Visions of Dutch Empire Towards a Long-Term Global Perspective 1

What were the major developments in thinking about Dutch empire from the early modern period to the twenty-first century? What moral, political, legal and economic arguments have been put forth to justify, criticize or reform empire? How and under what circumstances did these visions and arguments change or remain the same? This article outlines a research agenda that addresses these questions. It argues for an approach that includes a long-term perspective from the early modern period to the postcolonial situation, which sees ‘Dutch’ history broadly, moving beyond national borders, and instead explicitly informed by influences and actors from across the globe. This implies a transnational and transimperial approach that can highlight these global connections as well as tensions; and finally, an approach that understands intellectual history as going beyond the big names of systemic thinkers, and includes visions of empire as negotiated in (day-to-day) practice. Visies politieke,

Since the start of this millennium, 'empire' has become a dominant concept in historical scholarship, resulting in a variety of historiographical approaches that are often labelled New Imperial History. 2 A specific outcome of this development is the increasing attention for empire from the perspective of intellectual history, which focuses on the ways in which Europe's colonial koekkoek, richard, weststeijn of these studies have in common is that they explicitly take a global as well as a long-term perspective, connecting East with West and early modern developments with nineteenth and twentieth-century history. However, they also share an overall disregard for one of the most significant imperial powers in (early) modern global history: the Dutch empire.
We argue that an intellectual history, writ large, of Dutch empire from a long-term and global perspective is necessary to offset this imbalance in the international scholarship and to enrich the existing historiography on empire in general and the Dutch empire in particular. We argue for an approach that includes a long-term perspective from the early modern period to the postcolonial situation; which sees 'Dutch' history broadly, moving beyond national borders, and explicitly informed by influences and actors from across the globe; which implies a transnational and transimperial approach that can highlight these global connections as well as tensions; and finally, an approach that understands intellectual history as going beyond the big names of systemic thinkers, and includes visions of empire as negotiated in (day-to-day) practice.

Dutch Empire in Context
Whilst there is a venerable tradition of research on the political, socioeconomic and cultural aspects of Dutch colonial history, the intellectual history of Dutch empire has thus far been largely neglected. 6 Nevertheless, the Dutch case is highly significant for at least two reasons. First, unlike their main European competitors, the Dutch were not only imperial agents themselves, but also subjects of foreign imperial rule during crucial periods in their history, subjugated by the Habsburg Empire, the Napoleonic French Empire, and the Nazi Third Reich. Crucially, these periods of foreign imperial rule coincided with decisive moments in the history of the Dutch colonial empire: the opening moves of Dutch overseas expansion at the turn of the seventeenth century, the demise of the Company-based imperial system around 1800, and the decolonization of Indonesia in the immediate aftermath of World War ii. An intellectual history of Dutch empire from a comparative perspective could therefore offer specific insights into the possible ideological correlations between being subjected to empire at home and attempts to make and maintain an empire overseas. Moreover, it opens up research into the manifold actors included in 'Dutch' empire.
The Dutch case is also significant for a second characteristic that to a certain extent sets it apart from other European imperial histories: whilst 6 For a recent overview of current approaches in Dutch colonial history, see Catia Antunes and Jos Gommans (eds.), Exploring the Dutch Empire. Agents, Networks and Institutions, 1600-2000(London 2015. forum empire, imperio or Reich clearly signify existing conceptions, there is no direct Dutch equivalent for the term 'empire' in historical discourse. Throughout the history of Dutch imperialism from the seventeenth century onwards, different concepts have been used to denote Dutch rule overseas, from mogendheid ('power') and gezag ('authority') to bezittingen ('possessions') and coloniën ('colonies'), and eventually, overzeese gebiedsdelen ('overseas territories'). 7 This conceptual elusiveness raises the question which vocabularies, ideas and visions of empire were articulated throughout history, how they interrelated, developed and changed over time, and which actors and practices of domination and resistance influenced, and were influenced by, these intellectual developments.
These questions are especially pertinent since the Dutch imperial past has long remained beneath the surface of public culture, collective memory, and common discourse. Indeed, the much-derided (but nonetheless noteworthy) plea by former Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende for a revival of the 'voc mentality' betrays to what extent it has been possible to sidestep any imperial allusion in talking about early modern Dutch colonial history. 8 This conceptual loophole is also apparent from the persistent use of the term politionele acties ('police actions') to denote violent episodes of the    We argue that this 'colonial aphasia', to borrow Ann Stoler's term, is related to the ways in which the Dutch empire has been defined and  contexts, from the onset of Dutch overseas expansion around 1600 to our contemporary postcolonial world.
Exploring visions of empire in Dutch history from a long-term perspective raises the question what 'Dutch' in this context means. After all, as Catia Antunes and Jos Gommans have recently stressed, 'even in an empire that is called "Dutch", Dutch agents were a minority'. 16 How 'Dutch', if at all, were those peoples across the world that were subjected, enslaved, as well as collaborating with and profiting from the Dutch empire? In addition, until 1798 the Dutch Republic was not a centralised nation-state but a confederal union, and for most of the early modern period the 'Dutch' empire was mainly an undertaking of the seaborne provinces of Holland and Zeeland. Finally, and most contentiously, to which extent is it possible to understand empire as Dutch, or British, or French etcetera? Given that visions of empire did not develop in isolation, but in conjuncture and in reaction to developments across the globe, a transnational and transimperial approach is imperative to understand communalities as well as specificities. Without claiming to offer a definite solution to these conceptual problems, our starting point is that we intend to explore not what the Dutch empire was, but how actors from across the globe envisaged it. The hybridity of that empire, which consisted of conquered territories as well as multiple trading posts and a few settler colonies throughout Asia, Africa, and the Americas, was reflected by a myriad of contending conceptions of (the justification of) empire, discussed publicly in lofty humanist treatises and popular pamphlets, as well as in heated debates within the boards of the voc and wic. The richness of those debates still needs to be mined fully.   Indies, reinforces the need for connecting the East and West in a long-term intellectual history of visions of empire.

1850-2017: from Colonial to Postcolonial Empire?
The period from the mid-nineteenth onward saw the Dutch empire expand and consolidate, influencing the daily lives of more and more people across the globe, and then collapse in the period of global decolonization. Did the idea of empire expand and collapse too? Or should we first ask whether empire was an idea that had any traction at all in Dutch debates and if not, why?
The discussion about Dutch participation in the modern imperialism, and hence exceptionalism, has been revisited in various forms over the last thirty years with recent debates over Dutch postcolonial society revitalising these questions. 33 Historically, ideas of an ethical, perhaps even non-imperial, approach to empire have gone hand in hand with decidedly imperial practices. Indignation at British imperial violence during the Boer War was for example flanked by support for the 'pacification' of Aceh. What were the processes of simultaneous remembering, forgetting and perhaps above all self-representation through which a self-image of a benevolent, ethical power  survived, and how was this image confirmed and contested, by the Dutch, by other (imperial) powers and above all by those subjected to the Dutch empire? 34 As before, East and West were intimately connected, but from 1870 onward, economic and infrastructural changes led to a tying together of the empire, as well as its further integration in the world economy. 35 This connective process coincided with the rise of nationalism in the metropole and led to colonial state formation in the Indies and a sense of (creolised)  World War ii saw alternative forms of empire, imagined in the Indies for some time, and being discussed in the metropole as well. 42 Nonetheless, the war of decolonization was fought to retain as much of the old empire as possible and while economically empire continued after its political demise, real alternatives came too late. Meanwhile, the Netherlands joined nato and a nascent European community. Was Jacques Marseille right that these new empires, by invitation, smoothened the Dutch transition from colonial empire to a bipolar world? 43 In the era of Dependency theory and progressive politics, a 'benevolent' Dutch empire, focused on development aid, gave Surinam its, reluctantly accepted, independence, but also saw large numbers immigrating to the metropole, leaving the Antilles as the last vestiges of Dutch imperialism. How do we account for an empire that would prefer to dissolve itself; how does development aid and the eu's Common Agricultural Policy relate to empire in the context of earlier paternalistic and economic realist tropes? 44 A longterm analysis that studies the continuities and discontinuities in visions of Dutch empire from its inception to the present is necessary to answer these questions.

Conclusion
In the postcolonial Netherlands, arguments about the myth of white innocence face passionate pleas for Black Pete. While the Dutch empire in its various incarnations was often creolised and dependent upon other European powers, entrepreneurs, and labour from across the globe, Dutch colonial memory today appears more 'Dutch' than its empire ever was. We therefore visions of dutch empire 95 koekkoek, richard, weststeijn contend that it is time to investigate visions of 'Dutch empire' in the long term from a transnational, transimperial and global perspective: exploring the interplay (or lack thereof) between a multitude of conceptualisations and arguments, including entrepreneurial and governmental visions, as well as visions of resistance and opposition; asking how science and culture buttressed and battered ideas of empire; interrogating Dutch 'exceptionalism' and examining the claims to great, middle or moral power status of this small country with its large empire. This implies examining the 'Dutchness' of a multicultural (post)empire, fundamentally dependent on others, be they the great powers, non-Dutch entrepreneurs or local populations who all shaped visions of empire in Dutch and world history.
This essay and the forum in which it appears are the first steps in pursuing this research agenda further. (1985) is lecturer in Modern European History at the Capacity