Hereditas Historiae
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Website hosted by Irène Diependaal to foster some historical knowledge necessary to understand our present times

Articles


It started with my Master’s essay for Public Administration (1992). I was given the opportunity to publish my research results in a debate article in NRC Handelsblad, the most prestigious newspaper in The Netherlands, and in Nederlands Juristenblad, the main Dutch professional journal concerning topic subjects of Dutch Law. After my double graduation at master’s level – History (1990) and Public Administration (1992) – I had discovered how to bring my knowledge and ideas to a national stage. Of course times have changed since then. Newspapers thrived thanks to the strong economy and were able to fill many pages with news, comments and background articles. At the same time, developments within British and Dutch monarchy created a public interest in royalty and constitutional monarchy. Sometimes I made contribution on a particular topic debate and wrote articles on the pages of “opinion and debate” in one of the leading Dutch national newspapers. Monarchy became one of my specialisations, created by a huge demand for knowledge about a subject which was depicted as insignificant in politically correct circles, but which was able to govern the mass media. 

Today’s newspapers wraps tomorrow’s fish. It is the fate of authors that the majority of their published materials will someday become out of date. News is changing every minute nowadays, new facts are discovered or created, and fresh opinions are formulated. An author, certainly one who is working with academic standards, changes his or her opinion throughout lifetime for a number of reasons and is happy it all becomes "wastepaper”. However, some articles still maintain some value because they either became news themselves, were used by others (with or without acknowledgement) or still have a topical recording of (closed) research. This section is dedicated to a selection of old articles. Everything is published in the original language (Dutch or English).