- Wednesday, April 12, 2023
- 3:30 PM–5:00 PM
- Meeter Center Lecture Hall
In our annual History Student Colloquium, senior historical studies students will present their honors theses and other research projects. Please join us in celebrating their accomplishments!
Our 2023 presentations are:
John Meyer
‘Sumatra... is a world’: Agency, Irreducibility, and Why the VOC Period Still Matters Today
Sumatra looms over Indonesia as the birthplace of its national language—Bahasa Indonesia—and as a region with a troubled history, due to the Aceh Insurgency of 1976–2005. It is also the world’s largest producer of pepper. In the Dutch East Indies (VOC) period (1602–1795), pepper became the focus of both Sumatran and Dutch agents. Sumatra’s principal ethnicities—the Malayu, Minangkabau, Batak, and Acehnese—profited or plummeted as they navigated pepper’s extraordinary rise in 1600–1680 and its precipitous fall thereafter, forever altering their ethnic futures. The Sumatran environment has similarly reaped the consequences of Sumatran and Dutch eagerness to profit, contributing to problems still felt today.
John Meyer is a double major studying history and writing. He grew up in Guadalajara, México, though his family has since moved back to the U.S. to live in Holland, Michigan. He is applying to jobs in the publishing and journalism industries as a proofreader, line editor, and copy editor.
Peter Mouw
Willem Bilderdijk and the Neo-Calvinist Political Tradition
In the century after the French Revolution, the Netherlands experienced a revival of Calvinistic religious and political thought (the Réveil) that produced the tradition better known today as Neo-Calvinism. This movement, which culminated in the “Anti-Revolutionary” political ideology of Groen van Prinsterer (1801-1876) and Abraham Kuyper (1837-1930) has received considerable attention in the English-speaking world over the last decade, and yet scholarship (in both English and Dutch) has largely neglected one of its earliest and most influential thinkers, Willem Bilderdijk (1756-1831). Bilderdijk is a difficult figure to nail down: a well-known poet and historian, staunch monarchist, theosophic mystic, and heterodox Christian who brought generations of young people to reject the ideology of the French Revolution---despite never publishing a clear and coherent statement of his own political ideology. This paper aims to clarify and re-emphasize Bilderdijk’s role in the Neo-Calvinist political tradition and underline the fundamentally counter-cultural nature of what would come to be known broadly as “Kuyperian.”
Peter Mouw is a senior from North Little Rock, Arkansas, with double majors in history and philosophy and a minor in Dutch. After graduation, he hopes to study theology and history at the graduate level, partially in the Netherlands.
Gabrielle Freshly
A Look at the Tulip Time Festivals of Pella and Holland Through Postcards
Tulip Time festivals in Pella, Iowa and Holland, Michigan became very popular in the early and mid 20th century. These festivals were meant to celebrate Dutch heritage and to draw tourists into the cities. One of the ways tourists across the country were drawn to these festivals was through postcards with images of the festivals on them. The postcards show idyllic pictures full of Dutch symbols and cultivated landscapes that promoted a certain reputation for Pella and Holland. This talk will address how cities with strong Dutch ethnic ties promoted themselves to tourists through postcards that advertised tulip festivals and how the images on the Holland and Pella postcards compare to national postcard image trends.
Gabby Freshly is a senior from Westerville, Ohio with a major in history and a minor in data science. At Calvin University, she was a resident assistant, a 2023 McGregor fellow, and an Honors scholar. After graduation, she plans to attend graduate school to pursue a Masters of Library and Information Science.
This talk is part of history colloquia series. These lectures are open to the Calvin community - students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends - and all are warmly welcome to attend.
