Over the past two decades, there has been an eviction notice on the doors of many of the rooms that the field of history once occupied in the ivory tower. The required survey course on national history or Western Civilization, once the bread and butter of history departments everywhere, has often become optional, depressing enrolment. Full-time faculty positions are being cut, and funding of all kinds is disappearing down the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) rabbit-hole. History majors are on the decline in the face of the increasingly widespread belief that a university education is a vocational school. The job advice most widely given to new Ph.D.’s is to find work outside the Academy. Perhaps it is overly alarmist to say that the field is dying, but it is certainly suffering from the ramifications of this perceived lack of relevance in university administrative circles.

The public does not seem to share this opinion. History titles consistently occupy a good proportion of the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list; video games with historical themes like the Assassin’s Creed series, the first three in the Call of Duty and The Age of Empires series are immensely popular; historical podcasts and YouTube videos and, of course, the cable “History Channel” all present a form of history. Much of this mass-produced “history” is little more than sensationalism and does not meet the standard of evidence-based analysis or confrontation with larger issues that make up the real practice of history. Will an audience whose most frequent contact with history is simplified and sensationalized appreciate thoughtful and challenging historical explorations? Is there a market for a book series that is careful and considered but not academic? Can a public, even an educated public, whose perceptions of history are not shaped by professional historians, but through pandering documentaries, conspiracy blogs and nationalistic monuments, appreciate a reflective examination of a colonial and mercantile past? That they can and will consume such a product is the gamble that the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and publisher Van Tilt are making with this new series of books, the first four of which are under review here. According to the Vantilt website, the next in the series (and probably out before this review is published) is Cinnamon & Elephants: Sri Lanka and the Netherlands since 1600 written by Lodewijk Wagenaar and future volumes are promised on South Africa, India, and Suriname and Brazil. There is some overlap between the various texts as important locations such as Zeelandia (Taiwan) and Batavia (Djakarta) are covered in detail in more than one volume so that their impact can be viewed from a variety of perspectives.

Slightly oversized, lavishly illustrated, and very reasonably priced, the Rijksmuseum has not stinted on the fabrication of this series. Overall, the English translations from Dutch (the only versions this reviewer has seen) read smoothly and demonstrate only trace amounts of translation fog (what I call when something has been translated literally in such a way that it fails to convey any meaning, which happens when the translator does not understand the original). A few other additions such as modern maps reflecting the locations mentioned in the text, glossaries to refer to specialized language, or chronologies of events would have useful and desirable for most readers. Moreover, as the original conception appears to have been envisioned with a Dutch audience in mind, some wider, general historical background might have been helpful for other readers who would not have learned these specifics as a part of their ordinary education. While the question as to whether the target audience exists or not will only be answered by sales, overall the production team has done a good job in creating a product that might reach such a group.

A second, unique, characteristic of the series is that the volumes are organized to promote an important role of the museum—teaching through objects. To most people, the Rijksmuseum suggests Rembrandt’s The Nightwatch, or their Vermeers and other masterpieces of seventeenth-century Dutch art, but these are of course only a fraction of their vast collection of some one million objects. These books are not exhibition catalogues, the usual purview of museum publication, but rather historical narratives, with a historical, rather than an art historical emphasis. In three of the four volumes, each chapter is defined by a representative object from the Rijksmuseum collection. Sometimes, the author(s) chose to use a class of objects, such as “porcelain”. This object or group of objects is then given context in the historical narrative so that each way of presentation is enhanced by the other. In A Narrow Bridge, the authors elected instead to present specific objects through “Intermezzo” sections interpolated between the chapters of the historical account as representative of the discussion rather than as the foundation for it. In all volumes, many additional objects are illustrated in full colour to flesh out the story, some from the Rijksmuseum collection, but also with many from other collections in the Netherlands and abroad. This technique is generally interesting and informative, and it provides some insight into the process of curating, a verb which in its overuse has belittled the museum professional. Nevertheless, some authors were more effective at applying this methodology than others. Moreover, at times this convention created a somewhat jumpy text in which large chronological and conceptual leaps were made to cater to the needs of the next object or group of objects under consideration rather than propelled by the demands of historical events.

Most of the highlighted objects were chosen to represent the complexities of the Dutch maritime past, acquired in the belief that these objects “would boost their prestige as a glorious monument to imperialism (Stevens, Bitter Spice, 19)”. These books appear to be a part of a larger effort to grapple with not just Dutch colonial history, but specifically, the part played by the Rijksmuseum itself in reflecting and perpetuating that narrative of dominance as a “product and key champion of Dutch nationalism (A Narrow Bridge, 16)”. Another effort by museum administration along this line is the renaming of paintings that had words in their titles that today might be deemed offensive, such as “negro”, “Indian” (referring in this case to Native Americans), and “dwarf”. Thus, it is in this context of re-evaluation of the past in which the analysis of many of the objects is specifically designed to feature their histories of ownership, how they were acquired by the museum, and how they were displayed by the collector and in the museum in the past. They provide a corporeal reality to the stories that make them fresh. The somewhat unusual result of this technique is a national history with at times a rather self-consciously apologetic tone.

The first volume, in order of publication (although advertising materials call it the second), is Bitter Spice. Each volume has a forward by a prominent individual from the region under discussion, in this case, Ayu Utami (b. 1968). This journalist, author of fiction, activist and “critical spiritualist (which, according to her Twitter page, means, “a critical mind and a spiritual heart will give you a free soul)”, is an outlier among the other forewords who have been penned by more conventional figures with ties to government, maybe because of the four regions represented by these volumes, the colonial relationship was most profound in Indonesia. She sets the stage with a brief summation of the past and a path to the future that she believes should be forged by rising above the events of the past. The objects selected by Rijksmuseum Curator of Twentieth Century History Harm Stevens reflect his interest in military history. Or perhaps they reflect the nature of the relationship between the Netherlands and the many islands that make up the modern nation of Indonesia. Stevens begins with a painting of Banda Neira. From the second half of the seventeenth century which was one of a group that had once hung in the boardroom of the Amsterdam Chamber of the Dutch East India Company. The Banda islands comprised the centre of nutmeg and mace (which is the fibrous growth around the nutmeg nut). Stevens does not temper his discussion of Dutch actions in this region, entitling on section “The Killing Fields” and calling it “a reign of terror” (23). Nevertheless, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) is given surprisingly little space in a book about colonialism. Batavia (Djakarta) as a VOC outpost is in fact covered not in this volume but in A Silk Thread. By the next chapter, we have already moved to the nineteenth century, and a pencil portrait of Indonesian national hero Prince Diponegoro (1785-1855), which became the basis for his portrait on the 1952 Indonesian hundred rupiah note. His actions in the Java War (1825-1830) led to his exile on Makassar. Only two of the seven objects that frame the chapters (the Banner Al-Iskander and a Dayak shield) are of Indonesian manufacture. It is just another layer of irony in this exploration of the Dutch colonial past.

China and Japan differ from the first two books in that the books cover exchange rather than a colonial relationship. Neither of these places was ever a Dutch colony but rather, they housed important Dutch factories. Silk Thread is by far the longest volume in the series to date, perhaps reflecting not so much a greater relationship between the Netherlands and China but rather the depth of these collections and the decision by the authors to include Taiwan and the large Chinese diaspora to other locations in the region, especially to Batavia. It is consequently, “not a history of China as a whole but predominantly of the south-eastern coastal areas around modern-day Fujian and Guangdong (19)”. This volume veers slightly from the others in that rather than focusing on few individual objects, classes of objects such as “porcelain” are examined. This organization makes sense in that the relationships with China were around trade, and those in Batavia were around labour, but at the same time it is the crossroads between history and art history because many objects that better represent the trade between China and the Netherlands in terms of value and volume, like tea or even silk, are given little attention. But this is true to the nature of art museums, which do not collect usually pepper or copper bars. The book focuses on the early modern period, beginning with a description of “China around 1600”, and describes the efforts made to establish trade with China. One chapter is devoted to trade in Canton and others to collecting, chinoiserie, and Batavia. The concluding content chapter covers the turbulence of the late nineteenth century up through the Second World War. The final images (except the endpapers) are a photograph of Chinese and Dutch attendees at the 1993 International Film Festival in Rotterdam (10.2) and an Ai Weiwei and Serge Spitzer installation of “Ghost Gu Coming Down the Mountain”. Implicit in the selection of this work, of ninety-six pots that each depict a part of a traditional porcelain design on only one side and placed in even rows to form a larger picture, is the suggestion that this is also how we must also view Dutch relations with China.

Of the four, A Narrow Bridge is the least satisfying from the point of view of an expert. The separation of the objects into “Intermezzo” sections is essentially a reversion to more traditional attempts at incorporating objects with history by presenting them separately. Since these sections come between the chapters, they seem afterthoughts rather than complementary. This volume also deviates from the format of the others by omitting an epilogue. Overall, the assessments in the text are conservative and do not reflect more recent research. For example, the performances the Dutch merchants were required to perform in front of the shogun are presented as a recurring fact (53), when they did not appear to have occurred past the seventeenth century. Moreover, the last sixty years of Dutch occupation of Deshima are treated the same as the first 155, but the disbandment of the VOC substantial altered some aspects of the relationship. Nevertheless, the history enthusiast will find the descriptions of life on Deshima vivid and engaging. This volume covers the arrival of the first Dutch ship in Japan, the Liefde, the first Dutch factory in Hirado, the Japanese diaspora of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, including the Dutch-Japanese mestizo Cornelia van Nijenroode, whose tragic history Leonard Blussé covered so eloquently in Bitters Bruid (Balans, 1997), Dutch life on Deshima, the exchange of art objects, and various kinds of knowledge, opening of Japan, Japonisme, and Japanese colonialism (especially in Indonesia), concluding with a few paragraphs about contemporary Dutch-Japanese relationships.

Perhaps in part, because it is the area in which this reviewer has the least expertise, Tarnished Gold seemed the most successful of these volumes. Graced with a Foreword by former UN Secretary-General Kofi-Annan it does not shy away from tough issues like slavery and miscegenation. Author Gijs van der Ham had at hand a compelling yet exquisite object around which to frame his narrative - a tortoiseshell and gold box veneered with gold reliefs inset with a nugget of ore and decorated with maps and images of Dutch holdings that was presented by the Dutch West India Company to William IV (1711-1751). The various parts of the box echo through the early modern section of the book, reminding us of the reach of the Company at the height of its power. Another strength of van der Ham’s approach is biography. It is not that the other authors ignore the individual for the object, but that van der Ham was able to find unusual and meaningful examples to educate and entertain the reader. This is especially compelling in this volume because, as van der Ham notes, “We know very little about all the people who ended up as slaves in the Americas” (97). It is this reality that makes, for example, the story of Jacobus Elisa Joannes Captein (ca. 1717-1747), whose portrait graces the cover, so fascinating. Captein was a slave who became a Dutch Reformed minister in the Netherlands and then returned to Ghana to preach. He has been the subject of several books and is probably well known among regional specialists but his fascinating life is not common knowledge. Van der Ham brings in many other lesser-known figures whose portraits reside in the Rijksmuseum, such as the unnamed envoy from the Congo to Dutch Brazil attributed to Albert Eckhout, or chronologically later, Kees Pop and Jan Kooi, nineteenth century African recruits in the Dutch Army. This volume covers the causes of expansion, colonization, Ghanaian connections with Suriname and other parts of the world and the effects these historical Dutch actions have had in the modern world.

Overall, the presentations in these volumes are synthetic rather than ground breaking, using few primary or indigenous-language sources. Some things were not to this reviewer’s personal taste, such as the translation for supercargo as a merely an official rather than something more explanatory like “head merchant” in Silk Thread or the use of Dejima, the modern pronunciation, instead of Deshima, the historical one, in a Narrow Bridge, but these criticisms aren’t especially relevant to the public. The imagined target audience of history buffs will probably be more than satisfied with the offerings here. However, given that most readers of Itinerario are academics, what use would these books be to us? Judging at least by the regions that this reader has some expertise in, there would be little need for a specialist to acquire them. Once they might have had value to the specialist but online collections databases have almost obviated the need for physical catalogues to find objects for study or reference. However, if one were seeking a clear, manageable introduction into a new region outside of one’s own expertise they would be a pleasurable way to go about it. Given the reasonable price one could (depending on the exchange rate) acquire the whole series for about the price of some survey textbooks) in courses on world history, colonialism, maritime trade or the specific region of one title, they have potential as supplementary reading but the slightly disjointed nature and not just Eurocentric, but Dutch, perspective even in their attempts to bring indigenous perspectives into the history of Dutch colonialism make them insufficient as stand-alone texts. They would be of interest in museum studies courses as case studies for examining one approach to teaching through objects. Most importantly, these volumes speak to the need for accessible history produced by professionals. Non-experts should have more than video games to learn about the past.