Wouter Linmans is working on a PhD thesis on visions and fears of future warfare in Dutch society (1918-1939).

In this article, Thomas Maguire, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, examines why states use intelligence to influence external audiences.

In Freedom on the Offensive, William Michael Schmidli illuminates how the Reagan administration's embrace of democracy promotion was a defining development in US foreign relations in the late twentieth century.

On 4 May, Leiden University remembered the victims of the Second World War from our university community. Alumni, students and present and former staff of the University came together for this Hour of Remembrance.

Who are open-source intelligence activists and how reliable are their contributions to public understanding of Russia’s war in Ukraine?

This edited volume by Jeff Fynn-Paul pushes forward the debate on the role of entrepreneurs in making war and building states in Europe and the Ottoman Empire.

On 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender that also brought an end to the Second World War in Asia, Indonesia declared its independence. The declaration was not recognized by the Netherlands, which resorted to force in its attempt to take control of the inevitable process of decolonization.…

By the end of the sixteenth century, stories about the Revolt in the Low Countries (c. 1567-1648) had begun to spread throughout Europe. These stories had very different authors with very different intentions.

Engin Kiliç defended his thesis on 11 june 2015

This week 'Dutch Post-war Fiction Film through a Lens of Psychoanalysis' by Peter Verstraten was published by Amsterdam University Press, the sequel to Humor and Irony in Dutch Post-war Fiction Film from 2016. Each chapter in his 482-page new study begins with a title of Fons Rademakers who made films…

In Reframing the Diplomat Albertine Bloemendal offers a unique window onto the unofficial dimension of Cold War transatlantic relations by analyzing the diplomatic role of the Dutch Atlanticist Ernst van der Beugel as a government official and as a private diplomat.

Robert Pee, William Michael Schmidli (Eds.) This book posits that democracy promotion played a key role in the Reagan administration’s Cold War foreign policy.

A new vision on the Revolt of the Low Countries through the eyes of Spanish commanders

This is the 2017 paperback release of William Michael Schmidli's The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere, which won the 2013 Foreign Affairs Magazine Best Book of the Year.

Emily Wolff, PhD candidate at Leiden University, wrote a paper about the inclusion of imperial citizens in the Dutch post-war welfare state.

Does foreign aid promote human rights?

This paper written by Alexandre Afonso, Assistant Professor and Researcher at Leiden University, argues that gender norms and the political strength of the left were important structuring factors regarding why European countries choose migrant labour to expand their labour force in the decades that…

Drawing on the analogical lessons of the Great War, this article uses applied history to analyze how the four parallels discerned can help us make sense of contemporary Sino-American rivalry

Subproject of

Jacques Waisvisz (98) is one of our oldest living alumni. As a Jewish student in the Second World War, he was forbidden from completing his studies. How does he look back at that time, and what was life like afterwards? ‘No one thought that the situation here would become so bad.’

This article reviews how external expertise supports intelligence production and crisis decision-making with Germany's response to the Russio-Ukrainian war.

Two Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) have been placed in front of the University Library in memory of the Jewish Cosman family. At the time of the Second World War, they lived in one of the houses where the library is now located.

Southern Crossings: Indian activists and the Afro-Asian movement in the early Cold War era

The territories that would make up what is today the Republic of Zambia officially became British in 1891. However, this did not equate to an on-the-ground presence of colonial authority capable of affecting the destiny and daily lives of people.

Exchanges between different cultures and institutions of learning have taken place for centuries, but it was only in the twentieth century that such efforts evolved into formal programs that received focused attention from nation-states, empires and international organizations.

Students were able to continue their studies in September 1945 after the University had been closed for several years during the Second World War. This moment was celebrated for four days, with the traditional cortège, commemorative services and a party in the Botanical Garden. Queen Wilhelmina was…

This book explores the reception of foreign news during the late sixteenth-century civil wars in France and the Netherlands.

In this article, Thomas Maguire, assistant professor at the Institute of Governance and Global Affairs, examines the intelligence of the US, British and Ukrainian governments and NATO partners concerning Russia and its war against Ukraine. This article discusses how and why governments communicate intelligence…

Benjamin Fogarty-Valenzuela published the article 'Pedagogies of Prohibition: Time, Education, and the War on Drugs in Rio de Janeiro’s Zona Norte' in Cultural Anthropology 37. The article’s three sections focus on three forms of temporal control—busyness, punctuality, and rhythm—and each demonstrates…

The Persian Empire (539-330 BCE) was the first world empire in history. At its height, it united a territory stretching from present-day India to Libya - and it would take 2,000 years before significantly larger empires emerged in early modern Eurasia. This territorial sweep is both a source of fascination…

This interdisciplinary study focuses on (trans)national ethnic and popular networks, combining historical-ethnographic and computational methods to understand the ‘workings’ of networked conflict interfering in the increasingly violent conflict in the Sahel (Africa) and beyond. The project focuses on…

Leiden researcher Ethan Mark has a mission, he explains in the alumni magazine Leidraad. He wants us to take off our Eurocentric glasses when we study the Second World War. We have focused on ourselves for far too long; after 75 years, it’s about time we listened to stories from the rest of the worl…

1000 Years of World History in 100 Old Maps.

Stories of resistance in the Second World War are widely covered in Dutch historiography: Hannie Schaft, Erik Hazelhoff Roelfzema, and Professor Cleveringa are some of the best known. But these accounts largely focus on the Dutch domestic perspective. On the other side of the world, a complex colonial…

This book closely analyses the rise and fall of Louis XIV's marine insurance institutions in Paris, which were central to the French monarchy's efforts to stimulate commerce, colonial enterprise and economic growth.

Political scientist Corinna Jentzsch (Leiden University) explains why Mozambique is not (yet) a success story.

Drugs-related violence in Mexico is similar in terms of dynamics and strategy to the IS hybrid war in the West. This is the claim made by Teun Voeten. PhD defence 20 September.

The chief aim of this study is to explore how classical Persian poetry and the Persian mysticism that is interwoven with the poetry have been used in the new politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran, especially during the Iran-Iraq war.

‘That hornets’ nest in Leiden must be destroyed,’ said Dutch National Socialist Party member Robert van Genechten in November 1942. He was referring to Leiden University. Why this hatred? Emeritus Professor of University History Willem Otterspeer has written a book about Leiden University during the…

A group of confidants including a former student of Meijers managed to avert his deportation to a death camp. In her lecture on 27 November, Cleveringa Professor Marjan Schwegman revealed the history of the persecution of the Jewish Professor Eduard Meijers.

On 1 June 2022, Bruno Braak defended his thesis entitled 'Overcoming ruptures: Zande identity, governance, and tradition during cycles of war and displacement in South Sudan and Uganda (2014-2019).' The doctoral research was supervised by Prof.dr. J.M. Otto, Dr.ir. C.I.M. Jacobs, and Dr. C. Leonardi…

The researchers in the World Archaeology department of the Faculty of Archaeology concentrate on a range of different periods and regions: from humanity’s origins to the Middle Ages and the modern age, and from Asia to South America.

This dissertation describes the history of the Ottoman county of Foçateyn as a case study of the process of transition from the Ottoman Empire to nation states.

The department of World Archaeology combines research and education about regions all over the world, from Human Origins to the Middle Ages, and from Europe, to Asia, Africa and the America’s. That broad range in time and space makes the department a dynamic pluriform community with many different approaches,…

When it comes to languages and cultures, Leiden University is the university. The global expertise present places our university at the top. In Leiden and The Hague, we study languages and cultures from all regions of the world and from prehistory to the present day. In this way we create a broad view…

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.