Difference Between the Self and the Heathen. European Imperial Culture in Dutch Missionary Exhibitions, 1909–1957
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11944583 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Miel Groten (0000-0002-9529-7980, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2018 |
| Volume | 47 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 490-513 |
| Publication date | 2018-10-29 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0308-6534 • E-ISSN: 1743-9329 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/03086534.2018.1539725 |
| OpenAlex | W2898904448 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 23 |
‘Imperial culture’ is a concept coined by British historiography to describe the influence of imperialism on metropolitan British culture. Although it is now used in other national historiographies as well, it would appear that we have not yet realised the concept's full potential. This article, drawing on recent scholarship emphasising the transnational connections in European imperial cultures, investigates the implications of seeing imperial culture as a European phenomenon and as a European mentality. For this purpose, this article uses the narrative that was propagated at a specific national practice where empire met a metropolitan European society as a case study: missionary exhibitions in the Netherlands in the first half of the twentieth century. Here, Catholic and Protestant missionaries displayed objects from the indigenous, colonised populations who they were trying to convert and hereby legitimised and underpinned imperialism in Dutch culture. However, their significance went deeper than that. This article argues that the missionaries’ narrative transcended the national level and promoted ideas of Christianity as a European religion and civilisation as a European trait. A European community based on religious, cultural, and racial traits was set against a generic non-European heathen world. However, national and denominational frames of reference also remained in place. With this case study, the article explores the possibilities and difficulties that arise from studying imperial culture as a European mentality
Ancient history · Art history · Ethnology · Exhibition · Sociology · Anthropology · Asian Studies and History · Australian History and Society · History · Philippine History and Culture
Congregational missions and the making of an imperial culture in nineteenth-century England
The Myth of Continents
Between Metropole and ColonyRethinking a Research Agenda
Europe after Empire
Beyond sovereignty
Writing imperial histories
The Wretched of the Earth
Social Careers Across Imperial Spaces
Europe in the colonial mirror
For God and for England‘
Interwar Pro-Empire Propaganda and European Colonial Culture
Missionary Discourses of Difference
European Empires and the People
An Imperial Cloud? Conceptualising Interimperial Connections and Transimperial Knowledge
Colonialism and the Object
Modernity and cultural citizenship in the Netherlands Indies
Inventing Europe
European Integration, European Identity and the Colonial Connection
A New Dutch Imperial History
Ethnographic Showcases, 1870-1930
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2021 - 2025 (5) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |