This PhD project develops and applies a GIS procedure to use legacy survey data in settlement pattern analysis. As part of the research by the LERC project (NWO, Leiden University, KNIR), legacy data produced by surveys in central and southern Italy are examined in a comparative framework to investigate…

Spirited narratives of purpose and progress: church-society engagement alongside the (Company-) state

The Khoesan were the first people in Africa to undergo the full rigours of European colonisation. By the early nineteenth century, they had largely been brought under colonial rule, dispossessed of their land and stock, and forced to work as labourers for farmers of European descent.

Much attention has been paid to the exchange of objects, ideas, and people in the Caribbean. Networks of interaction connected local communities across pan-regional scales, shaping indigenous socio-political integrations and their responses in colonial situations. This work examines the poorly understood…

Forgotten Lineages explores the paths through which generations of formally enslaved and their descendants gradually forgot their past of enslavement under Dutch and British imperial rule and became local subjects in Sri Lanka and South Africa. It explores why and how forgetting rather than memory became…

Conference

When former Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström announced in 2014 that Sweden would become the first state to implement a feminist approach to its foreign policy, her idea was met with giggles. [1] But the concept quickly spread around the world. In May 2022, the Netherlands became the 10th state…

Markus Kornprobst writes about managing international crises.

Over the past year and a half, China’s diplomacy has attracted attention from media institutions, policy makers and scholars around the globe.

Gendered dynamics and assumptions are prevalent throughout the field of cybersecurity.

Faced with warfare on the European continent and growing Sino-American geopolitical disputes, the EU’s rising use of sanctions and attention to economic security call for a better diplomatic understanding of how state-market actor-networks are assets of modern foreign and security policy.

It is undeniable that the public is central to the practice and study of public diplomacy. Indeed, this field is known as *public* diplomacy.

In the past months the COVID-19 pandemic has made the world become more reliant on digital communication and social media. As virtual spectators of diplomacy during these times, it is not difficult to notice that diplomacy is more colourful nowadays.

What was the social function of the colonial civil law courts in eighteenth-century coastal Sri Lanka? Why did people choose to have their disputes settled by Dutch law courts?

Non-urban settlement organization and Roman expansion in the Roman Republic (4th-1st centuries BC)

For the upcoming conference

On Friday, November 22, students of the Archaeology Honours track participated in a poster presentation at the national archaeological congress 'De Reuvensdagen'. The posters were made as final assignment for the Honours Orientation Seminar, which is the introduction course for the Honours Track ‘Crossing…

During the one-year master’s programme in Colonial and Global History you will learn about the importance of a comparative perspective for understanding transnational processes such as imperialism, colonialism, islamisation, modernisation and globalisation.

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. On 1 October, he will be appointed…

Scientific research on Colonialism and Slavery is done from different research programmes and different disciplines.

This book argues that Dutch Brazil (1624–54) is an integral part of Atlantic history and that it made an impact well beyond colonial and national narratives in the Netherlands and Brazil.

This dissertation presents a comprehensive description of Xinka, an indigenous language from southeastern Guatemala. The description is based on a missionary grammar that is titled Arte de la lengua szinca and was written by the priest Manuel Maldonado de Matos around 1773.

In A History of Plague in Java, 1911–1942, Maurits Bastiaan Meerwijk demonstrates how the official response to the 1911 outbreak of plague in Malang led to one of the most invasive health interventions in Dutch colonial Indonesia.

Nadeera Seneviratne defended her thesis on 21 January 2016.

Southern Africa has a rich tradition of social history, one inspired by the tumultuous changes that have regularly convulsed the region from the 1780s onwards. Scholars have always sought to understand what these changes meant for everyday life and emphasised a perspective of marginal groups, how these…

A study of Dutch Fort at Galle, Sri Lanka

During the Slavery Memorial Year, from 1 July 2023 to 1 July 2024, the Kingdom of the Netherlands reflected on its colonial and slavery history.

On January 28 and 29, 2021 the conference ‘Imperial Artefacts: History, Law and the Looting of Cultural Property’ took place online. This first of its kind event at Leiden University was an interdisciplinary online conference and brought together (post-)colonial historians, legal historians, curators,…

Lecture, COGLOSS

Mechanical metamaterials are man-made materials which derive their unusual properties from their structure rather than their composition.

Book by Dr. Mariana Françozo resulting from her research into the collection of count Johan Maurits of Nassau-Siegen, governor of the Dutch colony in Northeastern Brazil between 1637 and 1644.

Exam, paper, exam, paper. A familiar, though sometimes little unexciting, routine for students. That is why Film and Literary students Sietske de Haan and Wouter Dijkman decided to write a blog post for the course Interculturality. Their impressive achievement was rewarded with a publication on science…

Lecture, COGLOSS

What do the cloth trade and slavery have to do with each other? Quite a lot, as it turns out, as by history student Sjoerd Ramackers demonstrated in his bachelor’s thesis. He reveals that cloth merchant Daniel van Eijs was closely associated with four plantations in Berbice, a former Dutch colony on…

A biographical approach to material cultural interactions between Caribbean communities and Europeans across the historical divide (AD 1000-1800)

Objects and framings of heritage, archives, and academic knowledge production generate worldwide, fierce societal debates on the legacies of colonial violence, past injustice and present-day institutional racism. Whether bronzes from Benin, daggers from Bali, fossils from Java, photo-albums from…

Investigating the relations between Tupi Indigenous Knowledge, Museum Collections and the Dutch Colonization of Brazil

This book explores the intellectual history of the Dutch empire from the sixteenth century to the postcolonial era, going beyond systemic thinkers to understand how empire was perceived in day-to-day life. It takes a transnational and transimperial approach to the Dutch empire, connecting European,…

In several Mediterranean regions archaeological sites have been mapped by fieldwalking surveys, producing large amounts of data. These legacy site-based survey data represent an important resource to study ancient settlement organization. Methodological procedures are necessary to cope with the limits…

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.

A multiple isotope approach to human-animal dynamics in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide

On 1 July – Keti Koti, in the year ahead, our university community will be able to reflect extensively on the history of slavery by engaging in research, education and many other activities.

The main aim of this project is to reveal and unravel the invisible histories of the UN, transcending the dominant Western perspective to recover the historical agency of Global South actors. The research will investigate how the UN has both facilitated and limited their role in shaping global order…

As of 1 September Jan-Bart Gewald has been appointed as Professor of Southern African History in the Leiden Institute for History, in conjunction with the African Studies Centre, Leiden.

The new blog Afro-Asian Visions showcases new and ongoing research on Afro-Asian interactions through networks of artists, intellectuals, technical experts, and activists. It is designed as an online magazine.

Conference, Workshop