The wonder
“I come from a family where history played an important role. I always knew I wanted to do something with history. As a child, I collected stamps featuring castles and churches from France. I found the Sint-Janskathedraal in Den Bosch, where I grew up, absolutely stunning. I don’t know why, but I have always been fascinated by the lives of people and societies in the past.
“In the late 1980s, I began my PhD research. My eldest brother, who is also a historian, lived in Los Angeles and sent me an issue of the American Historical Review. It contained an article about forgotten women historians. I was active in a women’s history group, so this resonated with me. And it made me wonder what the situation was like in the Netherlands.”
Maria Grever is a historian specialised in historical culture, historical consciousness, and collective memory. She is an emeritus professor of Theory and Methods of History and founded the Centre for Historical Culture in 2006. She is a member of the KNAW and researches how history is remembered, interpreted, and taught. She is currently working on an international book about contested monuments.
The eureka moment
“I discovered that between 1902 and 1948, more than eighty women obtained PhDs in history. That was a real revelation. No one knew this because women had long been barred from studying and had no access to academic societies. In the university library in Nijmegen, I scoured reference works for female historians. I can still picture myself standing there. During my studies, I had never attended a lecture by a woman. My discovery was an eye-opener – there had been many more female historians with PhDs than previously assumed.
“My dissertation focused on the work of historian Johanna Naber, who played a key role in the women’s movement. In Naber’s personal archive, I found photos of tough-looking soldiers and officers from the army and navy. I set them aside, without realising why.
“At a certain point, I thought: ‘Why am I doing that?’ Naber was a feminist, but she also supported a strong military and was in favour of limited suffrage for women. That didn’t fit my image of the first wave of feminism. Then I had a Gestalt switch – the women’s movement was far more diverse than the stereotype I had in my mind. Naber belonged to the conservative liberals who held such views. By ignoring this, I was unknowingly contributing to the perpetuation of that stereotypical image.”
The result
“In the 1980s and 1990s, there was controversy over the fact that I and others were researching women’s history. It was seen as too politically engaged and lacking objectivity. Nowadays, there are more female historians, including professors, and publishing on women and gender is more accepted. Of course, it’s not the case that women only write about women. Many of the dissertations I had uncovered dealt with entirely different subjects – such as 17th-century diplomacy or a biography of Stadtholder-King William III. In many ways, these scholars continued the discourse of their mentors.
“The insights I gained during my PhD research had a major impact on my later work. I have always remained interested in exclusion mechanisms in historical representation. To analyse this, I developed the meta-historical concept of ‘historical culture’. This concept clarifies how canon formation works. It involves three interacting levels: narratives about the past, material infrastructure (such as archives, societies, and monuments), and the conception of history over time.
“The interplay between these levels reveals how certain groups and topics are excluded. This concept may also help us better understand why the histories of colonialism, slavery, and migration were ignored in Dutch historiography for so long – and how that continues to have an impact today. For instance, stories about Surinamese resistance fighters in World War II struggle to gain recognition when there is no visible trace of them in public spaces.”
