While many will place the origins of the United Europe as a peace and prosperity project in the 1950s, Joep Schenk’s new book shows that the foundations of this project were laid much earlier, on February 2, 1815. On that day, 206 years ago this week, delegates from the four superpowers France, Prussia, the United…

Beatrice de Graaf, Ozan Ozavci and Erik de Lange will be speakers at the 2021 annual conference of the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, 1750-1850. This conference will take place over Zoom, and will be spread out over five days: February 18-20 (Thursday through Saturday), and February 26-27 (Friday and Saturday). This interdisciplinary conference encourages scholars…

Erik de Lange received this prize for his paper “No Security, Except in Destruction”: Transnational Threats, International Anxieties and the French Invasion of Algiers. The abstract of his paper: The French invasion of Ottoman Algiers in the summer of 1830, which started over a century of colonial rule in Algeria, ought to be understood within the…

Yannick Balk and Paul Kardoulakis wrote two reports of the recent ERC-Conference ‘Cultures of Security. Transimperial Perspective’ (9-10 May). The first report was published by H-Soz-Kult. The other report was featured by Historici.nl  

On 9 and 10 May 2019 we will host the closing conference of the ERC-project Securing Europe, Fighting Its Enemies. The Making of a Security Culture in Europe and Beyond, 1815–1914 at Utrecht University. We are delighted to invite proposals for this closing event. The theme of the event is security cultures in the nineteenth century. We define…

Prof. Beatrice de Graaf(Professor of the History of International Relations) has received the prestigious Stevin Prize from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO). The prize of 2.5 million euros is an individual award intended to foster knowledge transfer and serve as a token of appreciation in this regard. It is a reward for De…

Joep Schenk, Erik de Lange, Beatrice de Graaf and Wouter Klem recently contributed to a new volume on Shaping the International Relations of the Netherlands. The volume is edited by Ruud van Dijk, Samuël Kruizinga, Vincent Kuitenbrouwer and Rimko van der Maar. The book seeks to launch a new research agenda for the historiography of Dutch…

Erik de Lange wrote a review of the newest book of Joshua Meeks: France, Britain and the Mediterranean. The review was featured by H-Soz-Kult. The book is a revision of Mooks’s dissertation and it provides a ‘refreshing take on the complicated, muddled beginnings of what we now call the Revolutionary Wars.’ The book aims to understand the…

Last September, Ozan Ozavci attended an international workshop in Berlin on Trans-imperial History in a Global Age. Seventeen scholars from twelve countries were invited to present their papers, divided into five different panels. The workshop was aimed at making an ‘intervention in recent Empire Studies’. Many scholars argued that ‘we cannot separate connections, competition and…

  With the generous support of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, Professor Beatrice de Graaf and Dr Ozan Ozavci organise a master class for PhD and Research MA students at the headquarters of the Royal Academy in Amsterdam on 27 September 2017. The topic of the master class is ‘Global Perspectives on Security…

With the generous support of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, our ERC research team organises an academy colloquium to be held at the headquarters of the Royal Academy in Amsterdam from 25-27 September 2017. In this colloquium, we aim to historicise security in the nineteenth century with a select group of invited speakers…

Prof. Beatrice de Graaf, Principal Investigator of ERC SECURE, has been elected as new member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). In the Netherlands, membership of the KNAW is a high honour to a scientist’s research. De Graaf holds the Chair of History of International Relations & Global Governance at Utrecht University, within…

Can we understand the present better by looking into the past? In an interview with NRC Handelsblad, Beatrice de Graaf debated with two other Dutch historians (Martin Bossenbroek and Geerten Waling) on this important question. De Graaf argues – in line with the famous historian Johan Huizinga – that “for a whole generation, history has become…

Beatrice de Graaf writes in NRC Handelsblad about her perspective on the New Year and draws a comparison with the turn of the year from 1816 to 1817. With the ERC research project halfway to the finish line she looks forward to the research of the next two years. The Column is available (in Dutch)…

Scholars are increasingly focusing on the non-physical aspects of war in order to explain ‘why big nations lose small wars’. One of the central arguments in the debate is that it is increasingly important to explain what success will look like to the local population, opponents, the international audience and the public at home, and to convince them of the official storyline.

Joep Schenk recently published a new article in the Dutch journal ‘Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis‘ (Journal for Naval History), titled ‘War-time opportunities. Rhine sailors versus the Coal-trading union, 1914-1918’. Abstract: During the First World War the British economic blockade squeezed off transit via the Netherlands to Germany. Consequently, unemployed Rhine skippers flooded the Dutch inland shipping market and freight…

In their new book Terrorists on Trial: A Performative Perspective, editors Prof. Dr Beatrice de Graaf and Prof. Dr Alex P. Schmid present a performative perspective on terrorism trials, drawing attention to the mechanisms and effects of these trials in and outside the courtroom. Trial and theatre This volume views terrorism trials as a form of theatre, where…

Joep Schenk was interviewed by Nieuwsblad Transport on the Rhine Commission (Central Commission for Navigation of the Rhine, CCNR) and its contribution to the creation of a European security culture in the nineteenth century. The article was published in issue 19, volume 29 (2016), pp. 16-17.

A special issue on radicalisation and terrorism of the journal Justitiële verkenningen (Judicial explorations, no.2, 2016) explores the attractiveness of IS to (islamic) European yougsters and the apocalyptic nature of IS ideology. In their chaper ‘After the release: Observations and dilemmas in dealing with (former) detainees with a jihadist background’, Beatrice de Graaf and Daan Weggemans explore how to deal…

On Friday 27 May 2016, the fourth annual NISIS Islamic Studies Network day will be held at Leiden University. This year’s theme is: ‘War in Syria: dynamics, and the consequences for Europe’. The Islamic Studies Network Day is part of the NISIS Training programme. Ozan Ozavci gives his keynote speech from 09.45 – 10.15 hours. During…

ECFR’s director Mark Leonard speaks with Beatrice de Graaf, Professor of History of International Relations at Utrecht University, Michiel van Hulten, one of the leaders of the Dutch yes-campaign, and Dick Oosting, CEO of ECFR, about the Dutch referendum and its results. You can listen to the podcast by clicking here.

In the 7 February 2016 broadcast of the daily Dutch news radio show ‘Met Het Oog Op Morgen’ (Radio 1) PhD candidate Erik de Lange was interviewed on the First Barbary War (1801-1805). He discussed the recent bestseller Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates and critically reflected on the author’s comparisons between the nineteenth and twenty-first century….

On 18 February 2016 Beatrice de Graaf is invited to the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) by the department of Dutch Studies to give the Van Tilburg Lecture at the Centre for Dutch Studies. Her lecture is titled: “Finding the terrorist. The never ending search for the radical profile”. Abstract Since the time of Napoleon, practices…

On 24 January PhD candidate Erik de Lange was interviewed during the Dutch radio show ‘Onvoltooid Verleden Tijd’, which is broadcasted weekly on Radio 1. He discussed the recent bestseller Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates (also featured in his latest blog) and critically reflected on the book’s rather non-historical treatment of piracy as a…

On November 19, 2015 Joep Schenk successfully defended his PhD thesis ‘Port Barons and Ruhr Tycoons : the origins of an interdependent relationship between Rotterdam and the Ruhr area 1870-1914’. The dissertation (in Dutch) is now available online: http://repub.eur.nl/pub/78784/

On December 3, 2015 Mark Mazower (Professor of History, Columbia University) presented a lecture at the WRR in The Hague, In this lecture, he explored the current European crisis from a historical perspective with a view to the future. Prof. Beatrice de Graaf (Utrecht University, History of International Relations) presented a comment to Mazowers work from the…

The edited volume Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War: Winning domestic support for the war at home (Routledge 2015) explores the way governments endeavoured to build and maintain public support for the war in Afghanistan, combining new insights on the effects of strategic narratives with an exhaustive series of case studies. The volume is edited by…

In a context of accelerating, institutional, intellectual and moral uncertainties, what role does the scientist play? What role ought he to play, and how can politics and institutional settings facilitate this role? Prof. Beatrice de Graaf explored these questions in her guest lecture at the opening of the academic year at Erasmus University Rotterdam, on 31…

This article discusses the establishment, ideology and actions of the Liberal International and its Turkish group the Society for the Dissemination of Free Ideas (SDFI). The SDFI was the first liberal civil society in Turkey. To this date, little attention has been paid to its actions and ideology. Taking the history of the SDFI as…

This article supplements Anglo- or Prussian dominated readings of the Vienna Conference by focusing more on its beginnings, on alternative scenarios of a Dutch-German union and on the process of diplomatic bargaining by secondary agents. Based on new archival material, German-Dutch cooperation in Vienna is traced and placed in a wider context. Vienna did not…