David van der Linden
|
Dr. David van der Linden is Assistant Professor in Early Modern History at the University of Groningen. His research focuses on religious conflict, peacebuilding, and memory in the early modern world. He is PI of the five-year research project (funded by the Dutch Research Council) Building Peace: Transitional Justice in Early Modern France. This project explores the mechanisms used by French authorities and local citizens to restore peace after four decades of civil war, and aims to contribute to the recent debates on the efficacy of transitional justice. He is currently also writing a book (to be published by Oxford University Press), Divided by Memory: The Legacy of the Wars of Religion in Early Modern France, which explores how Catholics and Protestants in seventeenth-century France remembered the religious wars, and how such memories could undermine religious coexistence in local communities.
|
|
Project Transitional Justice in Early Modern Europe
This synthesizing project analyzes the long-term impact of peacebuilding in early modern France and develops a historical framework for transitional justice. The first objective is to explain why transitional justice instruments initially succeeded in keeping the peace in post-war France, but ultimately failed. The central hypothesis is that religious conflict was reignited because subsequent generations challenged the transitional justice mechanisms created in the aftermath of the religious wars. I will analyze a range of transitional justice mechanisms utilized in early modern France, in addition to the peace commissioners and bipartisan courts studied in the two sub-projects. Amnesties, for example, are often criticised as instruments of impunity but formed a key component of early modern peace agreements, including the Edict of Nantes.
The second objective is to demonstrate that transitional justice predates the modern age, using the early modern period to develop a historical framework for understanding peacebuilding effectiveness. Few scholars have tried to map transitional justice strategies before 1945, because they assume it is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Its origins are generally situated after World War II, when authoritarian societies transitioned to democracy, including Germany and Japan, and more recently countries in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. By analyzing the longue durée of peacebuilding, this project proposes that the early modern period provides fertile ground for assessing the failure and success of transitional justice.
This synthesizing project analyzes the long-term impact of peacebuilding in early modern France and develops a historical framework for transitional justice. The first objective is to explain why transitional justice instruments initially succeeded in keeping the peace in post-war France, but ultimately failed. The central hypothesis is that religious conflict was reignited because subsequent generations challenged the transitional justice mechanisms created in the aftermath of the religious wars. I will analyze a range of transitional justice mechanisms utilized in early modern France, in addition to the peace commissioners and bipartisan courts studied in the two sub-projects. Amnesties, for example, are often criticised as instruments of impunity but formed a key component of early modern peace agreements, including the Edict of Nantes.
The second objective is to demonstrate that transitional justice predates the modern age, using the early modern period to develop a historical framework for understanding peacebuilding effectiveness. Few scholars have tried to map transitional justice strategies before 1945, because they assume it is a distinctly modern phenomenon. Its origins are generally situated after World War II, when authoritarian societies transitioned to democracy, including Germany and Japan, and more recently countries in Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe. By analyzing the longue durée of peacebuilding, this project proposes that the early modern period provides fertile ground for assessing the failure and success of transitional justice.