Last Wednesday, the court in The Hague held the Dutch state liable for a massacre that Dutch soldiers inflicted in December 1947 in the Indonesian village of Rawagede. The period of decolonization is not a beautiful page in our history. What was going on in these years? Historian Joop de Jong comes
Mercury. It is not often found in archaeological investigations. Yet this drop of mercury is one of the 33,000 finds in the National Ship Archaeological Depot. The drop comes from the shipwreck Approach Molengat, a wreck that is currently being investigated as part of the NWO Odyssey project Wreck
Europe – Eurosceptics say – will never unite, even with the utmost political will. Cause? Europe lacks its own identity. This often-heard view is not entirely without foundation:indeed the continent seems to be constantly reinventing itself and the self-image is just as often shifting. Yet there is
April marked 50 years since CIA-armed exiles invaded Cuba to oust Fidel Castro. The Bay of Pigs invasion turned out to be a fiasco for the Americans. There are still many questions, especially about the role of the CIA. That secret service recently released its own internal investigation. At least p
A handwritten phrasebook Low German-Russian from the seventeenth century. That was the research object of PhD student Pepijn Hendriks. In the dissertation that he will defend on September 7, he questions the authenticity of the manuscript. Is it an original book or has it been copied, as was common
The Roman poet Virgil (70-19 BC) was much admired in the Middle Ages. Not so much for his poems, but because he had a reputation for having the wisdom and power of a magician. A few centuries later, however, his popularity was over and he was reviled and loathed for his supposed magical arts. A cove
The Netherlands is known all over the world for its International Court of Justice, which is located in the Peace Palace in The Hague. Almost a hundred years ago, on August 28, 1913, this special building opened its doors. The story behind the dream of many pacifists, citizens and world leaders abou
Wikimedia Commons, U.S. Navy Public Affairs Resources Website via CC0 (public domain). second world war (63) In the summer of 1945, World War II ended with the atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, it was a German scientist who initially discovered nuclear fissio
In the municipality of Nijkerk, the archaeological excavation of a walburg from the 10th century was completed last week. The territory was then the plaything between the Earl of Hamaland and his daughters. In 2006, a hiker and amateur archaeologist discovered an abnormal hill in the landscape near
A guest column appears on Kennislink every two weeks. The columnist is always a different researcher, who writes from his or her field about the science behind an event in society or from our daily lives. This week:historian Jouke Turpijn about the riots in Great Britain. The riots that broke out i
On August 13, Germany commemorated the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the construction of the Berlin Wall. In August 1961, construction was strongly condemned by the United States Kennedy administration. That same government, incidentally, did not take any action, because at the same time it r
The fear of becoming a minority in their own country within a short period of time due to mass immigration is something that populist politicians often manage to put to good use. However, according to two British archaeologists, this is exactly what happened to the Neanderthals some 40,000 years ago
John Calvin played an important role in the period known in Western European history as the Reformation. What started as an attempt to reform the Christian faith soon took on grim political streaks. Fourteenth- and fifteenth-century intellectuals such as Jan Hus and John Wycliffe had already attemp
Amsterdam Fashion Week starts in July and our capital is dominated by new fashion collections for ten days. Models stride down the catwalk in creations by well-known Dutch designers and up-and-coming talents. Dutch Design has sometimes been worse on the map. Sylvain Kahn, director of haute couture
John Calvin, the founder of Calvinism, formulates his beliefs firmly and strictly in his major work Institutions. However, he contradicts himself on other points. According to literary scholar Ernst van den Hemel, Calvin wanted to use this to punish the believer who is too self-confident about his f
The ancient man fascinates. For example, what about the Neanderthal from the Netherlands? And in Europe? And what new insights await us? Former Spinoza winner Wil Roebroeks answers twelve burning questions. Humanoids probably roamed this part of Western Europe just under a million years ago. Remain
Around the penultimate turn of the century, exhibitions of exotic people were immensely popular in Europe. Not only circuses, but also fairs, zoos and world exhibitions showed hundreds of groups of people between 1870 and 1940, who were special because of their skin color, clothing and customs. Lat
In 2006 a committee led by Dutch scholar Frits van Oostrom presented the canon of Dutch history. Fifty windows everyone should know about our history. Now, seven years later, historian Chris van der Heijden believes that this canon is far too positive. In response, he recently wrote The black canon.
A research group led by geneticist Sarah Geerards in Amsterdam will investigate whether there are any Dutch people who are directly descended from William of Orange. She does not initially find it very interesting that people can be found who could be genetically more related to William of Orange th
The liberation in May 1945 caused a release in the Netherlands. Everywhere there was celebration but also revenge. Years of suppressed anger, frustration, fear and envy came out at once. This popular anger was aimed, among other things, at girls who had become involved with the Germans, the muff gir
“Being Red Heels”. No doubt you have already read, or even heard, this old expression. It comes to us from this fashion launched by Monsieur, the brother of King Louis XIV, in a completely involuntary way. Adopted by all the courtiers of Versailles and by Louis XIV himself, red heels became a way of
It is well known that Stalin possessed such a noble rank (title) of generalissimo. However, have you ever asked yourself how did it become one? Everyone probably thinks that a self-righteous dictator has promoted himself. In fact, things were a bit more complicated. The whole story began on Jun
The Polte factory, originally called Jürgens &CO, was founded in 1873. It took the Polte name definitively in the midst of the First World War, in 1917. At first, the company was dedicated to the manufacture of water pumps, gas pumps and other metal elements. However, the Polte factory became infam
Uncompromising fighter, unyielding defender of democracy, melancholic - of rare sensitivity - poet, but also endowed with a heart and soul forged of steel, uncompromising in his beliefs, consistent in his principles, brave in torture, uncompromising in politics, beautiful as a myth, this was Alekos