Search results

AbstractDrawing evidence from the proceedings of the Antwerp hoogere Vierschaer (the local criminal court), the article challenges some key features from Jan de Vries' hypothesis of the Industrious Revolution. Mesmerised by an endless variety of fashionable and exotic consumer goods, eighteenth-century people would have slashed their leisure time in a variety of ways. Labour input would have been forced up on a daily, weekly and annual base. However, time-budget analysis of Antwerp labour rhythms evidences a much more complex picture, which does not really hint at an industrious revolution but rather reveals invariable industriousness.

Drawing evidence from the letters and travel journal of Jan Teding van Berkhout—scion of a wealthy regenten family from Delft—this article scrutinizes how elite masculinity and wellevendheid (politeness) were constructed, perceived, experienced, and contested in the eighteenth-century Dutch Republic. Berkhout's correspondence not only hints at some important differences in the Netherlandish and British interpretation of polite masculinity but also evidences that ideas about what a "true man" was and how he should behave could differ substantially within one and the same family. Differences in age, gender, and the unequal balance of power created a set of—coexisting, competing, or clashing—multiple masculinities. Whether masculinity was performed front- or backstage also mattered, as politeness was frequently put on hold and replaced by intimate bawdiness. In fact, the spectrum of masculinities available in Berkhout's correspondence casts some serious doubt on Connell's idea of hegemonic masculinity.

Files of the local criminal court in Antwerp – the Hoogere Vierschaar – are used in this article to assess the evolution of literacy and numeracy in Antwerp. Both forms of human capital are habitually seen as strongly intertwined, yet our evidence shows that they were not always geared to one another. Literacy did not grow significantly in Antwerp during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while it reached its high-water mark in other European towns. Faced by a severe economic crisis, the local government had to trim down free public education in Sunday schools, while private boarding schools ( Duytsche scholen) saw their number of pupils fall abruptly as the recession impoverished a wide swath of society. Numeracy, however, followed a different course. Despite the economic crisis, people's age awareness took a huge leap forward in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries as basic arithmetic skills were bound to a more informal, everyday training. Moreover, this idea, that literacy and numeracy were not always geared to each other is buttressed by marked social and gender variations.

Visitando il teatro della guerra. Fortezze, campi di battaglia, e memorie di guerra nei Paesi Bassi meridionali (1697-1750)Dagli ultimissimi anni del Seicento in poi, la zona sud-orientale dei Paesi Bassi meridionali, con città quali Liegi e Namur, diventava meta di viaggiatori e turisti curiosi di visitare i luoghi che solo alcuni anni prima erano stati devastati nelle campagne militari di Luigi XIV. A cominciare dalla guida di Jean-Baptiste II Christyn, Les Délices des Païs-Bas (1697), una produzione corografica chiaramente modellata su esempi precedenti relativi soprattutto ai Paesi Bassi settentrionali cominciava a stimolare tale nuovo fenomeno di 'turismo dei campi di battaglia', presentando la regione in una veste militare appositamente accentuata per soddisfare questo nuovo mercato turistico. Verhoeven dimostra il successo di questo tentativo di 'region branding', illustrando non solo il crescente flusso di viaggiatori a questa regione prima solo raramente visitata, ma anche l'impatto preciso di alcuni testi corografici, la cui impronta è chiaramente riconoscibile negli appunti di alcuni viaggiatori e perfino nei percorsi turistici offerti sul luogo a questi visitatori.

Visitando il teatro della guerra. Fortezze, campi di battaglia, e memorie di guerra nei Paesi Bassi meridionali (1697-1750)Dagli ultimissimi anni del Seicento in poi, la zona sud-orientale dei Paesi Bassi meridionali, con città quali Liegi e Namur, diventava meta di viaggiatori e turisti curiosi di visitare i luoghi che solo alcuni anni prima erano stati devastati nelle campagne militari di Luigi XIV. A cominciare dalla guida di Jean-Baptiste II Christyn, Les Délices des Païs-Bas (1697), una produzione corografica chiaramente modellata su esempi precedenti relativi soprattutto ai Paesi Bassi settentrionali cominciava a stimolare tale nuovo fenomeno di 'turismo dei campi di battaglia', presentando la regione in una veste militare appositamente accentuata per soddisfare questo nuovo mercato turistico. Verhoeven dimostra il successo di questo tentativo di 'region branding', illustrando non solo il crescente flusso di viaggiatori a questa regione prima solo raramente visitata, ma anche l'impatto preciso di alcuni testi corografici, la cui impronta è chiaramente riconoscibile negli appunti di alcuni viaggiatori e perfino nei percorsi turistici offerti sul luogo a questi visitatori.

Intro -- Makelaars in kennis: Een inleiding -- Erika Kuijpers en Gerrit Verhoeven -- Rederijkersnetwerken en de verspreiding van kennis in de vroege zeventiende eeuw -- Het werk van Willem de Gortter en de beeldvorming van de Opstand -- Bram Caers -- Meertalige tijdingen in het Van der Meulen archief (1588-1600) -- Nina Lamal -- De vroegmoderne ambassade­secretaris als informatiemanager -- Henri Brasset en zijn briefregisters (1616-1654) -- Kerrewin van Blanken -- Kennis over verre zeeën

AbstractThe late eighteenth century has often been portrayed as a pivotal period in the genesis of modern awareness and use of time. Despite this, empirical research to bolster such claims remains relatively thin. The same holds true for gender differences as surprisingly little is known about women's timekeeping and time‐use in early modern Europe. Drawing on evidence from the late eighteenth‐century diary of Clara Cornelia van Eijck, a Dutch burgeres who spent her days in exile in Ghent, this article provides a fresh perspective on some of the key debates on early modern awareness of time.

Belgium has often been labelled as a reluctant colonizer in the past. Yet, a meticulous analysis of tourist magazines, guidebooks, brochures, posters, and documentaries on colonial tourism in the Belgian Congo tells a different story. Travel literature was often teeming with pro-empire propaganda that emphasized the primitiveness of the Congo and underscored the civilizing mission. Tourism was, in this respect, not very different from the overtly positive framing of the Belgian colonial rule that was propagated by museums, monuments of colonial heroes, exhibitions, movies and schoolbooks. The aim of this article is to take the argument even further. Most research on colonial tourism is focused on the creation of pro-empire propaganda in tourist magazines and guidebooks, while the actual appropriation of this image by travellers of flesh and blood is often tacitly assumed or – even worse – taken for granted. Interviews with ex-colonials show that the reality was much more subtle, as the overly positive propaganda was not always swallowed hook, line and sinker.