What socio-cultural transformations did indigenous communities in the Lesser Antilles undergo from the late precolonial to the early colonial period in response to Amerindian­ European-African cultural encounters? How did Amerindian populations realign themselves in response to the colonisation…

Ruling Overseas: Connected Practices of Governance of Law

Amerindian settlement patterns and early colonial cartography in Northern Hispaniola

The aim of the Indonesian-Dutch Literature Collective (which is allied to the Society of Dutch Literature (MNL)) is to support research into the literature of and about the Dutch Indies, from the era of the Dutch East India Company to the present. Starting in 1986, the collective has published its own…

Building cultures of legality: lawmaking and anxiety in the office of the Governor General.

Representing Japanese Colonial 'Heritage' in Taiwan

Landscapes of mobility in the northern Chilean altiplano: from chiefly networks to colonial markets (AD 1100-1800).

Alternative perspectives and sources of colonial literature haven’t received much attention before now. School books have long ignored the violence that accompanies colonialsm. How can we paint an honest picture?

The Dutch and English East India Companies were formidable organizations that were gifted with expansive powers that allowed them to conduct diplomacy, wage war and seize territorial possessions. But they did not move into an empty arena in which they were free to deploy these powers without resista…

This project looks at material culture to better understand the character and organization of Roman colonial society in the Republican period, with a focus on the colony of Aesernia (founded 263 BC) in Samnium (modern-day Molise, Italy). What impact did the foundation of the colony have on precolonial…

The focus of this programme is the inter-community social relationships and transformations of island networks in the Lesser Antilles across the historical divide.

Eine Analyse materieller Kultur römischer Kolonien in der Mikroregion von Suessa Aurunca, Minturnae und Sinuessa

The role of material culture in early colonial encounters in the Caribbean

How did colonial law work to turn people into property? This project argues that colonial ideas about households and domestic authority were critical to legal processes of enslavement in the early modern Dutch empire. Using colonial court records from Dutch Brazil, Suriname, and the Moluccas, the project…

Central to Nuranisa’s PhD project is the cultural diplomacy practiced by the Javanese courts of central Java (Surakarta, Yogyakarta, Pakualaman and Mangkunegaran) in response to the increasing Dutch colonial power in the 19th and early 20th century. The Javanese sultanates were incorporated into the…

What are the immediate and lasting effects of the colonial encounters on indigenous Caribbean cultures and societies and what were the intercultural dynamics that took place during the colonisation processes? How can the study of indigenous Caribbean histories contribute to a more sophisticated awareness…

The research focuses on the understanding of symbolic stratigraphy of the land (through time) from the worldview of the People of the Rain (one of the Indigenous Peoples of southern Mexico), by studying contemporary cultural heritage in communities of the Mixtec Highlands.

How did “free agents” (entrepreneurs operating outside of the myriad of interests of the centralized, state-sponsored monopolies) in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire react to the creation of colonial monopolies (royal monopolies and chartered companies) by the central states in the Early Modern…

On 17 August 1945, two days after the Japanese surrender that also brought an end to the Second World War in Asia, Indonesia declared its independence. The declaration was not recognized by the Netherlands, which resorted to force in its attempt to take control of the inevitable process of decolonization.…

Bandura Witharana defended his thesis on 27 September 2018

As an educational and research institution Leiden University is seeking to understand its own relationship with the colonial and slavery past.

This project explores the community of engineers in Sri Lanka and their role with regard to three domains of inquiry.

Une étude archéo-anthropologique de la céramique des sociétés caribéennes multiculturelles de la période précoloniale à nos jours

Interested in studying Colonial and Global History at Leiden University? Find out what our alumni said about this master's programme.

Mesoamerican Manuscripts: New Scientific Approaches and Interpretations brings together a wide range of modern approaches to the study of pre-colonial and early colonial Mesoamerican manuscripts. This includes innovative studies of materiality through the application of non-invasive spectroscopy and…

Find out how to apply for Colonial and Global History (research) at Leiden University by following our step-by step guide.

Find out how to apply for Colonial and Global History at Leiden University by following our step-by step guide.

Linking botanical collections, peoples, and illustrations in seventeenth century Dutch Brazil

Why is Crossnational and Cross-cultural agents such as Henrich Carloff and Willem Leyel important when studying Early Modern expansion?

Amerindian intra- and inter-insular relationships and social organization in the pre-colonial Windward Islands.

This PhD project develops and applies a GIS procedure to use legacy survey data in settlement pattern analysis. As part of the research by the LERC project (NWO, Leiden University, KNIR), legacy data produced by surveys in central and southern Italy are examined in a comparative framework to investigate…

Spirited narratives of purpose and progress: church-society engagement alongside the (Company-) state

The Khoesan were the first people in Africa to undergo the full rigours of European colonisation. By the early nineteenth century, they had largely been brought under colonial rule, dispossessed of their land and stock, and forced to work as labourers for farmers of European descent.

Forgotten Lineages explores the paths through which generations of formally enslaved and their descendants gradually forgot their past of enslavement under Dutch and British imperial rule and became local subjects in Sri Lanka and South Africa. It explores why and how forgetting rather than memory became…

Much attention has been paid to the exchange of objects, ideas, and people in the Caribbean. Networks of interaction connected local communities across pan-regional scales, shaping indigenous socio-political integrations and their responses in colonial situations. This work examines the poorly understood…

What was the social function of the colonial civil law courts in eighteenth-century coastal Sri Lanka? Why did people choose to have their disputes settled by Dutch law courts?