Curated by Karla Vandersypen, with the collaboration of Pablo Alvarez
Our exhibit showcases a curated selection of Dutch pamphlets, also known as Dutch historical tracts, which vividly depict a pivotal era of political, social, and religious turmoil in the Netherlands throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Deeply inspired by contemporary events, these pamphlets served as significant channels of government expression, manifesting in treaties, regulations, and edicts, many of them issued by the Spanish Habsburg rulers of the Low Countries in the sixteenth century. However, alongside this official discourse, there existed a parallel realm of independent pamphleteering, offering diverse perspectives on unfolding events. Particularly noteworthy is the period following the 1560s, during which many of these publications emerged as potent ideological instruments, often taking the form of satirical narratives, allegorical tales, and biting lampoons.
Our selection draws from the Dutch Pamphlet Collection housed at the Special Collections Research Center (University of Michigan Library). Consisting of nearly 4,300 imprints, it is one of the largest collections of its kind in North America. However, they represent only a fraction of the more than 30,000 pamphlets housed in the Koninklijke Bibliotheek at The Hague, meticulously cataloged by W.P.C. Knuttel in his nine-volume Catalogus, published from 1889 to 1920. Interestingly, the word pamflet was not used in the Netherlands until late in the eighteenth century; what Knuttel identifies as pamphlets in his Catalogus are small printed works published in the Netherlands in various languages such as Dutch, French, and Latin. Materially, they could be described as fairly brief tracts usually printed in quarto format, that is, consisting of sheets of paper folded twice to create gatherings of four leaves or eight pages. Altogether pamphlets contained four (half quarto), eight, or sixteen pages. Issued cheaply and swiftly, these pamphlets were often distributed unbound or in paper wrappers, frequently lacking information about the place of publication or the publisher's name.
The Michigan collection begins with the period of the revolt of the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands against their Spanish..
In 1556, Charles V abdicated, transferring the Netherlands and Spain to his son Philip, whose reign (1556-1598) witnessed a long..
Until 1648, when the United Provinces finally were acknowledged by Spain to be a free and sovereign state at the..
In addition to pamphlets addressing political and religious matters, our collection boasts a diverse array of documents, including ordinances and..
The pamphlets included in this section serve as eloquent witnesses of the rapid progression of the General States towards military..
The year 1672, commonly referred to as the Disaster Year or annus horribilis in Latin, and the Rampjaar in Dutch,..
