the importance of focusing on children in colonial contexts during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially when analysing political rationalities of colonial power and religion. While the VOC was an early modern mercantilist company, it sought to impose intellectual, moral and bodily discipline on the local population. The Company wanted to create subjects through education and the introduction of Protestant religion, explicitly targeting children. Why did an early modern mercantilist Company-state attempt to create loyal subjects? How was the Dutch Reformed Church involved in this process of subject-making in Sri Lanka, and what was the importance accorded to children? Using ordinances, visitation reports, minutes from church council meetings and school thombos (parish registers containing school data), I will show why children in eighteenth century Sri Lanka were targets of Dutch colonial subject-making.NederlandsDe positie van kinderen onder de Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) in Sri Lanka is een tot nog toe weinig verkend perspectief in de historiografie over de VOC. Recente studies over kinderen in de negentiende- en twintigste-eeuwse koloniale context hebben laten zien dat dit een belangrijk uitgangspunt is voor het bestuderen van de politieke visies achter koloniale en religieuze machtsstructuren. Hoewel ze een vroegmoderne, commerciële compagnie was, wilde ook de VOC morele, intellectuele en lichamelijke discipline opleggen aan de lokale bevolking. Door het gebruik van educatie en het invoeren van de protestantse religie wilde de Compagnie hen omvormen tot loyale onderdanen, en zij richtte zich daarbij expliciet op kinderen. Waarom probeerde een vroegmoderne, mercantilistische Compagnie-staat haar bevolking door een proces van ‘subject-making’ aan zich te binden? Hoe was de Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk betrokken in dit proces in Sri Lanka, en welke rol en welk belang werd hierin aan kinderen toebedeeld? Met behulp van visitatierapporten, minuten van de Kerkenraadvergadering en ‘school thombos’ (kerkelijke dorpsregisters die schooldata bevatten) laat ik zien waarom kinderen in het achttiende-eeuwse Sri Lanka het doelwit waren van een Nederlands, koloniaal disciplineringsbeleid. Show less
This dissertation explores the causation of mass conversions to Islam in Bolaang-Mongondow and to Protestant Christianity in Sangir-Talaud and Minahasa (North Sulawesi, Indonesia) in the eighteenth... Show moreThis dissertation explores the causation of mass conversions to Islam in Bolaang-Mongondow and to Protestant Christianity in Sangir-Talaud and Minahasa (North Sulawesi, Indonesia) in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It demonstrates that despite deviations in particularities, the mass conversions to world religions in these regions broadly shared similar causations. It places emphasis on particular periods in the nineteenth-century when the Dutch colonial state centralized political authority and imposed census-based monetary taxation with the aim of commercializing the economy. It points to these reforms as the immediate triggers that enabled both Dutch apical rulers and especially indigenous apical rulers to weaken the authority of subaltern chiefs. It illustrates that these reforms were weaved into the religious conversion agenda of rulers as a strategy to further consolidate authority by depriving the subaltern chiefs of their functionally undifferentiated and socially embedded authority. As such, this dissertation shows that the apical rulers could expand their political and economic reach while paving the way for their claimed subjects to access prestigious religious identities, which had hitherto been exclusive to the ruling elite. Show less
Drift en koers (Passion and control) is the first scientific biography on the Dutch socialist, sociologist and feminist Hilda Verwey-Jonker (1908-2004). She is best known for the introduction of... Show moreDrift en koers (Passion and control) is the first scientific biography on the Dutch socialist, sociologist and feminist Hilda Verwey-Jonker (1908-2004). She is best known for the introduction of the word allochtonen (foreigner/alien) in the Dutch discourse and has very been influential in improving the (legal) status of especially married women. The questions her autobiography provoke were the starting point of my research. I present the results of my investigations into her lives as a passionate socialist, Protestant, intellectual, governor, expert in the field of refugee and migrant issues, ‘grey panther’ and mother of four children in fourteen chapters and fifty images. In the epilogue I present answers to the questions Verwey-Jonkers memoires raise and connect them with the notion that women are not supposed to fight in public. I thus present a new explanation for the very slow entry of women into Dutch parliamentary politics Show less
