Gert Oostindie, born in Ridderkerk, the Netherlands, in 1955. Ph.D. from Utrecht University. Professor of Caribbean History at Leiden University and Director of the Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies, Leiden.
Fellow (1 February 2013 – 30 June 2013)
Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1670-1800
As programme director of the “Dutch Atlantic Connections, 1670-1800” programme, I hope to bring this project to an end while simultaneously broadening the original scope of the project. Our aim was to explore the development and structure of the ‘Dutch Atlantic’ between 1680 and 1800, and to analyse changes in the Dutch broker’s function between three continents and among the Atlantic sub-empires. At NIAS, I will revise the draft synthesis co-authored with Henk den Heijer. We aim to add three dimensions: first, to expand the temporal framework; second, to expand the focus from economic history to political and cultural history; and finally, to integrate our findings on the Dutch sub-empire into the larger field of Atlantic Studies. I will also co-edit a book in the same field, taking advantage of the fact that several contributors are now in our NIAS Theme Group.
Selected Publications
(ed., with Ulbe Bosma & Jan Lucassen), Postcolonial Migrants and Identity Politics. New York: Berghahn 2012
Postcolonial Netherlands. Sixty-five years of forgetting, commemorating, silencing. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2011
Paradise Overseas. The Dutch Caribbean: Colonialism and its Transatlantic Legacies. Oxford: Macmillan, 2005