More news. Oh boy!

The Royal Dutch Library (KB) has posted their scans of 10,000s of newspapers from the 17C-19C online. For example, there are over 4,200 issues just between the period 1700-1709. Which means I have lots more downloading to do.

The newspaper selection includes such classics as the Haarlem Courant, the Leiden Gazette, the Amsterdam Gazette, the Amsterdam Courant, the Rotterdam Gazette, and so on. As you’ve probably noticed, I’ve translated all those titles into English. But never fear if your knowledge of the Netherlands (and its langauge) is limited to thinking that Deutschland refers to the land of the Dutch. Several of the papers (most are triweeklies), including the Rotterdam Gazette (Gazette de Rotterdam) and the Leiden Gazette (Nouvelles extraordinaires) are, as their parenthetical titles suggest, in French. And everybody who’s anybody knows how to read French.

[Edit: The URL is http://www.delpher.nl. Kranten means newspapers in Dutch.]

Some good news on the Dutch front…

I haven’t kept up with Dutch archival developments for several years, but today I somehow managed to happen upon a new (for me) important change: the Nationaal Archief (formerly Algemeen Rijksarchief) has now put up some (all?) of their typescript archive indices, the ones you had to go look at in the archives years ago. For one example, see this pdf. They also have scans of some of their maps as well. Most of the inventories aren’t nearly as descriptive as the catalogs the French Archives de Guerre put out 100 years ago (and which are now on Google Books/Gallica), but it’s a good start.

If somebody has some free time (and the requisite knowledge of the Dutch language) and wants to update the rest of us in the comments, that’d be neat-o. As for me, I’ve got deadlines looming.

Recent article on military finance

Swart, Erik. “‘The field of finance.’ War and taxation in Holland, Flanders and Brabant, ca. 1572-1585.” Sixteenth Century Journal 42 (Winter 2011): 1051-1071.

Abstract: The Dutch province of Holland has solicited much research in the context of the link between war and political development, an important theme in early modern historiography. During the Dutch Revolt in the late sixteenth century it became the core and financial bedrock of a new, powerful, and very prosperous polity: the Dutch Republic. Why Flanders and Brabant, larger and traditionally wealthier, failed where Holland succeeded and were retaken by King Philip II’s army has never been explained. One difference was the structurally narrower political base in Brabant and Flanders; compared to Holland fewer people had a part and stake in the government. But the main problem in the former provinces was a structural lack of finances. From 1578 the war was right on top of them, which made the collection of newly introduced taxes impossible and attempts at administrative reorganization fruitless. War destroyed the tax base in Brabant and Flanders, while Holland’s taxes were the foundation of its success.

Dreams of a Dutch digital playground fulfilled

In a previous post on digital sources I noted that the Dutch were sadly trailing their neighbors when it came to digitizing and disseminating their old publications. At the ‘Louis XIV Outside In’ conference last month, I learned from Donald Haks that the Koninklijke Bibliotheek (i.e. the Dutch Royal/National Library) has now digitized its Knuttel pamphlets (some 47,000 thus far) and put them online via Brill’s TEMPO – The Early Modern Pamphlets Online. The catalog is freely searchable without any kind of subscription. And unlike most of the English databases (EEBO, ECCO, Burney…), the KB has made scans of the pamphlets themselves accessible to those with a KB yearpass, which costs a paltry 15 euros. In other words, you can download any of the pamphlets in PDF format from anywhere in the world with your internet connection and a yearpass account.

Most of the pamphlets are in Dutch, but some are in English, French, and German. Lots on the Dutch Revolt, the Dutch War, and William III’s wars.

So what are you waiting for? Details at http://www.kb.nl/hpd/kbpas/registratie-en.html

Olaf van Nimwegen on Dutch logistics

Edwin reminded me that Olaf van Nimwegen’s book on Allied logistics in the Low Countries during the War of the Spanish Succession has a lengthy English summary. So I’ve taken the liberty of posting it here, so that non-Dutch readers can see what they’re missing, and maybe it’ll encourage Olaf to get the book translated into English. The transcription is a quick-‘n-dirty OCR, so there may be a few formatting errors.

Olaf van Nimwegen, De subsistentie van het leger: Logistiek en strategie van het Geallieerde en met name het Staatse leger tijdens de Spaanse Successieoorlog in de Nederlanden en het Heilige Roomse Rijk (1701-1712), (Amsterdam: De Bataafsche Leeuw, 1995), 339-344.