Wyger Velema, born in The Hague, the Netherlands, in 1955. Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. Researcher of Cultural Studies at the University of Amsterdam.
Fellow (1 September 1994 – 30 June 1995)
During my stay at NIAS I have worked on several projects, all in one way or another belonging to the history of Dutch political thought in the eighteenth century. As a member of the nucleus “The History of Dutch Concepts”, I have written an article entitled “From the Rule of Law to Popular Sovereignty. The Concept of Liberty in the Dutch Republic, 1750-1800”. It will appear in a volume of essays on the development of the Dutch concept of liberty between ca. 1550 and ca. 1940, to be edited by E.O.G. Haitsma Mulier and myself.
As a second project, I have done research (resulting in two articles) on the concepts of citizenship, virtue and sociability in Dutch early eighteenth-century political thought. Finally, in connection with the commemoration of the year 1795, I have written two articles on the transformation of the vocabulary of Dutch republicanism in the late eighteenth century.