Dirk Alkemade is Secretary of the History Programme.

More information about Dirk Alkemade

Research

In my PhD research project Dutch Democratic Radicalism. Pieter Vreede and Revolutionary Politics in the Netherlands (1780-1801) I will investigate the swift rise of democratic radicalism in the age of revolution. I'm particularly concerned with the Dutch variant of this phenomenon. This project will focus on the political life of Pieter Vreede, a radical Dutch politician whose influence has been acknowledged by both contemporaries and later historians. Vreede played a leading role in the Patriotic Movement in Leiden (c 1770-1787); in the early years of the Batavian Republic (c. 1795-1798) he became the most prominent spokesman for the democratic movement on a national level. The biographical approach enables me to trace the development of radical democratic thought throughout the shifting contexts of the Dutch Revolution, its impact on the first Dutch constitution of 1798 and the political culture of the Dutch Revolution in general.

Publications