This article examines sodomy prosecutions by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) during the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. It shows that long before the Dutch "gay panic" of 1730, colonial workers were actively (if selectively) prosecuted for sodomy by the VOC's ship and fleet councils, as well as the corporate colonial courts in the Dutch East Indies. These prosecutions, this article argues, contributed to the construction of a Dutch sexual-moral order in the colonial encounter-within, and as a function of, European imperialist capitalism, and by extension, capitalist law. The overarching aim of the "VOC sexual-moral order" was VOC commercial hegemony in the Indies, and labor discipline, with "sexual enclosure" (following Christopher Chitty) delineating permitted and punishable practices. VOC leaders like J.P. Coen articulated an ideal Dutch identity, the "nation mirrored in the individual," contrasting it with Asian (especially Muslim) societies. The contested VOC sexual-moral ordering "boomeranged" back to the Dutch Republic in the early eighteenth century. The story of one convicted sodomite, Leendert Hasenbosch, tracks this boomerang movement from the Dutch Indies back to the Dutch Republic, where, during the 1730s "gay panic," the criminalization of sodomy served to strengthen and legitimize the nascent capitalist state apparatus. The case of the VOC shows that colonial history is part of Western history of sexuality, and illuminates how European, and eventually hegemonic, ideas about sexuality in fact developed in the colonial encounter. Conversely, it shows that sexuality, alongside race, forms a key part of the history of imperialism and European state-formation.
Abstract The now little-remembered 1926 flight of a hydroplane piloted by Ramón Franco from Spain to Buenos Aires was greeted with enthusiasm on both sides of the Atlantic. It demonstrates the excitement of the early era of flight and the openness of Argentina to a rapidly changing world. It also reveals much about the society of Buenos Aires, especially its large emigrant community of Spaniards. The expedition was financed by the Spanish government to build support for the dictator, Miguel Primo de Rivera, to improve the image of the Spanish military, and to tighten ties with the Hispanic Republics. The decision to terminate the adventure in Buenos Aires created friction between Primo de Rivera and Franco, which impacted large sectors of the local Spanish community. This allows the historian to see the fissures in the resident Spanish community that are usually seen as emerging with the creation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931. Tensions were displayed based on regionalism versus nationalism, republicanism versus monarchism, and even anti-clericalism. These foreshadowed tensions that beset much of the region a decade later. The differing reaction in Spain and Argentina to the flight’s mechanic Pablo Rado also demonstrates that the Argentines were more open to those from the working class and demonstrates one reason for the country’s attractiveness to immigrants.
