Book Recommendations Sought - Dutch History (inc. Boer States and the East India Company)

by NedFleming

Goedemorgen!

I recently moved to the Netherlands from the UK, and I'm looking to vastly improve my understanding of Dutch world history.

Beyond the basics, I don't know that much about the pre-modern period, so I'm looking for general primers as well as adjacent history such as:

  • The Dutch East India Company
  • Dutch American and Asian Colonies
  • The Orange Free State
  • The Transvaal

Hard mode:

  • The books are Dutch Language.
  • The books are by Indonesian, Suriname or South African authors.

Very Hard Mode:

  • The books give a multi-or-alternative viewpoint treatment of Dutch history. Specifically, I'm looking to avoid a situation such as: You pick up a biography of Winston Churchill, and it almost completely ignores his role in the Bengal famine - instead focusing on what an ePiC cIGar MaN he was.

Bedankt!

Marmite-Badgers-Mum

When I moved to the Netherlands one of the first books I read was "The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century" ISBN: 0521604605

Whilst it only gave quite a high level overview it then lead me on to know which specific areas I wanted to research further.

You pick up a biography of Winston Churchill, and it almost completely ignores his role in the Irish or Bengal famines

FWIW, Churchill was born 19 years after the Irish famine so I'm not sure the role he played was too pivotal.

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The Dutch East India Company

Be forewarned that these are books in the very hard mode but you'll be all the better for it if you read them:

The Dutch East India Company and the Economy of Bengal, 1630-1720 by Om Prakash

The Dutch East India Company and Mysore, 1762–1790 by Jan van Lohuizen.

Happy reading!

electric_ranger

While I share your distaste for genocide enthusiast Winston Churchill, I must unironically endorse Candice Millard's Hero of the Empire, a chronicle of the Boer Wars and specifically the time Churchill spent as a prisoner in Boer custody.

The book is very sympathetic to the Boers, while also acknowledging the deep racism at the core of the Boer republics.