The Bible and the Dutch Empire

Reviewed by: Foundations by Karin Speedy Heather Goodall Foundations. By Karin Speedy. Lower Hutt: Karin Speedy, 2022. This is an engaging and evocative work of creative non-fiction. Karin Speedy has cryptically described it in her cover notes as a “memoir/literary nonfiction novel.” The book depicts episodes of her life—at different ages—and intersperses them with her analyses of the situations she was researching. This is certainly memoir, but Speedy takes us further, disrupting chronological progressions with juxtaposition, shifting narrative voices and contrasting styles. This agility allows Speedy’s book to remain lucid and accessible while it draws the reader in. Foundations tells at least four stories, weaving them together so they are in conversation—sometimes disturbingly, often movingly—with each other. One story is a family history, across a number of generations of migrancy and colonialism, told through the eyes of Speedy as a young person growing up within a difficult family relationship in Auckland, Aotearoa. Beyond this troubled nuclear family, there is her far longer genealogical search across the myths and secrets which so often shroud settler family histories. Only on the final pages—and after the penultimate book manuscript had been completed—do we, and the author herself, learn a key fact which offers an answer to one of these family myths. That long family history is related to the second major narrative of this book, which is the colonial history of Aotearoa New Zealand—the invasion and then the theft of whenua—Māori land—through military force and the deceptive versions of the Waitangi treaty. This Aotearoa colonial history necessitates telling part of the story of British colonialism in Australia and across the Pacific, although most attention is on Aotearoa. Yet another major narrative is about the French empire, itself a fragmented story with many foci. In this book, one focus is on the colonies in the Pacific, particularly Kanaky New Caledonia where Speedy has researched, but also Tahiti. Another focus is on the colonies near the east coast of Africa—Reunion and Mauritius. A third is on the colonies in the Americas, both in Canada and in Louisiana. Most of these French colonies have Indigenous, settler and enslaved populations—with African enslaved people transferred to the Americas, the Indian Ocean and, post-emancipation, to the Pacific colonies as well—and with metropolitan France intervening in the interactions between each population in and between each colony. The second and third of these stories—the colonial history of Aotearoa to the present and the entangled histories of colonies and metropole in the French Empire—open up challenges for readers who, like me, are historians working largely within one empire. I have looked at very different colonies within the British Empire, namely Australia and India, as well as exploring the tensions between the diverse and often conflicting groups within each of those colonies. And because there are such complex situations to explore, even within any colony, it has been tempting to work only on one empire. My recent work, published as Beyond Borders: Indians, Australians and the Indonesian Revolution, 1939–1950 (2019), forced me to gain a much better grasp of Dutch colonialism, and the bitter decolonisation of the Netherlands East Indies. I was disturbed to realise how little I had known about the Dutch Empire, despite the geographic proximity of the Netherlands East Indies to Australia; despite the conflicts, in which Australians had been involved, in South Africa between the British and the formerly Dutch settlers, known as Boers, in the Boer War at the turn of the twentieth century and, finally, despite the Dutch retreat to Australia during the Japanese invasion from 1942 to 1945 and beyond. Recognising Australia’s place as a South Pacific Island—as I work on the relationships between First Nations people, including Indigenous Australians, in the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific campaign—I have paid much more active attention to the French Empire. Here my knowledge has proved to be even less adequate than in relation to the Dutch colonial impact. One dimension of my failure to know more about the histories of both Dutch and French colonialism has been my monolingualism—and the false sense of confidence...

Book Review| July 01 1999 Song and Story in Biblical Narrative: The History of a Literary Convention in Ancient Israel Song and Story in Biblical Narrative: The History of a Literary Convention in Ancient Israel, Steven Weitzman. Marc Brettler Marc Brettler Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Journal of Biblical Literature (1999) 118 (2): 335–337. https://doi.org/10.2307/3268011 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Marc Brettler; Song and Story in Biblical Narrative: The History of a Literary Convention in Ancient Israel. Journal of Biblical Literature 1 January 1999; 118 (2): 335–337. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/3268011 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveSBL PressJournal of Biblical Literature Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Most archaeologists of ancient Israel still operate with a pro-biblical ideology, while the role that archaeology has played in Zionist nation building is extensively documented. Terms such as ‘ninth century’ and ‘Iron Age’ represent an improvement on ‘United Monarchy’ and ‘Divided Monarchy’, but these latter terms remain implanted mentally as part of a larger portrait that may be called ‘biblical Israel’. This chapter argues that the question of ‘biblical Israel’ must be regarded as distinct from the kingdoms of Israel and Judah as a major historical problem rather than a given datum. ‘Biblical Israel’ can never be the subject of a modern critical history, but is rather a crucial part of that history, a ‘memory’, no doubt historically conditioned, that became crucial in creating Judaism. This realization will enable us not only to write a decent critical history of Iron Age central Palestine but also to bring that history and the biblical narrative into the kind of critical engagement that will lead to a better understanding of the Bible itself.

Despite almost constant involvement in foreign wars early in its history, the Dutch Empire rose to prominence in the seventeenth century and quickly became one of the most powerful naval presences in the world. Alongside the English, their naval rivals with whom they fought three separate wars, the Dutch Empire helped establish the flourishing Atlantic slave trade in the mid to late seventeenth century. In their pursuit of naval and slave trade superiority, the Dutch Empire would eventually establish a presence that reached from North America to modern‐day Indonesia, and this presence would leave lasting effects on the culture, history, and even languages of these locations.

: Since many years ago, Bangka’s tin had been recognized as one of prior commodities having been known by people outside Nusantara ( Indonesian archipelago) . Due to its high economic value, this natural re source ha d invited the other huge power from out side this island , intending to have control over it . In the 19 th century, the map of political power in this island changed, along with the strengthening of colonial influence. Their political authority was connected to the maintaining of tin trenches. People were asked to obey the colonial provisions , as undergone by Chinese mining laborers . Th e difficulty suffered by the people and Bangka Chinese laborers had caused Depati Amir to struggle to resist against the imbalance. The battle was then continued by Depati Amir who tried to fight the colonial power in Bangka . One of the sources of Dutch power was their ability in developing administrative communication. C orrespondences and report arrangement became the references to make the next fighting schem e . Later t h ese reports were then used to be the primary references to reveal the activities of Depati Amir, Chinese labor ers , and Dutch government in Bangka. This paper is based on the findings of a research some time ago, discussing about the struggle of Depati Amir and Chinese people againts Dutch colonial government in the mid of 19 th century. The findings showed that “the archive tells the story”, that is by showing the contents of archive s as a material to understand the story of Depati Amir and his cooperation with Chinese people in overthrowing the wall of Dutch colonialism. KEY WORDS : Depati Amir ; Chinese People ; Dutch Colonialism ; Resistance ; Archive Tells the Story. About the Author: Prof. Dr. M. Dien Madjid is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Adab and Humanities UIN (State Islamic University) Syarif Hidayatullah, Jalan Ir. H. Djuanda No.95, Ciputat, Kota Tangerang Selatan 15412, Banten, Indonesia. For academic interests, the author is able to be contacted via his e-mail at: dienmadjid@uinjkt.ac.id Recommended Citation: Madjid, M. Dien. (2017). “Depati Amir and Chinese People’s Resistance against Dutch Colonialism in Bangka, 1848–1851: An Archival Study” in TAWARIKH: International Journal for Historical Studies , Vol.9(1), October, pp.33-48. Bandung, Indonesia: Minda Masagi Press and UIN SGD Bandung, ISSN 2085-0980. Article Timeline: Accepted (February 17, 2017); Revised (May 20, 2017); and Published (October 28, 2017).

Steven Weitzman. Song and Story in Biblical Narrative: The History of a Literary Convention in Ancient Israel. Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997. xiv, 209 pp. - Volume 24 Issue 2

From the early seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century, slavery played a fundamental role in the Dutch colonial world. This chapter presents a global comparative overview of Dutch colonial slavery, with a heavy emphasis on the history of the slave trade in the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) and West Indies Company (WIC) domains. It addresses some of the fundamental differences between the origins of slavery in 'the East' and in 'the West'. The chapter sketches the nature, volume and directions of the long-distance slave trades to the Dutch colonies. From the perspective of the supply of slaves a closer look is necessary to establish the major directional patterns of these forced migrations in the Indian Ocean World. As a European settlement colony on the tip of the African continent and straddling the borders of two supra-regional slave-trading networks, the Cape occupied a unique place in history. Keywords: Dutch colonial world; Dutch East Indies Company (VOC); Indian Ocean World; slave trades; slavery; West Indies Company (WIC)

Reflects upon the commemoration of the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery. Author describes how the slave trade and slavery was recently "rediscovered", as a part of Dutch history, and he compares this to the attention to this history in other European countries once engaging in slavery. He argues that despite the fact that the history of the slave trade and slavery is worthy of attention in itself, contemporary political and social factors mainly influence attention to the slave trade and slavery, noting that in countries with larger Afro-Caribbean minority groups the attention to this past is greater than in other once slave-trading countries. He further deplores the lack of academic accuracy on the slave trade and slavery in slavery commemorations and in the connected search for African roots among descendants of slaves, and illustrates this by focusing on the role of Ghana, and the slave fortress Elmina there, as this fortress also has become a much visited tourist site by Afro-Americans. According to him, this made for some that Ghana represents the whole of Africa, while African slaves in the Caribbean, also in the Dutch colonies, came from various parts of Africa. Author attributes this selectivity in part to the relatively large Ghanaian community in the Netherlands.

Reflects upon the commemoration of the Atlantic slave trade and American slavery. Author describes how the slave trade and slavery was recently "rediscovered", as a part of Dutch history, and he compares this to the attention to this history in other European countries once engaging in slavery. He argues that despite the fact that the history of the slave trade and slavery is worthy of attention in itself, contemporary political and social factors mainly influence attention to the slave trade and slavery, noting that in countries with larger Afro-Caribbean minority groups the attention to this past is greater than in other once slave-trading countries. He further deplores the lack of academic accuracy on the slave trade and slavery in slavery commemorations and in the connected search for African roots among descendants of slaves, and illustrates this by focusing on the role of Ghana, and the slave fortress Elmina there, as this fortress also has become a much visited tourist site by Afro-Americans. According to him, this made for some that Ghana represents the whole of Africa, while African slaves in the Caribbean, also in the Dutch colonies, came from various parts of Africa. Author attributes this selectivity in part to the relatively large Ghanaian community in the Netherlands.

Compares slave trading and slavery in the Dutch colonial empire, specifically between the former trading and territorial domains of the West India Company (WIC), the Americas and West Africa, and of the East India Company (VOC), South East Asia, the Indian Ocean region, and South and East Africa. Author presents the latest quantitative assessments concerning the Dutch transatlantic as well as Indian Ocean World slave trade, placing the volume, direction, and characteristics of the forced migration in a historical context. He describes how overall the Dutch were a second-rate player in Atlantic slavery, though in certain periods more important, with according to recent estimates a total of about 554.300 slaves being transported by the Dutch to the Americas. He indicates that while transatlantic slave trade and slavery received much scholarly attention resulting in detailed knowledge, the slave trade and slavery in the Indian Ocean World by the Dutch is comparatively underresearched. Based on demand-side estimates throughout Dutch colonies of the Indonesian archipelago and elsewhere, he deduces that probably close to 500.000 slaves were transported by the Dutch in the Indian Ocean World. In addition, the author points at important differences between the nature and contexts of slavery, as in the VOC domains slavery was mostly of an urban and domestic character, contrary to its production base in the Americas. Slavery further did in the VOC areas not have a rigid racial identification like in WIC areas, with continuing, postslavery effects, and allowed for more flexibility, while unlike the plantation colonies in the Caribbean, as Suriname, not imported slaves but indigenous peoples formed the majority. He also points at relative exceptions, e.g. imported slaves for production use in some VOC territories, as the Banda islands and the Cape colony, and a certain domestic and urban focus of slavery in Curaçao.

Slavery in the Dutch Atlantic world has five distinct themes: the early colonies of Brazil and Nieuw Nederland; the West African forts; the plantation colonies on the Wild Coast (Suriname, Essequibo, Berbice, and Demerara); in the West Indies on the islands of Curaçao, St. Eustatius, Bonaire, Saba, St. Maarten, and Aruba; and the Dutch participation in the transatlantic slave trade. At the height of slavery’s development during the last quarter of the 18th century, there were over 150000 slaves in the Dutch Atlantic settlements, which amounts to just over 6 percent of all slaves in the Americas and the West Indies. The vast majority of the slaves lived and worked in Suriname (60000) and Essequibo/Demerara (60000). The Dutch West Indies were more trade entrepôts than a plantation complex, without a large enslaved population. In 1863 slavery was abolished in all Dutch colonies. The emphasis in the historiography has been on the Dutch participation in the transatlantic slave trade. In total, Dutch slave traders shipped around 600,000 enslaved Africans to the New World, which is 5–6 percent of the total of the transatlantic slave trade. The Amiens peace in 1803 was the de facto end of the Dutch slave trade, and in 1814 the Dutch abolished the transatlantic slave trade de jure. The surviving records of Dutch slavery and the slave trade are among the richest of all nations, particularly the privately operated slave trade after 1720. During the 18th century, for instance, the Middelburgse Commercie Compagnie (MCC) equipped a total of 113 slaving voyages. On 25 May 2011, the archive of the MCC was inscribed on the UNESCO International Register “Memory of the World.” This article privileges the literature available in English, but it also includes some of the most important studies written in Dutch.

Colonialism prevailed in Asia and Africa; in America there was colonialism. It was Great Britain which championed colonialism to an intense degree. Other European countries too had their colonies. After each colony attained independence, it so happened that colonialism was not rooted out, but a new type of colonialism persisted and manifested its primordial characteristics. My main objective is that British colonialism in East-Africa during 19 th century's; which was very much important for the economical causes like slave trade, various spices trade, etc. There are only few studies on the colonial history of British-east Africa. This article contains-how and why British interested there and its effect. It has also described their administrative system at that time.

Dutch Attitudes Towards Colonial Empires, Indigenous Cultures, and Slaves Gert Oostindie (bio) and Bert Paasman (bio) I. Introduction 1 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. The scope of the Dutch Maritime Empire. (Map by G-O graphics, Wijk bij Duurstede). From its very beginnings, Dutch colonial ventures gravitated towards Asia. The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was established in 1602, nineteen years before its West Indian counterpart, the WIC. In addition to various trading posts along the Indian subcontinent and along the Asian coast, Dutch expansion under the aegis of the VOC resulted in the colonization of the Cape Colony and, most importantly, the vast and populous Dutch East Indies. The importance of the Dutch West Indies pales in comparison. The New Netherlands’ colony was ceded to the British in 1664; the Dutch intermezzo in Brazil was short-lived. By the late seventeenth century, the Dutch empire in the West consisted of six tiny Antillean islands and three as yet barely exploited and inhabited colonies on the “Wild Coast” of the Guyanas (fig. 1). Apart from this, the WIC only supported a few trading posts on the West African coast. Dutch colonialism had started in the geopolitical context of the struggle against Spain. Initially therefore, there had been an obvious ideological rationale behind the overseas expansion. Once independence was attained, however, pragmatism ruled. In contrast to the Catholic nations, there was no serious attempt to convert the subjected peoples to Christianity, much less to socialize them into Dutch culture. Apart from the numerically insignificant colonial expatriates, metropolis and colonial world remained separate entities for all but economic purposes. Moreover as the physical presence of colonial subjects in the Netherlands was negligible, for ordinary Dutch people the colonial empire must have been an extremely distant reality at best. Accordingly, the rare debates about themes such as colonialism, slavery, or Christianization had a very limited participation and impact. At the same time, within the colonial empire, the divide between the VOC’s and the WIC’s respective territories was hardly ever bridged. This short paper therefore discusses these two parts of empire in separate sections. II. The Dutch East Indies 2 When the Portuguese arrived in Southeast Asia in the early sixteenth century, they found people with highly developed cultures, including their own languages and religions. European supremacy existed only in technology, especially in maritime and military fields. When the Dutch arrived about one century later, Portuguese had already become the lingua franca in most of Southeast Asia, certainly on the coasts. This was also true of the western part of the Indonesian archipelago; in the eastern part Malay served that purpose. In and around the Portuguese trading posts there were already large numbers of Eurasians (offspring of a European father and an Asian mother, or of mixed parents), the so-called mestizos, with their own culture. The Portuguese had already begun missionary work; the Jesuits in particular were active. The VOC, clad with sovereign rights by the States General, tried to push back the Portuguese influence by taking over trade contracts, conquering trading posts, and by replacing the Roman Catholic mission with a Calvinist one. Portuguese remained the major language in the “central rendezvous” of the Company, Batavia, as well as in other settlements far into the eighteenth century. Dutch was only spoken in the offices of the VOC by the governor general, the Councillors of the Dutch East Indies and other officials, and in some churches and schools. In the eighteenth century Malay gradually replaced Portuguese, while Dutch still played a minor role. Because of the influence of Asian and Eurasian women and their slaves, who raised the children, Portuguese or Malay was often spoken in the family circle. The so-called mestizo culture became more and more important during the eighteenth century. Every European staying in the East Indies for a period of time began to live like a mestizo to a greater or lesser extent. Marrying into mestizo families was even a means to make a career for oneself in the Company. Having obtained a monopoly for the whole [End Page 349] territory between South Africa and the Strait of Magellan, the VOC did not...

In this article, a number of aspects of the history of Dutch colonialism are linked to developments in world history. A number of themes are covered by this approach, such as the consequences of the worldwide revolutions around 1800, the Cultivation System, modern imperialism, the rise of the colonial state, nationalism and decolonisation. The aim is to show that the development of specific parts of the world was linked to major, worldwide historical processes through links that arose thanks to Dutch colonialism. I further argue that knowledge of the history of Dutch colonialism is essential to an understanding of these major, worldwide processes. This article is part of the special issue 'The International Relevance of Dutch History'.

1655, Adriaen van der Donck published his promotional tract A Description of New in an attempt to attract settlers to the Dutch colony in North America. As its title suggests, Van der Donck's text primarily a description of the land, resources, and opportunities that await potential colonists in New Netherland. For seventeenth-century readers, transatlantic emigration was an enterprise fraught with potential complications, not the least of which was the stability of national identity in an alien environment. To convince his readers that the environment on the other side of the Atlantic was suitable for Dutch settlers, Van der Donck devoted the first section of his tract to a discussion of New Netherland's landscape, flora, fauna, and climate. Ina chapter titled Of the Air, Van der Donck writes that [t]he gentle governess of mind, strength, and form alike in humans, animals, and plants the air, also termed the temperamentor (2008 ed., 64). Van der Donck here suggests the importance of climate as it relates to the problem of cultural assimilation and geographic movement. Seventeenth-century understandings of the relationship between identity and travel were based on the Galenic theory of the four humors, which held that the early modern body was subject to the influence of one's environment. (1) Travel in the seventeenth century thus brought with it the potential for dramatic alterations in an individual's psychology and physiology. Van der Donck invokes this early modern scientific discourse in the opening lines of his chapter, only to assuage any fears of alteration when he writes that the air in the colony is as dry, pure, and wholesome as could be desired--so much so, in fact, that people who are not at their best, whether in the West Indies, Virginia, or other parts of the world, soon feel fit as a fiddle when they come to New Netherland (64). In short, he writes, Galen has a lean time of it there>> (64). The Description thus takes up the identity issues that accompany geographic movement in the seventeenth century, specifically the fear of physical and cultural assimilation brought about by travel, only to assuage those doubts and set up the colony of New as a geographic or climatological extension of the United Provinces. While this rhetorical strategy not uncommon in colonial promotional literature, (2) I suggest that what makes Van der Donck's text unique the way in which it struggles with the possibility of a cosmopolitan model of colonization that embraces circulation and difference, working within the humoral model to suggest the possibility of maintaining Dutch cultural identity despite travel and dislocation. The text experiments with a model of belonging that relies not on birth within the territorial borders of the Dutch Republic, but rather on residence in either the United Provinces or its colonies. (3) Van der Donck, I argue, thus able to transform the multiplicity of peoples emigrating to the United Provinces and its colonial holdings into a manageable and productive population that would secure Dutch interests within the European world economy. (4) Even as the text encourages a sense of identity grounded in geography, however, it must reassure its specifically Dutch readers of the stability of Dutch cultural and national identity in the New World through its emphasis on the economic integration of emigrant workers into the Dutch colonial project. (5) This tension in the text between embracing a diverse, mobile labor force and securing a stable Dutch identity, I argue, suggests the ways in which the Description imagines the economic and political security of Dutch nationalism as dependent on a population that must be constructed out of the cultural contacts and connections of the Dutch colonial project in the Americas. This tension in the text mirrors the ambivalence toward cosmopolitanism that we see on the ground, as new and more restrictive residency requirements were instituted in New Amsterdam in 1657. …