Institute for History Annual Report 2010 - O - Universiteit Leiden

memories? Could certain memories be adapted
when new stories turned up? All these questions
will play an important role in this project. In
addition, this project seeks to explore local
memory cultures as a multimedia phenomenon. It
will be based on literary sources and archival
material, but also on commemorative objects
including paintings, prints and a wide range of
material and immaterial objects – gable stones,
tapestries, windows, ceramics, or ‘relics’ of the
Revolt years, as well as local rituals, place names
and lieux de mémoire. All these media have their
own messages and audiences, they will be studied
both individually and collectively in order to
understand their position and meaning in the
memory process.
Exile memories and the reinvention of the
Netherlands (PhD project)
Johannes M. Müller
This research project examines the role of memories
of war and exile among Netherlandish refugees
and their descendants in the Netherlands,
Germany and England from the beginning of the
Dutch Revolt until 1700. The main objective is to
explain how and in which forms images of the
past lived on in the Dutch exile communities and
how memories about the war and the lost homeland
contributed to the formation of new social
identities in the Low Countries and abroad. To
meet this objective, this study will focus on a) the
social structures and institutions, through which
memories were shaped and preserved, b) an
analysis of the ‘semantics’ of exile, i.e. the social
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meanings that were attributed to this phenomenon,
and c) the changing topical and intertextual
traditions in which exile memories were modelled
and articulated. Leaving behind their hometowns
and local social networks which were held
together by mechanisms of trust and reputation,
exiles were forced to redefine themselves and to
fashion identities that were acceptable and
recognizable in the new society. Especially
Southerners, who had fled to the Republic were
immensely active in publishing pamphlets and
other literature, in which they presented
themselves as compatriots of their hosts,
‘Netherlanders’, who sought refuge for the sake of
their faith. Whereas the inhabitants of the Low
Countries had previously defined themselves by
referring to local rather than to national identities,
exiles began to appeal to ‘the common fatherland’
of all Netherlanders or to the unity of trans-local
religious confessions. So far, the role exile
memories played in the formation of new
confessional and ‘proto-national’ constructions of
Netherlandish identity has scarcely been examined.
This study will do so, in the belief that this
can offer valuable insights into the development of
two distinct Netherlandish states and identities as
well as the emergence of new confessional selfimages.
The politics of memory in the Low
Countries (PhD project)
Jasper van der Steen
The Dutch Revolt tore apart the seventeen Netherlands
and led to the formation of two states that