Dienke Hondius

While the study of race relations in the United States continues to inspire and influence European thinking, Europeans have yet to confront their own history. To be black in Europe—whether during the sixteenth century or today—means sharing one crucial experience: being part of a small, but visible minority. European slave-owners, company directors, and investors in the distant past maintained an ocean-wide gap between themselves and the enslaved in the plantation colonies of the Caribbean. In the following centuries, this distance persisted. Even today, to be black in Europe often means to be one of a few black persons in a group. A racial pattern of exclusion has characterized European policy for more than four centuries. Dienke Hondius identifies ideas and attitudes toward "blackness," the concept of race as visible difference, developed in western Europe. She argues that racial discourses are generally dominated by paternalism—a concept usually used to explain power structures that is often applied to the nineteenth century. Hondius identifies five patterns of paternalism that influenced Europe much earlier and iniated trends of imagery and perception. Taking a chronological and thematic approach, Hondius first focuses on southern European societies in the Early Modern period and moves to northwest European societies in the Modern period. Addressing religion, law, and science, she concludes with a synthesis of developments from the twentieth century to the present.

Racial Patterns of Paternalism and Exclusion

Blackness in Western Europe

Examines the experiences of Jews who returned from concentration camps to the Netherlands after World War II.

Holocaust Survivors and Dutch Anti-semitism

Return

Anne Frank Stichting

Joke Kniesmeijer

Bauco van der Wal

Fotoband zur Ausstellung "Die Welt der Anne Frank 1929 - 1945" mit englischen und deutschen Bilderläuterungen. Die Bilder vermitteln ein Panorama der Zeit.

Anne Frank in the World, 1929-1945

Vincent Boele

Carl Haarnack

Esther Schreuder

Elmer Kolfin

Nationale Stichting De Nieuwe Kerk

Adi Martis

Dutch and foreign museums house a hidden treasure of masterworks depicting black Africans who have played a major role in painting for centuries. Almost all the great masters have portrayed black people at some time or another.In recent years a study has been made of these works for an exhibition at the Nieuwe Kerek (New Church) Amsterdam. This has now been incorporated into an appealing collection of essays written by leading authors and specialists. The writings cover black people at Europe's courts, the black king in Rembrandt's painting The Adoration, black mythological figures, Africans in genre paintings, black people in the Netherlands, the changing role of black people from the nineteenth century on and Africans in work by contemporary artists.Each of the 140 works in the exhibition are also looked at in great detail, thus making the book a handsome survey on the portrayal of black people in the Lowlands between 1330 and 2008.

Rubens to Dumas

Black is Beautiful

Dienke Hondius

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