Auke Reitsma

Senior Researcher & Collector for Africa

PhD Researcher

British social history writing spans about seven centuries, from the medieval farmers' protests and enclosure movement to the 1984 miners' strike and the peace movement today. 

Traditionally, acquisitions related to the Netherlands have included socialism and the labor movement in the 19th and 20th centuries. Since the 1970s, the social movement has expanded to include environmental issues, human rights, squatters, and similar subjects. The legacy of these new social movements can be found at the IISH as well.

The Law of Historical Memory of Spain (Ley de la Memoria Histórica de España) (October 2007) has greatly enhanced research on the Spanish Civil War. 

In the Russian and Eastern Europe collections at the IISH, Russia and the former USSR are dominant. Additional collection development efforts cover most countries in Eastern Europe that became communist after 1945.

The IISH collections on Germany and German speaking countries in Central Europe cover the period beginning with the democratic revolutionary movements and early workers' organizations around 1840 to the protest movements in the FRG during the '60s and '70s, and the civic movement in the GDR during the '80s.

The French collection is among the larger national collections at the IISH. Materials date back to the emergence of the revolutionary ideology in the second half of the eighteenth century. 

On the Waterfront : newsletter from the Friends of the IISH
Authors: Jaap Kloosterman, Bouwe Hijma, Eric de Ruijter, Huub Sanders
Place of publication: Amsterdam