Search results

Cover -- Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Notes on Contributors -- Acknowledgements -- Acronyms and Abbreviations -- Introduction Samuël Kruizinga -- 1 Belittling Spain. Hispanophobia and the mirror of greatness Yolanda Rodríguez Pérez -- 2 Dealing with smallness in Habsburg Bohemia, Ottoman Albania and Tsarist Georgia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Adrian Brisku -- 3 Smallness and the East-West binary in nationalism studies. Belgium and Romania in the long nineteenth century Raul Carstocea and Maarten Van Ginderachter -- 4 'Poor Little Belgium'. Food aid and the image of Belgian victimhood in the United States Marjet Brolsma and Samuël Kruizinga -- 5 Science, health and American money. Small state strategies in interwar Czechoslovakia and Denmark Elisabeth Van Meer, Casper Andersen and Ludvig Goldschmidt Pedersen -- 6 Neutral news. Forging a small states' transnational media network, 1914‒40 Vincent Kuitenbrouwer -- 7 'Whoever says that Serbia is small is lying!' Serbia, ontological (in)security and the unbearable smallness of being Christian Axboe Nielsen -- 8 Iceland's smallness. Acceptance or denial? Baldur Thorhallsson and Guðmundur Hálfdanarson -- 9 Great Britain and Little Ireland. Reimagining British and Irish relations in BIPA, Brexit and beyond Sara Dybris McQuaid -- 10 From David to Goliath? The question of size in Israel's identity politics Alexei Tsinovoi -- Conclusions Samuël Kruizinga and Karen Gram-Skjoldager -- Bibliography -- Index.

About 700 Dutchmen joined the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) to fight Franco specifically and fascism generally. After 1945, both surviving veterans and those writing their histories agreed that after their return, they continued their fight against fascism in Nazi-occupied Holland. This article presents a microhistory of the trajectory of three Dutchmen, and finds the links between Spain and resistance in these three cases neither obvious nor very strong. In doing so, this article highlights not only the wide varieties of anti-fascist experiences, but also emphasizes the twists in turns in how these were subsequently refashioned.

Struggling to Fit In. The Dutch in a Transnational Army, 1936-1939 The Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) possessed a transnational resonance that echoed far beyond the borders of the country in which it was fought. It drew thousands of foreign fighters to Spain where, as many believed, the future of Europe would be decided. Most of them fought on the side of the embattled Republican government against an uprising supported by international Fascism. Given the foreign fighters' similar socio-economic backgrounds and shared anti-Fascist sentiment, historians have suggested that the «International Brigades», formed out of these foreign fighters, constitute a true transnational army. This article suggests, however, that many of these foreign fighters had real trouble forging a transnational connection with their fellow fighters. Focusing on Dutch Interbrigadiers, it further highlights how the specificities of Dutch political culture and the legal regime created in the Netherlands combined to create a unique set of circumstances that impeded Dutch foreign fighters' abilities to effectively work together with their German colleagues in Spain and their post-Spanish Civil War efforts to resist the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands. This article suggests, therefore, that the International Brigades do not possess a single, distinctive and collectively transnational identity. Rather, they are made up of different identity layers that can, but need not, be mutually exclusive, and are linked to elements of different national and/or military cultures.

H.P. van Tuyll van Serooskerken, Small Countries in a Big World: The Belgian-Dutch Conflict at Versailles, 1919 (Leiden: Brill, 2017, 268 pp., isbn 978 9 004 31469 6).

Tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog pleegden de oorlogvoerenden op grote schaal inbreuk op de rechten van neutrale partijen zoals die waren vastgesteld in internationale verdragen. Zowel de Geallieerden als de Centrale mogendheden oefenden druk uit op de neutralen om hun beleid te hunner gunste aan te passen. In de ruim vier jaar die de oorlog duurde, nam die druk zo sterk toe, dat de neutralen zich met handen en voeten gebonden voelden. Ruim vijftig jaar geleden stelde Nils rvik dat deze minachting van het internationale recht, gecombineerd met de betrekkelijke zwakte van de Europese neutrale staten, het einde betekende van de traditionele politieke neutraliteit, een begrip dat hij gelijkstelde met niet-gebondenheid en afzijdigheid. Dit boek bespreekt die stelling in het licht van nieuw vergelijkend onderzoek in Scandinavië, Nederland, Spanje, Argentinië en de VS. Het resultaat is de eerste Engelstalige vergelijkende studie naar neutraliteit tijdens WWI. De opstellen behandelen niet alleen meerdere landen, maar ook meerdere aspecten van het neutraliteitsconcept

This article investigates how, during the Spanish Civil War (1936–9), left-wing British, Dutch and German-language newspapers 'recruited' their readers to the cause of the Spanish Republic. Recruitment could consist of donating time, money, social and political capital, or, in extreme cases, actually joining the fighting in Spain. It employs a double comparative approach, analysing recruitment messages attuned to readers in three different national political contexts and cultures produced on behalf of socialist and communist organisations. It argues that different 'sketches of Spain' co-existed, aligned to different domestic political and popular cultures and through different ideological lenses. These different sketches, in turn, were vital in shaping people's expectations of the Civil War, circumscribed the scope for and content of anti-fascist transnational connections made in Spain, and helped foster new understandings of social and political circumstances at home.

"This book seeks to launch a new research agenda for the historiography of Dutch foreign relations during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It does so in two important ways. First, it broadens the analytical perspective to include a variety of non-state actors beyond politicians and diplomats. Second, it focuses on the transnational connections that shaped the foreign relations of the Netherlands, emphasizing the effects of (post-) colonialism and internationalism. Furthermore, this essay collection highlights not only the key roles played by Dutch actors on the international scene, but also serves as an important point of comparison for the activities of their counterparts in other small states."--Provided by publisher.