Perspectives on the WorldReflections of -

F H

The - academic year saw the quality assessment of the

education and research carried out at our institutes. It goes

without saying that these assessments involve a lot of work, but

they are necessary for transparency and accountability, as well as

being extremely useful. We learn from the experience, and we

receive useful suggestions from our peers who review us.

The Faculty of Humanities can be proud of the way the different

committees evaluated the quality of our research. The output of

the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL), for example,

was termed “impressive in its quality, often representing

international-level research and in some cases even world-leading

research”. The committee that assessed the Leiden University

Institute for History (LUIH) “was impressed by the number of

grants, awards and prizes that were acquired in the period under

review” and described the institute as “an attractive and

prestigious place of research and teaching for many scholars”.

Another committee remarked that the Leiden Institute for Area

Studies (LIAS) is working towards a more interdisciplinary and

transregional research programme. They complimented the

researchers of this institute: “They are strong international

players, even among the leaders in their respective fields”. The

Leiden University Institute for Religious Studies (LIRS) was

referred to as “the institutional home of a number of high-calibre

scholars with an strong national and international reputation”,

while, according to another committee, the research of the Leiden

University Institute for Philosophy (LUIPh) “reaches a high

standard, as evidenced by refereed articles, book chapters and

monographs”. The output of the Leiden University Centre for the

Arts in Society (LUCAS) was described as “good to excellent in all

three programmes”. The committee concluded with regard to the

Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA): “It is clear

that Leiden University and the Faculty of Humanities have a

success story on their hands”.

It is highly rewarding to work in such a Faculty and to know that

we can look forward to the future with confidence. It is also clear

that the quality of our research is recognised internationally. A

few examples of this research are presented in this edition of

Perspectives, that covers the - academic year: from the

impact of social reading on the book industry, to the system of

deliberative democracy; from the response to environmental

problems to Assistant Professor Boletsi’s insight that “we’re all

barbarians”. You can also read about former master’s student

Sander Stolk, who developed a computer tool to calculate how

many words can be found for a given concept in the Thesaurus of

Old English, as well as about how young people draw an image of

God, what are the underlying aspects of effective speeches of

politicians, and what we, as society, can learn from studying –

sometimes inaccurate – accounts of the Dutch Revolt.

I hope you will enjoy reading our Perspectives on the World.

Professor Wim van den Doel

Dean

Humanities

A word from the Dean

• The Leiden University Institute for Philosophy (LUIPh) studies

philosophy in all its facets, in relation to the many disciplines

taught at the University

• The Leiden University Institute for Religious Studies (LIRS)

includes all religions within its range of expertise

The Faculty of Humanities is home to more than , students.

In the - academic year they are able to choose from no

fewer than BA and MA programmes, including research

master’s. In , the Faculty’s staff members were engaged in

teaching and research activities based on a turnover of almost

million euros. The Faculty awarded PhD degrees to

candidates in .

International researchThe Faculty is ranked among the top five Arts and Humanities

faculties outside the English-speaking world. The quality of the

Faculty’s research is recognised internationally, as witnessed by

the fact that our researchers are regularly awarded significant

national and international research grants and prizes. An example

this year is the award for the short film El último consejo. This film

by PhD candidate Itandehui Jansen of our Academy of Creative

and Performing Arts was acclaimed at the international film

festival Viña del Mar in Chili. The film is about the Mixtec Indian

community in Mexico. The jury commended Jansen for the way

Humanities

Humanities at Leiden University

Multidisciplinary collaborationThe Faculty of Humanities was formed in . Merging the

diverse departments to create the current institutes has enabled us

to engage in collaboration at a multidisciplinary level and given

us the opportunity to extend our scope beyond the limits of the

former departments.

The Faculty’s research activities are currently structured within

seven institutes:

• The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) focuses

on bringing together art and science

• The Leiden University Institute for Area Studies (LIAS)

combines thorough knowledge of language and culture with

disciplinary approaches from the humanities, social sciences

and law

• The Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS)

covers the field of literature and literary studies, the history of

art and material culture, and film and new media studies

• The Leiden University Institute for History (LUIH) has a broad

and wide-reaching academic scope. The Institute has an unique

international orientation and focuses on the study of

European, American, Asian and African societies in a global

context

• The Leiden University Centre for Linguistics (LUCL) brings

together all the Faculty’s linguistic research

Leiden’s Faculty of Humanities is an international centre for studying the world’s languages, cultures and nations. The Faculty’s research stretches from prehistoric times to the present day, and adopts a broadperspective that encompasses fields as diverse as religion, philosophy, literature, art and technology.

she blended fiction and non-fiction. The European ‘WeCurate’

subsidy for cultural projects was awarded to Professor Kitty

Zijlmans (LUCAS). Together with artists, the public and cultural

institutions, Zijlmans’ research team is investigating how cultural

organisations and the public themselves can think about culture

in a broader way. How can culture and cultural activities

contribute to social challenges? Or improve the quality of our

neighbourhood? And how can museums connect with new

generations?

Besides awards and European subsidies, funding is also provided

by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)

that finances a number of top researchers every year. Its

prestigious VICI award, one of the largest personal scientific

awards in the Netherlands, has been awarded to a Leiden

Humanities researcher twelve times since its inception in .

Last year Professor Kasia Cwiertka (LIAS) received a VICI award

for her research on waste management and what it tells us about

society. More specifically, her research is about recent changes in

China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. The contribution made

by the Faculty of Humanities plays a key role in positioning

Leiden University among the top three recipients of VICI awards.

Profile themesIn order to facilitate cutting-edge fundamental research at

national and international level, Leiden University has chosen to

focus on six key themes from among eleven multi-disciplinary

fields of research. The Faculty of Humanities is engaged in

research relating to four of these themes:

• Global Interaction of Civilizations and Languages

• The Asian Challenge

• Health, Life and Biosciences

• Law, Democracy and Governance: Legitimacy in a Multilevel

Setting

In , our university founded ‘LeidenGlobal’ a collaboration

between research institutions and museums. This partnership

brings together scientific and educational knowledge about global

and area studies.

More about the Faculty of HumanitiesFor more information about the Faculty, its programmes andinstitutes, see: hum.leiden.edu.The recipients of scientific awards are listed at:hum.leiden.edu/research/hall-of-fame.A list of candidates who recently received their PhD can befound at: hum.leiden.edu/research/PhDs. Subsidies received by researchers are listed at:hum.leiden.edu/research.

Humanities

Humanities

A politician’s way with wordsWhatever you may think of Geert Wilders’ opinions, he is rarely accused of using ‘vague language’. So what is his secret? And what is it that makes us decide that some politicians are too ‘woolly’? Does one politicianspeak more as a ‘man of the people’ than another? Maarten van Leeuwen (1981) graduated in Linguistics,and is now studying politicians’ speeches at word and sentence level for his PhD dissertation on thestylistics of the Dutch language. Van Leeuwen is affiliated to Leiden University Centre for Linguistics.

Apart from an isolated attempt some years ago to identify the

stylistics of the Dutch language, there has for a long time been

little or no scientific knowledge in this field of study. A group of

Leiden researchers is currently working in this unchartered

territory, within the context of the interdisciplinary NWO

research project on ‘Stylistics of Dutch’, in which Van Leeuwen is

participating. The goal of the project is to reintroduce stylistics to

Dutch Studies as a field of research. Van Leeuwen’s work is part of

this effort.

Stylistics is about the choices a writer makes. Van Leeuwen: “The

DutchRail used to have stoptreinen (literally: ‘stop trains’). Now

they refer to these same trains as sprinters. With this change they

are making a stylistic choice that has rhetorical consequences: in

contrast to ‘stop train’, ‘sprinter’ emphasises how quickly the

train accelerates away.” Van Leeuwen studies these kinds of

stylistic choices in parliamentary speeches, taking media opinions

of different politicians as the starting point.

War metaphorVan Leeuwen compared a number of speeches on the topic of

integration by MP Geert Wilders, who is known as a ‘clear’

speaker, and former Minister Ella Vogelaar, who was said to use

‘woolly’ language. His analysis of their use of vocabulary and

figures of speech confirmed these opinions. “Wilders gives many

specific examples and, unlike Vogelaar, uses a lot of repetition and

metaphors. Many of Wilders’ speeches are recognisable by his use

of war metaphors: he often uses terms from warfare such as

‘fight’, ‘capitulate’ and ‘Trojan Horse’.”

The analysis also shows the grammatical choices that create the

impression that Wilders formulates his opinions clearly – this is

where Van Leeuwen’s background (his master’s thesis was onFoto ANP: Phil Nijhuis

Humanities

grammatical constructions using the verb krijgen (‘to get’) is most

apparent. “Vogelaar often formulated sentences with a main

clause and a subordinate clause, for instance: ‘I think that the

weather will be good tomorrow.’ Wilders says: ‘The weather will

be good tomorrow.’ Vogelaar’s choice of sentence structure left

much more room for discussion.”

Having a sayAnother aspect of the research focuses on whether the language

used by Wilders and Alexander Pechtold, another opposition

leader, corresponds with the way in which they present

themselves. “Wilders has created an image of himself as a political

outsider and a ‘man of the people’. This is also apparent in his

stylistic choices: he says, for instance: ‘People think’ instead of ‘I

think’. This seems to give voters something of a say as well.

Pechtold, however, creates the impression that he is a part of the

political establishment in The Hague. This, too, can be seen in his

use of language. He uses more jargon, and policy rather than

voters takes centre stage in his speeches. Pechtold says things like:

‘There will be less of a burden on the public and business.’

Wilders would say: ‘The public and business will bear less of the

burden.’ Wilders takes the perspective of the voters, and nearly

always gives them a more prominent role in the sentence.”

One of the goals of the stylistics project is to develop a method

for forming well-founded judgments about style. Van Leeuwen:

“We are creating a checklist of linguistic phenomena, so that you

can systematically analyse style. We use it when teaching stylistics,

but others will also be able to use it for scientific research. This

kind of checklist could be useful for speechwriters and journalists,

too. In addition, the study provides insight into the rhetorical

effects of stylistic choices, which is of interest to anyone who is

professionally involved with language.”

Maarten van Leeuwen

“The NS used to have stoptreinen (literally: ‘stoptrains’); now they refer to these same trains assprinters.”

Humanities

Solving environmental issuesHanneke Muilwijk (1986) has a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in both Chemistry (Sustainable Molecular

Science & Technology) and Philosophy. Her Philosophy thesis was awarded the Wouter Achterberg Prize in 2013.

“During my Chemistry studies, it became abundantly clear to me

that in terms of technology, we are able to come up with fantastic

solutions to environmental problems. But what about the next

step? I find this question fascinating, because actually

implementing these solutions often turns out to be much more

complex than the technical issues involved. In my thesis I

investigated why this is and how things could be improved.

“Sustainability issues often involve a number of different

interests: some people need the timber from the rainforest in

order to survive whereas others want to protect a rare butterfly.

Personal gain – a car journey, for example – is often at odds with

a collective problem, such as environmental pollution. In

addition, it’s essential that people take responsibility for their own

behaviour: low-energy bulbs should not mean that they leave

their lights on longer. Another difficulty is that while our

problems transgress borders, the international structures are not

equipped to deal with them.

“The conclusion I have drawn is that our liberal model of

democracy is not particularly suited to address these kinds of

problems. My hypothesis is that a deliberative democracy, in

which decisions are not based on a vote but on discussion and

consensus, is much better equipped for this.

Humanities

Hanneke Muilwijk

“The conclusion I have drawn is that our liberal modelof democracy is not particularly suited to address thesekinds of environmental problems.”

“The American researcher Fishkin has performed experiments in

which he brought people together and asked them to make

consensual decisions. He asked the test subjects to fill in a

questionnaire before and after the experiments. In one of his

European experiments, many of the participants proved to have

changed their minds on environmental issues: after the

experiment they made greener choices and voted for different

parties.

“Of course, deliberative democracy is not a magic wand; you

cannot determine the outcome. But it does show that this system

is better equipped to deal with environmental problems.

“After I graduated, I joined the Ministry of Infrastructure and the

Environment as a government trainee. I focus on the public

perception of water safety. I am happy to be doing work that is

socially relevant. In the future I would like to do a PhD on the

interaction between science and society.”

Humanities

“What makes a reader decide whether or not to read a new book?

The opinion of professionals, such as reviewers, is starting to

count for less. Research shows that what your friends and

acquaintances think is becoming increasingly important. Book

marketing has become more democratic, as it were.

“Reading has always been an incentive for social interaction – we

can term this ‘social reading’ – but the internet and social media

have made this process quicker and easier. Readers visit websites

and download apps on literature. They exchange book tips, news

and reviews via media such as Facebook and Twitter. In my thesis,

I documented how social reading can be used in book marketing.

“The book industry is having a hard time in the Netherlands:

publishers are faced with falling sales figures. They could use this

new kind of social reading, for instance by giving away books to

people who retweet a message about a book or write a review. The

most effective form of marketing is to stir consumers to action

because you then create a group of loyal followers, and word will

spread quickly about your book. The trouble is that publishers

run the risk of losing control: a book could end up receiving bad

reviews.

“Some publishers are therefore still a bit cautious. But the great

advantage is that you can easily reach a large target group, even

for books with a low marketing budget or by unknown writers. It

also enables authors to do much of the marketing themselves.

And you can reach people who rarely enter a bookshop, if at all.

To read or not to readCarola van der Drift (1989) has a Bachelor’s degree in Japanese Studies and recently completed her Master’s degree in Book and Digital Media Studies.

Humanities

Carola van der Drift

“Research shows that what your friends andacquaintances think is becoming increasinglyimportant. Book marketing has become moredemocratic, as it were.”

“I have just completed my thesis, but the topic is still very much

on my mind. I work at the University Library and write about the

impact of modern media on the library world for the journal

Informatie Professional. I would like to continue doing research,

especially if I can combine the themes of my master’s degree with

those of my bachelor’s degree, which was in Japanese.”

Humanities

“We’re always somebody else’sbarbarian”

Whenever the ancient Greeks encountered people they didn’t understand, they would call them barbaroi, because to the Greeks, their language represented incomprehensible sounds. In our current dictionaries,‘barbarian’ means the opposite of civilized, or the antithesis of ‘us’. However, in his poem ‘Waiting for thebarbarians’ (1904), Greek poet Cavafy suggests that the civilized depend on the barbarians, because theycarry the promise of a new beginning. Maria Boletsi (Corfu, 1979) was fascinated by this poem as ateenager. She works at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society where she is Assistant Professorat the Film and Literary Studies Department. Boletsi has just published Barbarism and Its Discontents.

Maria Boletsi is a product of her time. When she started her

master’s in Amsterdam in , the West was dominated by the al-

Qaeda attacks of . In the years that followed, Boletsi detected

an increase in the use of the word ‘barbarian’ in the media and in

political rhetoric as well as in everyday language. With Cavafy in

mind, she had found the inspiration for her research.

Dangerous enemiesBoletsi soon concluded that the barbarian’s role is always in

relation to civilisation. “To call somebody a barbarian has certain

consequences for how we perceive this person. It isn’t at all

innocent; there’s a lot of violence in these linguistic

constructions. Tagging others as barbarians transforms them

from legitimate opponents into irrational and dangerous enemies

that you have to eliminate. You can’t reason with evil. We hear

politicians using the term to legitimise military action against

Detail of the Esperando a los bárbaros installation by Graciela

Sacco (). Heliography on paper and wood, variable dimensions.

Photograph by Maria Boletsi, taken at Museum Morsbroich,

Germany.

Humanities

Maria Boletsi

“Tagging others as barbarians transforms them fromlegitimate opponents into irrational and dangerousenemies that you have to eliminate.”

others or to suspend human rights in the name of protection;

Guantanamo Bay is the perfect example of this.”

The meaning of barbarian as ‘someone we don’t understand’ is

also reflected quite literally in how people view recent protest

movements, such as the Occupy movement. “Many people don’t

understand the Occupy movement. They feel it doesn’t have clear

objectives. This is why they view it as barbarian,

incomprehensible. But this case also shows how relative the

concept is: the occupiers call bankers ‘barbarians’ too. The

barbarian isn’t a natural category. People aren’t essentially or

naturally barbarians; we’re always somebody else’s barbarian.”

A new perspectiveHowever, there can also be another side to the concept of

barbarism. “And now, what’s going to happen to us without

barbarians? They were, those people, a kind of solution,” Cavafy

writes. In Boletsi’s view, “This is what is intriguing about this

poem: what happens to the civilised when the barbarian is no

longer there? We’re lost if we don’t have this category of ‘the

other’ against which we can define ourselves.” But barbarism can

also be used in an affirmative or critical way, she suggests. “It has

been used in art, literature and philosophy as a mode of critique

of civilisation, progress or rationality. As a critical concept, it can

signify an alternative, new perspective, a new beginning.

The implications of current uses of the word still intrigue Boletsi.

In her new research she is focusing on the role of barbarism after

/ in art and literature, as well as in media and cultural theory.

This summer she will start a project with researchers from

Switzerland and Germany on the modern history of barbarism

and its role in definitions of European identity since the

eighteenth century. The project, for which she has just received an

NWO Internationalisation grant, is due to be completed in .

Humanities

“In my Psychology training very little attention was paid to

spirituality and the answers people seek to the big questions in

life. But I think this is precisely what makes us human. In society

there is also a lot of interest in spirituality and practices such as

mindfulness, but meanwhile the churches are emptying. This is

why in my Religious Studies thesis I wanted to consider the basis

of religious conviction: the development of the relationship

between an individual and God.

“I asked over seventy young people to draw the picture they see in

their minds if they think of GOD – I used three capital letters to

avoid biasing them. I wanted to find out how ‘developed’ their

image of God was, whether it had personal features and differed

from the fairy-tale image of an old man with a long beard, high

up on a cloud.

“Many drawings turned out to be very specific, and most were of

the fairy-tale old man. The young people had not really developed

their images of God into their own personal depictions. This

might be due to the way that churches try to appeal to young

people. They tend to reach out to them with mass events, but

appear to pay little attention to the more personal relationship

with God.

An old man with a long beardLizette Romijn (1987) did a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and went on to do two Master’s degrees simultaneously: in Psychology and Religious Studies.

Drawing by one of the young participants.

Humanities

Lizette Romijn

“I wanted to find out how ‘developed’ their image ofGod was, whether it had personal features anddiffered from the fairy-tale image of an old man witha long beard, high up on a cloud.”

“I also used a questionnaire to obtain some personal information

about the participants, and then looked at whether this

information correlated with their image of God. Most of the

drawings that depicted biblical scenes proved to have been

produced by religious young people with diplomas in junior

general secondary education or senior secondary vocational

education. Religious participants with a senior general secondary

education diploma or a higher professional diploma were most

likely to produce drawings that did not contain any biblical

references. Young people who felt insecure in their relationship

with their mother had a tendency to draw a more realistic image

of God, which differed more strongly from the fairy-tale picture.

Some researchers think that children’s images of God are

primarily a projection of their parents. If young people are more

insecure in their relationship with their mother, their image of

God will tend to represent a more accessible figure.

“If I were given the opportunity to do PhD research on this topic,

I would definitely seize it. At the moment I am working as a

researcher at the Youth Care Bureau. In my work, I often come in

contact with people with a different religious background, so my

studies definitely come in handy.”

Humanities

The Japanese struggle with a wartime past

During his PhD training, Mark encountered a book by Japanese

historian Yoshimi Yoshiaki called Grass-Roots Fascism. The War

Experience of the Japanese People (). “It’s a fascinating book,

because it looks at the experiences of ordinary Japanese people

during the Second World War. When I finished my PhD, I jumped

at the chance to translate it, because I thought it was long

overdue.”

Yoshimi, a member of the Japanese student protest movement in

the sixties, saw German students demanding an explanation for

the war. He wondered why this wasn’t happening in Japan. Mark:

“Japanese history is often seen as a history of oppression from

above, partly based on the idea that the Japanese are passive and

feudalistic: not modern enough, and therefore easily pushed into

war. This was a convenient explanation, maintained both by

Japanese elites and by foreign countries with their own political

When Ethan Mark (1965) met his future wife, the daughter of an Indonesian air force officer and his Dutch wife, he also met his academic future. Mark had already finished his Bachelor’s degree in Japanese Studiesand had been an exchange student in Tokyo. His encounter with Indonesia inspired him to complete a PhDat Columbia University on the Japanese occupation of the Indonesian island of Java during World War II. Nextyear, he will publish the English translation of a landmark book about Japanese fascism, with an extensiveintroduction that puts the issue in a global perspective. Ethan Mark is a specialist in the history of modernJapan and works at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies.

agenda. But Yoshimi didn’t accept the idea that ordinary Japanese

people had no active role in the war.”

Historical research on the experiences of ordinary people during

a war that had ended more than thirty years earlier wasn’t easy.

“But Yoshimi found many diaries and memoirs of low-ranking

soldiers and their families. These people turned out to be

surprisingly literate. The Japanese government had not been

forthcoming in explaining the war, but Yoshimi saw that there

were many Japanese who had thought about it and were still

wrestling with it.”

Brothers?The most striking aspect of the book in Mark’s eyes, however, is

its illustration of the central role of the Second Sino-Japanese War

(starting in ) in shaping developments within wartime Japan

Humanities

– and beyond. “The interaction between the battlefront and the

home front, which Yoshimi emphasises, is something we tend to

overlook, and it has relevance for our understanding of the

Second World War more generally. The Japanese became

increasingly brutal because they couldn’t handle Chinese

resistance. While the propaganda called the Chinese ‘brothers’,

one diary after another shows that in daily practice the Japanese

treated them as untermenschen. In the end, these experiences

radicalised Japan.”

In his introduction to Grass-Roots Fascism, Mark also assesses its

depiction of Japan’s occupation experience in neighbouring

countries like Taiwan, Korea and Indonesia. “In the last twenty-

odd years, scholars have started to look more at the grey areas of

interaction in colonial history, not just oppression and resistance.

For example, ordinary Indonesians suffered severely under

Japanese occupation, but the Indonesian elite had a much more

complex relationship with the Japanese. In my own work I look at

questions such as: why did they co-operate, what kind of interests

or ideologies did they share?”

Having completed a revised version of his PhD thesis, Mark now

wants to write a history of the Second World War that isn’t

Eurocentric. “The story of the War always starts in in Poland.

I have trouble finding a valid reason for this. If you look at the

War from the perspective of most of the world, this was a war

about empires fighting to the death. The fascist countries all saw

the war as a legitimate war for empire. The Sino-Japanese war was

the beginning of the end of colonialism. In this sense, the war in

Asia was essential to global history. I’d like to write a narrative

that starts the Second World War in , at the Marco Polo

Bridge in China, when the Japanese and Chinese initiated total

war.”

Ethan Mark

“The Japanese government had not beenforthcoming in explaining the war, but Yoshimi sawthat there were many Japanese who had thoughtabout it and were still wrestling with it.”

Humanities

Greetings from the Anglo-Saxons Sander Stolk (1985) studied Computer Science before doing a Bachelor’s degree in English Language and Culture and a Master’s in Literary Studies: English Literature and Culture.

“For my master’s thesis in English I tried to find a use for the

programming skills I had acquired while studying Computer

Science. I developed a tool that calculates how many words can be

found for a given concept in the Thesaurus of Old English.

“The thesaurus organises groups of words into a tree structure: it

begins with an abstract category of words, such as ‘actions’, and

then branches out into increasingly specific categories, such as

‘gestures’ and then ‘greetings’. The vocabulary of a civilisation

reveals its culture: we can now see how many words and nuances

the Anglo-Saxons had for ‘war’, for example.

“I did a case study on the words for and meanings of ‘to greet’.

The first thing you do when you meet another person is greet

him. It is a way of acknowledging the other person, a ritual that

structures the encounter. The Old English gretan (English: to

greet, Dutch: groeten) can have a number of meanings, all of

which relate to initial contact, whether this be playing the harp or

attacking with a spear. The same word can therefore have many

associations.

“I also studied literary texts, poems and administrative texts that

contained the words for greeting, in order to discover more about

the context in which they were used.

Humanities

Sander Stolk

“I developed a tool that calculates how manywords can be found for a given concept in theThesaurus of Old English.”

“My study showed that the initial greeting in Old English often

had a health or well-being connotation: hal (English: whole,

Dutch: heel) and gesund (English: healthy, Dutch: gezond) are

examples of this. Health wishes are not a feature of greetings in

modern English: they generally take the form of a question (‘How

do you do?’) or are used when leaving (‘Take care’).

“This kind of study makes it possible to chart the development of

a language. Although I originally studied English because I didn’t

enjoy working in the IT sector, my research has once again given

me a taste for programming, so that’s what I will be doing next.

But I will also be giving some serious consideration to whether I

want to do a PhD in this field.”

Episode from the Dutch Revolt. Hendrik van Steenwijck, Church

interior with iconoclasts, c. -, oil on panel (Collectie

Museum Het Prinsenhof, Delft).

Humanities

Tales of the Dutch RevoltOn 3 October each year, Leiden celebrates the Relief of Leiden – the city’s liberation from the Spanish Siege in 1574. People eat hutspot, and herring with white bread is handed out. Every Dutch person has heard ofthese festivities; they are familiar components of our memory culture of the Eighty Years War. Where betterto carry out research on this culture than at the Leiden University Institute for History? This is whereProfessor Judith Pollmann (1964) is leading the exceptional research project ‘Tales of the Revolt. Memory,oblivion and identity in the Low Countries, 1566-1700’.

Apart from Leiden’s eating habits, Pollmann and her research

group are studying diverse aspects of Dutch culture in the Golden

Age that bore witness to the tumultuous past, be it stained-glass

windows in churches, plaques on houses, street names,

storytelling, chronicles, literature or plays. “We study how

memories are transmitted, but also what this says about how

people deal with change and how they construct their own story

from events.” The Eighty Years War (-) is a rewarding

epoch to study, because of the quick succession of events during

the Revolt against the King and the lasting effects of the ensuing

war on the relationship between the Northern and Southern

Provinces of the Low Countries. This struggle eventually led to

the formation of two separate states.

One of the threads that Pollmann can see running through her

work as a historian specialising in the early modern era is how

people deal with change. “I am a child of the time when religious

barriers were lifted in the Netherlands: at a young age I had many

a discussion with my grandmother about the consequences of

these changes, for example.” Pollmann studied History in

Amsterdam and Renaissance Studies in London, and developed

an interest in the impact of change in the sixteenth century. A

collection of her research group’s results will be published later

this year under the title Memory before modernity. Practices of

memory in early modern Europe. Pollmann’s own contribution to

the larger research project will follow in .

AwkwardIf you consider what we know about the Eighty Years War in the

Low Countries, you can see how people construct their own

version of history and use this for political purposes. The

Southern regions – modern-day Belgium – initially rose in revolt

against the Spanish Habsburgs, but later they again came under

Spanish rule. “This was awkward, so they reconstructed history.

Religion played an important role in this respect. Stories were told

of how local saints had repelled attacks by heretics. William of

Orange, who initiated the revolt, was depicted as a person driven

primarily by his own ambitions. And, no, they had never been

Calvinists: it was just the bad influence of those Hollanders (from

the North).”

Humanities

Judith Pollmann

In the independence-seeking North, there were too many

religious distinctions to use religion as the basis for a commonly

constructed identity, Pollmann concludes. “So their story had a

much more secular and xenophobic bias: the Spanish versus the

Dutch. The concept of Fatherland proved to be the solution here:

Dutch was primarily all that was not Spanish. Revolt memories

became a tool in national politics: did you fight hard enough for

our Fatherland? But a common culture of remembrance was not

a matter of course. We can see this from the fact that it took thirty

years for a funerary monument to be built for William of

Orange.”

Different storiesHer research also led Pollmann to develop more profound ideas

about her field. “So many different stories have been told

about our past over the years. Some of these stories are

nonsense when looking at them from a scholarly

perspective, but that doesn’t make them less interesting.

Mayor Van der Werff is traditionally seen as a hero who

offered his own body to the hungry Leiden citizens

during the Siege of Leiden. We now know that there is no

evidence of such heroism, and that he may in fact have

considered capitulating. This knowledge changes nothing

about the celebration, and we still sing patriotic songs near

his statue on October. And there is not necessarily anything

wrong in this. It is our job as historians to challenge myths, but

we also need to accept that other people want to do other things

with the past.”

“We study how memories are transmitted, but also what this says about how people deal withchange and how they construct their own story from events.”

Perspectives on the WorldReflections of -

Faculty of Humanities

EditorsJesca Zweijtzer

Crowd Communicatie, Lise-Lotte Kerkhof

InterviewsSchonewille Schrijft, Marie-Louise Schonewille

TranslationAcademic Language Centre, Faculty of Humanities

Portrait photographyHielco Kuipers

DesignRatio Design, Haarlem

Graphic productionUFB / GrafiMedia

September

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