From the Editors – Redactioneel

Abstract

Sometimes an issue grows naturally into a theme number. The occasion was the celebration of two hundred years of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, which is almost over. BMGN – Low Countries Historical Review has put the most important publications that emerged in connection with this milestone into a historiographical context and judged them on their merits and blind spots. In the forum ‘The Bicentennial 1813-1815’ James Kennedy, Gita Deneckere, Matthijs Lok and Alicia Schrikker take an historiographical approach and tackle the various commemorative works from the point of view of such questions as continuitydiscontinuity of the Ancien Régime in the Netherlands/Belgium 1813-1831, the national history writing about this period in the Netherlands and Belgium and the situation in the colonies, something often forgotten. Tom Verschaffel succesfully reviews three royal biographies within a single framework and points out the similarities and differences between the three. The perceptive analyses of all these monumental works to which the occasion has given rise appear to accord well with other royal material, which indicates that this is a vigorous field of research. Frans Willem Lantink demonstrates this in his dissection of the usual genres dealing with the subject. Susie Protschky extends the area of royalty research to the Netherlands-Indies. She makes clear the role played by photographs in establishing the ‘imagined community’ of royalists who were faithful to the Dutch fatherland and Queen Wilhelmina.
In the discussion dossier on historical reasoning Dick de Boer, Peter Henderikx, Roos van Oosten and Erik Cordfunke and George Maat discuss the importance of innovative methods borrowed from physics and technology, in trying to solve tricky historical questions, but even
this debate has a royal tinge. The protagonist, or perhaps it would be better to speak of the subject because it is about his remains, is the Dutch Count William II, elected as the King ofthe Romans in 1247. The editors hope you will royally enjoy reading this new number.