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Abstract
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the magic lantern emerged as a prominent tool for colonial propaganda, notably for missionaries seeking support. This essay examines the propaganda efforts of the Belgian Scheut Missionaries, focusing on Jozef Napoleon Flameygh (1888–1969), a West Flemish priest deeply involved in these campaigns. By analysing Flameygh’s lantern lectures, personal correspondence and archival materials, this study uncovers the complex interplay of emotions and identity in missionary discourse. Through a microhistorical lens, these sources elucidate the role of the magic lantern in colonial propaganda and missionary self-fashioning, revealing Flameygh’s public and private personas. Despite projecting heroism in public, Flameygh’s private writings expose sentiments of fragility and vulnerability, highlighting the multifaceted nature of missionary identity and the performative dimensions of colonial discourse in constructing emotional communities.
Abstract
The Dutch United East India Company (voc) had a Janus-faced position in early-modern maritime Asia as merchant and politician. The present study highlights this through the case of the Spanish-born diplomat Johannes Andreas Paravicini (1710–71). During his mission to Timor in 1756, he concluded a major contract with numerous indigenous states that ostensibly brought a major part of Timor under the voc, in defiance of the rival Portuguese. The contract itself merits attention as literature due to its Enlightenment rhetoric and stress on general welfare, despite being accompanied by excessive physical violence, genocide, and slaving. The article furthermore scrutinizes the ceremonies and symbols that aimed to subjugate the native states. It is argued that Paravicini, while relying on local informants, misrepresented the Timorese hierarchical power structures and concepts of authority. For the Dutch, this led to a series of disappointments and setbacks in the region during the following decades.
Abstract
Few treaties before the Peace of Westphalia are likely to have affected popular culture as much as the so-called Treaty of Windsor, celebrated in 1386–87 between the rulers of England and Portugal, which has commonly been hailed as the oldest diplomatic alliance in place worldwide. A lesser-known fact is that the Treaty of Windsor was the last of four treaties signed in a relatively short span of 33 years, beginning in 1353. This essay examines each of those compositions’ context, making, content, and constitutional significance once they came into being. Considering the ever-changing political developments of the Hundred Years’ War and parallel Anglo-Portuguese commercial interests, which ran deeper, ultimately this essay questions the significance of late medieval treaties and the Anglo-Portuguese alliance as a political creation.