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…

In The European Commission of the Danube, 1856-1948 Constantin Ardeleanu offers a history of the world’s second international organisation, an innovative techno-political institution established by Europe’s Concert of Powers to remove insecurity from the Lower Danube. Delegates of rival empires worked together to ‘correct’ a vital European transportation infrastructure, and to complete difficult hydraulic works…

This month, Cambridge University Press published Fighting Terror after Napoleon: How Europe Became Secure after 1815. This book is an English translation of the book Tegen de terreur: Hoe Europa veilig werd na Napoleon by Beatrice de Graaf that was published in 2018. The aftermath After twenty-six years of revolutions and fighting, the victorious powers craved…

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…

IO BIO: Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries Generals of International Organizations includes a biography of John Stokes, the first British commissioner in the European Commission of the Danube (1856-1871) and de facto leader of the institution. The biography, authored by Constantin Ardeleanu, is illustrative for the political relevance of navigation experts during the second half of…

New publication by Constantin Ardeleanu, ‘Fishing in the Lower Danube and Its Floodplain from the Earliest Times to the Twentieth Century’, in Tonnes Bekker-Nielsen and Ruthy Gertwagen (eds.), The Inland Seas. Towards an Ecohistory of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea (Geographica Historica 35), Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart, 2016. This paper is an overview of…

New publication by Constantin Ardeleanu, ‘Foreign migrant communities in the Danubian ports of Brăila and Galaţi (1829-1914)’ in the vol. Olga Katsiardi-Hering and Maria A. Stassinopoulou (eds.), Across the Danube. Southeastern Europeans and Their Travelling Identities (17th–19th C.), Brill, 2016. The article by Constantin Ardeleanu discusses the context in which the Danubian outlets of Brăila…

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…

Ozan Ozavci recently wrote a paper in Turkish titled “Bir Jön Türk’ün Günlüğü ve 1915”. It is about The 1915 Armenian Genocide through the lens of a Young Turks’ personal notes and correspondence. H. Ozan Ozavci, ‘Bir Jön Türk’ün Günlüğü ve 1915,’ Toplumsal Tarih, 264 (Dec., 2015). The publication is open access available through Ozavci’s page at Academia.net.    

Constantin Ardeleanu, team member of the ERC Secure project recently published a monograph titled “International Trade and Diplomacy at the Lower Danube: the Sulina Question and the Economic Premises of the Crimean War, 1829–1853” (Brăila : Istros, 2014.). The publication is open access available through Ardeleanu’s page ar Academia.net.

Few studies tracing the history of liberalism have taken into account that its reception in non-Western or westernising countries, in the form of the denial or acceptance of its core values and institutions, is an important aspect of the liberal tradition. In Intellectual Origins of the Republic: Ahmet Ağaoğlu and the Genealogy of Liberalism in…

Schenk, J. (2014) Rotterdam’s port barons, Ruhr industrialists and the state. Transnational entrepreneurship along the Rhine 1870-1914. 18th Annual Congress of the European Business History Association (EBHA): Comparative Business History. Contrasting Regions, Sectors, and Centuries, 21-23 August, Utrecht, Netherlands.

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…

Beatrice de Graaf, ‘Nederland en de collectieve veiligheid’, in: Jacco Pekelder, Remco Raben en Mathieu Segers (eds.), De wereld volgens Nederland. Nederlandse buitenlandse politiek in historisch perspectief (Amsterdam: Boom 2015). Website Boom Publishers (in Dutch)  

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…

Joep Schenk, ‘Rotterdam’s port barons, Ruhr industrialists and the state. Transnational entrepreneurship along the Rhine 1870-1914’. 18th Annual Congress of the European Business History Association (EBHA): Comparative Business History. Contrasting Regions, Sectors, and Centuries, 21-23 August, Utrecht, Netherlands.

Wouter Klem, ‘Van kranten venten tot massademonstratie: de stemrechtstrijd in Den Haag van 1880 tot 1887’, Jaarboek van Geschiedkundige Vereniging Die Haghe (2014) pp. 96-123 Klem, Die Haghe (first page)