Xavier Rousseaux, born in Brussels, Belgium, in 1957. Ph.D. from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Research Associate National Fund of Scientific Research at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Fellow (1 September 1998 – 30 June 1999)
My original intention was to use the wealth of materials at the Royal Library and the Rijksarchief in The Hague for my NIAS project on “Criminal Justice from the Grand Empire to National States in Benelux Area (1810-1839)”. This project is the second part of a forthcoming book on “Criminal Justice and State Formation in the Benelux countries (1780-1830)” to be completed in 2001.
The NIAS year was an important step in finishing this project. The five first months were devoted to extensive bibliographical research in the Dutch libraries to collect published sources, case-studies and interpretative work. Due to the discovery of unexplored sources on the Batavian-French Period, I had to revise my chronological canvas of the period 1806-1830. The rest of the time, I spent on the editorial work of five collective books and wrote some articles on criminal history and social control in the early modern Low countries and the Revolutionary justice in Belgian and Dutch ‘departments’.
Furthermore I was asked to write a survey on Medieval and Early Modern Criminal Justice in the Benelux Countries, so I substantially extended my readings on Crime & Justice in the Netherlands from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century. I also wrote an article on a local cacique in an eighteenth-century village community.