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Fellow during the winter term 2019/20
Project: New Ways of Globalizing Colonial History 'Germans' in the Dutch Empire, c. 1770-1880
While in Munich, I will work on an article that investigates the largely unexplored history of entanglements between the Dutch Empire and the central European space that would eventually become Germany between roughly 1770 and 1880.
At the core of my research is a database with biographic information on roughly 175.000 European soldiers in the 19th century Dutch Colonial army (KNIL). Up to 40% of these soldiers were non-Dutch 'foreigners'. The majority of them spoke variants of German dialects and languages. By examining these men's career trajectories, family ties, professional networks, and (violent) encounters with colonised men and women in the Dutch empire, I seek to offer the first in-depth analysis of how deeply 19th century Dutch imperial networks reached into and affected a larger Central European 'hinterland'. And how the remarkably transnational character of the Dutch Colonial Army wove together large parts of Central Europe, the Caribbean and Southeast Asia far beyond the more narrowly conceived boundaries of the Dutch Empire.