Gert Oostindie – författare

These transfers of sovereignty resulted in extensive, unforeseen movements of citizens and subjects to their former countries. The phenomenon of postcolonial migration affected not only European nations, but also the United States, Japan and post-Soviet Russia. The political and societal reactions to the unexpected and often unwelcome migrants was significant to postcolonial migrants’ identity politics and how these influenced metropolitan debates about citizenship, national identity and colonial history. The contributors explore the historical background and contemporary significance of these migrations and discuss the ethnic and class composition and the patterns of integration of the migrant population.

Wim Klooster and Gert Oostindie present a fresh look at the Dutch Atlantic in the period following the imperial moment of the seventeenth century. This epoch (1680–1815), the authors argue, marked a distinct and significant era in which Dutch military power declined and Dutch colonies began to chart a more autonomous path.The loss of Brazil and New Netherland were twin blows to Dutch imperial pretensions. Yet the Dutch Atlantic hardly faded into insignificance. Instead, the influence of the Dutch remained, as they were increasingly drawn into the imperial systems of Britain, Spain, and France. In their synthetic and comparative history, Klooster and Oostindie reveal the fragmented identity and interconnectedness of the Dutch in three Atlantic theaters: West Africa, Guiana, and the insular Caribbean. They show that the colonies and trading posts were heterogeneous in their governance, religious profiles, and ethnic compositions and were marked by creolization. Even as colonial control weakened, the imprint of Dutch political, economic, and cultural authority would mark territories around the Atlantic for decades to come.Realm between Empires is a powerful revisionist history of the eighteenth-century Atlantic world and provides a much-needed counterpoint to the more widely known British and French Atlantic histories.

Dutch Atlantic Connections focuses on the Dutch dimension of the integrated Atlantic World between 1680 and 1800. In recent years, it has increasingly become clear that Dutch activities in this Atlantic world were of far greater significance than historians hitherto assumed. This volume illustrates how Dutch networks functioned in the Atlantic and highlights the pivotal and, indeed, exceptional role of the Dutch in the Atlantic. The chapters present the economic function of the Dutch as middlemen and brokers who helped the Atlantic system operate by embedding themselves in the networks of other empires. This book also demonstrates the cultural impact of the Dutch in the Atlantic and of the Atlantic on the Dutch.

Much has been written on the post-war decolonisation in the Caribbean, but rarely from a truly comparative perspective, and seldom with serious attention to the former Dutch colonies of Surinam, the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba. This study bridges both gaps. In their analysis of Dutch decolonisation policies since the 1940s, the authors discuss not only political processes, but also development aid, the Dutch Caribbean exodus to the metropolis and cultural antagonisms. A balance is drawn both of the costs and benefits of independence in the Caribbean and of the outlines and results of the policies pursued in the non-sovereign Caribbean by France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and the United States.

Unlike most city histories, this book focuses exclusively on the city's connections with colonialism and slavery. Rotterdam, the second-largest Dutch city, is one of Europe's leading ports. Its maritime expansion was intrinsically linked to Dutch colonialism, including slave trading and colonial slavery in the Americas, Africa and Asia. This painful history sits uneasily with the city's modern cosmopolitan image and its large population of 'new Rotterdammers' with colonial roots. The present volume provides a summary of the research that has documented this history, with chapters on the contribution of colonial trade to economic development; the city's involvement in slavery; the role of the urban political elites; the impact on urban development and architecture; the 'ethical impulse'; colonial art and ethnographic collections; colonial and postcolonial migration; and finally the resonance of this history in postcolonial Rotterdam.

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. Whereas the newly proclaimed Republic of Indonesia rejected the colonial regime and hence any attempt at ‘recolonization’ by the Dutch after the Japanese occupation (1942-1945), the Dutch framed their return to the archipelago as a mission to restore ‘order and peace’. Images of the Indonesian War. Many of these materials, alongside photographs and oral history collections, ended up in the collections of the KITLV and eventually the Leiden University Libraries. This trilingual (English, Dutch and Indonesian) catalogue accompanies a digital exhibition of some fifty unique items. The selection made demonstrates the sharply contrasting perspectives on the legitimacy of the Republic and Dutch colonialism, and also offers first-hand testimonies of a bitter war with a huge imbalance of casualties.

An initiative of King Willem-AlexanderWhat role did the House of Orange-Nassau play in Dutch colonial history? Were the Orange-Nassaus mainly symbols of the empire or were they actively involved in the colonial expansion, slavery, and economic exploitation? The historian Gert Oostindie has written a powerful, accessible book assessing four centuries of entanglement between the Orange-Nassaus and the colonial empire. Drawing on a major academic research programme commissioned by King Willem-Alexander, Gert Oostindie shows how the House of Orange-Nassau was implicated in colonial trade, war, and slavery. The family utilized its prestige and power in its involvement in the East and West India Companies, as well as in Indonesia, Suriname, and the Caribbean islands.The Orange-Nassaus aided expansion overseas and lent a regal allure to the empire while benefiting from colonial revenue. Yet their role was in constant flux. King William I proactively shaped the colonial empire, while Queen Wilhelmina became the figurehead of Dutch imperialism in its heyday. It was only after decolonization that the family found room for doubts, reflection, and (eventually) apologies.  The colonialism of the Orange-NassausGert Oostindie gives a clear and frank picture of how colonialism became deeply embedded in the history of both the Netherlands and its royal house. He considers not only what the Orange-Nassaus did but also what colonialism meant to them. The Dutch Monarchy and its Colonial History, 1600-2025 is a perceptive, topical, and at times surprising assessment of a past whose legacy continues today.

This book presents a comparative history of the role of monarchs in European colonialism, with chapters on the Belgian, British, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Swedish royal houses. This volume offers a comparative discussion, seeking to identify connections and parallels, as well as contrasts, from early modernity to present-day public debates. Almost all of the European states under discussion here embarked on colonialism as monarchies. The authors in this volume emphasise that across time and place, monarchs supported colonialism in its early stages, including slavery — and none were actively, let alone decisively supportive of abolitionism in their own colonies. Monarchs retained their colonial mindset until the end; not one king or queen anywhere in Europe was known for even silently sympathising with the struggle for independence in the colonies until well after the Second World War.

The current Dutch population counts two million non-Western migrants.Postcolonial Netherlands, which elicited much praise but also controversy following the publication of its Dutch edition, is the first scholarly monograph to address these themes in an internationally comparative framework.