📣 Starting today and for the rest of the week, every day a new post will feature one of the NIAA projects sponsored by the Network Institute.

🔍 Today’s spotlight is on “Mapping Missionaries in the Dutch Colonial Empire 1600-1960”, led by Julia Janssen and Gavin Lip, under the supervision of Fred van Lieburg and Victor de Boer.

The Dutch Republic (1588-1795) and later Kingdom (1815-1962/1975) worked closely with the church to send ministers and lay pastors to overseas territories. After the revolutionary era, missionary organizations continued this work for over a century. Thousands of Dutch men from the middle and lower classes, along with their families, participated in this tradition of cultural exchange. Despite the rich Dutch colonial historiography, the religious aspect has been overlooked.

💡 This VU project aims to fill this gap by developing a research agenda. A biographical database of Dutch Reformed ministers from 1555 to 2004, curated with the Netherlands e-Science Center, has formed the Digital Dutch Religion Portal 1500-2000. Making this data available will open up many possibilities in the fields of general and religious history, with the help of digital analysis of biographical and geographical data, archival sources and printed texts.

A huge praise to all collaborators for the effort and time that has been put into this work.

Collaborators

Fred van Lieburg

Victor de Boer

Gavin Lip

Julia Janssen