Thijs Brocades Zaalberg: 'How does the discourse on war influence practice?'
As a student, Thijs Brocades Zaalberg was primarily interested in diplomacy surrounding conflicts. Through research on peace operations and subsequently the fight against guerrillas, he became increasingly involved with the most violent aspects of colonial warfare. Per 1 September 2024 he is appointed Professor of Military History. His focus will mainly be on irregular and colonial wars.
'When I studied in Groningen in the 1990s, military history at universities still had a negative connotation,' Brocades Zaalberg recalls. 'It was seen as stories about strategy, "powerful men and tyrants" and arrows on maps. If you were interested in war, as I was, you ended up with courses on diplomacy. That’s where the attention was focused in the Netherlands: causes of conflict, and bringing peace, but not warfare or military organisations themselves. No attention at all was paid to guerrilla and other forms of "irregular warfare".'
Shift due to Afghanistan
That changed after '9/11' and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 'Everyone was suddenly questioning how to combat guerrillas,' says Brocades Zaalberg. ‘The focus was mainly on the colonial past, and British and French counter-insurgency theory was often uncritically drawn upon. Just as then, winning the hearts and minds of the population was thought to be the key to success.' In the modern variant, the emphasis was on building democracies and liberal economies. Extreme colonial violence was largely glossed over.
Breda and Leiden
Since then, this is precisely where Brocades Zaalberg's focus has been. At the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies (NIAS), he leads the comparative sub-study of the large research project 'Independence, Decolonisation, War and Violence in Indonesia, 1945-1949' with Bart Luttikhuis. Executions, torture, collective punishment and other forms of extreme violence by Dutch, French and British military personnel are central to this. 'Earlier research mainly emphasised unique national characteristics. Our international research team saw mostly parallels in the explanations for violent derailments.'
During this period, he has also taught at Leiden University and at the Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA) in Breda, where he gave lectures on irregular warfare to officers in training, among other things. 'At the defence academy, a more theoretical approach is paramount, while in Leiden it's primarily about historical research, of course.'
Ego-documents
research has been done on the perspective and experience of soldiers on the ground. I also find it interesting how the narratives about war change. In 1948, soldiers often wrote in their diaries with horror about the Dutch “excesses” in Indonesia, whilst veterans forty years later in their memoirs tend to conceal more. At the same time, they judge the unrealistic Dutch war aims more harshly and show understanding for the Indonesian independence struggle. After all those years, they seem to construct an image that is less burdensome to carry with them. These are fascinating mechanisms to study with students in lectures.’
Military history in Leiden
As a professor in Leiden, Brocades Zaalberg will continue to focus on these themes, whilst also remaining employed at the NLDA. 'In my research, the emphasis remains on irregular warfare and ego-documents,' he says. ‘My aim is to combine the top-down analysis of war with war from the ground up. That way we can see to what extent the discourse on war and theory actually influences practice on the ground.’
'Additionally, with this professorship, I want to put military history in general more on the map. This year, I did this, among other things, by giving the introductory lecture series on Warfare in Core Debates.' Previously, there was little room for this in the curriculum, but partly due to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, there’s ow much more interest in military history. 'All 125 places were filled. I would love to establish the field even more broadly in Leiden.'