This review discusses recent trends in the historiography of science, knowledge and colonialism, and how they have been applied to the Dutch Empire. It shows how historians have characterized the relation between science and colonialism in the last decades. The review begins by identifying two broad clusters: The first emphasized how science thrived through the networks created by colonialism. More recently, the scientists' descriptions and discoveries have been critically reinterpreted as forms of knowledge extraction, comparable to resource extraction. The second historiographical cluster highlights how science played a crucial role in the colonization and continued subjugation of the colonies, both technologically and ideologically. The second part of this review essay shifts the focus from science to the more general term 'knowledge', as this provides historians with a broader palette for writing about indigenous forms of knowledge. The challenge for future historians of knowledge remains to dismantle colonial frameworks and to make the field more inclusive.
Urban interactions with the public provide a way forward for Dutch police historiography. In 1966 police rooted in a parochial post-war culture clashed violently with nonconformist youth in Amsterdam. This led to the hiring of police psychologists to ameliorate relations with the public. This article examines the role of police psychologists within the Dutch police from the 1950s onwards, the strategies and vocabulary they introduced and their contribution to a modern, public-oriented police culture. Their approach to the police's public image, underpinned by a narrative of a democratizing society, addressed emotional management in dealing with demonstrations and youngsters. They trained police to view the street as an arena of emotions, broadening their repertoire of interactions with citizens with de-escalating, preemptive negotiating tactics. The first inhouse police psychologists were caught between the police corps culture and hierarchy and the public, risking their autonomy and professional distance. Although this led to the first police psychologist's early resignation, gradually the psychologist acquired a durable position within Amsterdam's municipal police force.
Who are 'we'? Fracture lines within a national narrative: the flood of 1926. The emotional responses elicited by moments of crisis have attracted recent and increasingly interdisciplinary attention. When emotional discourses and practices during crisis are investigated in relation to ideas of national identity, however, one method is critically overlooked. This article argues for the value of the history of emotions in this discussion. The fact that emotions are time and culture specific suggests the need for a thorough and nuanced analysis of their presence and function in different times and contexts. In this paper the framework of emotional communities is used to explain how emotions that were expressed in 1926 - and evaluated by others - influenced social and political relationships within the Netherlands. This shows communities that sometimes clashed but often overlapped without merging, making fracture lines within Dutch society dynamic. There was no single national `we', but rather a patchwork of interlocking and competing emotional norms.
This article examines the provenance of an oil painting, looted from the Cakranegara palace of Lombok by Dutch forces in 1894, and returned to Indonesia in 2023. The figure in the painting had long been assumed to be Anak Agung Made Karangasem (?-1894), a Balinese prince from Cakranegara and a key figure in the Lombok conflict. This assumption can be traced back to collector Theodore Delprat (1851-1932) who appraised it (along with many other looted objects from Lom bok) based on what it meant to him as a Dutch nationalist and imperialist. This appraisal was left unchallenged until recently, when critical viewers from Lombok regained easier access to the painting and were able to note discrepancies. Based on consultation of circulating accounts in Lombok and re-examination of colonial archives, this article identifies the figure as Dulatip of Kelayu (?-1920), a high-ranking Sasak official in the Cakranegara court, and a pembekel (chief) of Punia Village, likely the original owner of the painting. Our efforts show that critical collaboration between Indonesian and Dutch sources is still needed to overcome colonial misinterpretations and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of contested heritage.
