historical and political thought in the seventeenth - RePub - Erasmus ...

Chapter 7. The mistress of life
that Boxhorn believes are of interest to his audience go even beyond Dutch
and German history. Boxhorn also wishes that ‘the many changes of Asian
and Oriental history after the fall of the Roman Empire shall [also] be learned
more closely’. 46 For Boxhorn, then, the student or researcher of history should
not only concentrate on the legacy of the Bible and the ancient Greeks and
Romans, but should extend his view so that it would comprise almost the
entire world. This, more than anything else, seems to be Boxhorn’s message
on history, and the way it should be read and taught.
With such a Herculean task to fulfil, the silence on methodological issues
in Boxhorn’s inaugural oration on history and in his letters becomes painfully
clear. What tools, for example, are at the historian’s disposal to unearth the
past? On what sources should the historian rely? The obvious answer would
be sources with an unquestionable reliability. 47 But how can the historian
determine the reliability of his sources? And how should the historian deal
with the lacunae in his sources? In an attempt to answer some of these questions
we will now have to take a look at some of Boxhorn’s historical works in
order to see how Boxhorn actually conducted history.
Dutch history 48
The military and economic success of the Dutch Republic which enabled it
to stand its ground against such formidable opponents as the king of Spain,
the king of England, and the king of France is seen reflected in the large body
of regional studies that appeared in the Dutch Republic in the course of the
seventeenth century. These works tended to eulogise the fatherland (patria),
to praise its present condition and to glorify its past. They express a new consciousness
and pride of prowess and success. In the province of Holland there
46 Ibidem, p. 15. ‘Utinam quoque (nam & plura sunt, quae desidero) Asiae ac Orientis rerum tot,
post Romani imperii occasum, mutationes propius cognoscerentur?’ Boxhorn looked at Jacob Golius to
fulfil this wish. See also chapter 3.
47 See Boxhorn, “Preface of the author, in which an account is given of the intention [of the author]”,
in idem, Historia universalis, iii.
48 I use the term ‘Dutch’ here, and its Latin equivalent ‘Belgica’, in the broad sense as most contemporaries
understood the term: namely to indicate that large amalgam of seventeen provinces that had
once belonged to the House of Habsburg. Thus, we can give the Theatrum a place in seventeenth-century
Dutch historiography. However, we have to keep in mind that contemporaries, both inside the Netherlands
and abroad, did not reason vice versa. That is, they did not consider something that belonged to,
or that was characteristic of, a certain province, as an asset or a characteristic of all seventeen provinces.
Here, Cornelis Pieterszoon Hooft (1547-1626), the father of the famous playwriter, poet, and historian
Pieter Corneliszoon Hooft, comes to mind, who considered all non-Hollanders as ‘foreigners’. Gilbert,
“Hooft as Historian and Political Thinker”, p. 137.
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