The Historical Work of Pieter Geyl

Abstract

It is not often that a historian writing in a “minor” language about a “minor” country attains world fame. If he is dependent upon the availability and the sometimes dubious competence of translators, he begins with at least one disadvantage. Probably an even greater handicap is that historians usually focus their attention on the “major” countries — but has anyone yet shown that size and significance are always in direct proportion? Yet, for all that “Holland is such a small country” (as the Dutch wryly admit), two of the best-known historians of the twentieth century have been Dutchmen. That the late Johan Huizinga (1872–1945), professor of history at Leiden, achieved a reputation extending far beyond the boundaries of his native land is not surprising; not only was his work of superlative quality, but his most important studies were on subjects of traditionally wide interest. The reputation of Pieter Geyl, Huizinga’s younger colleague at Utrecht embodies more of a paradox. When Geyl finally became known outside the ranks of specialists after 1945, he was past 58 years of age and had produced the bulk of his historical work, almost all of it in the history of the Netherlands. Fame came to him, however, not so much for these specifically “Dutch” writings1 as for his work as a historical critic. Although many of Gey’s critical writings are available in English (he is fluent in the language, having lived in England for two decades, and has often been his own translator when he did not write originally in English), his writings in Dutch history are sparsely represented. Several articles published during the 1920s display samples of his monographic work, while the sections of his Geschiedenis van de Nederlandse stam [History of the Dutch people] on the period of the Revolt of the Netherlands and the seventeenth century have been translated into English. My purpose in these pages is to redress the balance in some small