20/09/2021
15th Symposium on the History and the Culture of the Jews in the Netherlands will take place in Amsterdam on 4 and 5 October: The Imperial Turn in Dutch Jewish History.
The 15th Symposium of the History and Culture of the Jews in the Netherlands will be devoted to how research and awareness of the Imperial and colonial past changes our perspective on Dutch Jewish History:
Asking Kalmar and Penslar’s question: Were “Jews, as a group, objectively irrelevant to imperialism?”, this conference will focus on the under-studied Dutch empire and its legacy. Ranging from the Antilles to the Indonesian archipelago, this empire brought together Jews of Ashkenazi,s Sephardi and Middle Eastern and North African descent. Beyond the well-covered economic focus of the three main settlement empires of the United Kingdom, France and the Netherlands, the lasting impact of Dutch Jews on European empires and colonies as well as the impact of Empires on the Dutch Jews remains elusive. This conference will bring these histories together by looking for overarching themes such as slavery, race, geopolitics, philanthropy, political and social belonging, inter and intra ethnic relationships, and the contemporary legacies of the colonial encounters. The conference will thus encompass a broad chronology ranging from the 17th-the present day in order to get at the larger issues surrounding the intersections of Dutch Jews, colonialism, and empire.
For more information and registration, see https://mbii.nl/15th-symposium-dutch-jewish-history/
