When Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope to reach India in 1497–1498, he had not only discovered a new sea route between Europe and Asia but also opened up a new world of commerce that would shape European consumption, manufacturing, and ultimately industrial production over the following centuries. While goods from the East had reached Europe much ear-lier …
Under the slogan ‘Merdeka!’ the Republic of Indonesia rushed into a battle for independence – a struggle of which no one could predict the outcome. Harry Poeze and Henk Schulte Nordholt provide a new narrative about the revolution, one that focuses not only on the fight against the Dutch but also on the precarious rise of the Republic. After the horrors of the Japanese occupation, the Rep…
The first Creighton Lecture took place on 4 October 1907, almost seven years after the death of the scholar and bishop whom it honoured. Apart from being delivered by a lifelong friend, its published version stands in no discernible relation to Mandell Creighton himself, except for treating of his narrower patria, the Anglo-Scottish border. In fact the whole subsequent lect…
Finland has been often labelled a ‘green superpower’. In 2016, according to the EPI (Environmental Performance Index) prepared by Yale and Columbia Universities, Finland was the world’s cleanest and greenest country.1 Gener-ally speaking, Nordic countries have tended to be idealised as ‘pristine and green’ compared to the rest of the rapidly contaminating world where the r…
In 1937 an offi cial from the Mexican forest service visited the rugged Sierra Tarahumara mountains in southern Chihuahua, which even today remain one of the nation’s most isolated places. Th e landscape that greeted An-tonio H. Sosa was unlike anything he had seen in central Mexico. He ad-mired the “immensity, beauty, and potential” of the untouched Ponderosa and Montezuma pines tha…
Ippolito II d’Este was born in 1509 into a Ferrara ruled by his father, Duke Al-fonso I d’Este. His mother was Lucrezia Borgia, the daughter of Pope Alexander VI, who had orchestrated the marriage in the hope of tying his lineage to an established Italian family. The Este had been ruling over Ferrara, Modena and Reggio since the thirteen century and had increasingly extended their territori…
Between 1945 and 1949, Indonesia defended its recently declared indepen-dence, and the Netherlands waged its last major colonial war.1 Much is now known about this war, but a great deal has also remained unclear or con-tested. At the end of 2016, the second Rutte cabinet decided to finance a broad-based study – conducted by the kit lv, the nimh and niod2 – on the …
Compared with other pre-industrial societies, a rather high percentage of the Roman population in the Gallic and Germanic provinces was not involved in agrarian production during the High Empire. Rural produce was needed to feed soldiers and the inhabitants of vici, small towns and cities. To maintain this system the Gallo-Roman villae – the rural settlements whose…
In Authoritarian Modernization in Indonesia’s Early Independence Period, Farabi Fakih offers a historical analysis of the foundational years leading to Indonesia’s New Order state (1966–1998) during the early independence period. The study looks into the structural and ideological state formation during the so-called Liberal Democracy (1950–1957) and Sukarno’s Guided Democracy (1957…
Upon the fall of the Han empire, the warlord Cao Cao (155–220) established a new political domain. The Cao court became known for its accomplished writers, including the warlord himself and two of his sons, Cao Pi (187–226) and Cao Zhi (192–232). Afflicted by sibling rivalry and an epidemic, these poets distinguished themselves by writing about frustration, sorrow, and death. Yet, as obse…