Mike Driedger
The Dutch Dissenters Blog features research on the political and cultural activities of Mennonites and related groups in the Dutch Republic from the 16th through the early 19th centuries.
My future research interests expand upon work that I began in the 1990s on Mennonite political culture in the neighbouring early modern German ports of Hamburg and Altona. That work looked at the dynamics of religious nonconformity and political conformity as experienced by a religious minority community in Lutheran-dominated polities. In the last 15 years I have done research on Anabaptist political and religious dissent in the 16th century, particularly the episode of Anabaptist rule at Münster in the 1530s, and I have also looked at the relationship between Enlightenment associationalism and revolutionary politics among Dutch Mennonites in the later 18th century. My current research involves pulling together years of archival research on the relationship between “the Radical Reformation” and “the Radical Enlightenment” among Dutch and German urban Mennonite communities.
Categories used most frequently by the blogger:
Sources Digital history Golden Age Patriot Movement Reformation Historiography Kemp HUMA 7P55 reading Amsterdamnified Enlightenment Pop Culture Patriots polemics Postcasts
24 April 2023
This post connects two recent programs from CBC Radio’s Ideas series that provide very helpful Indigenous perspectives on the history of encounters between Indigenous Americans and...
True Crime and Conspiracy Theories: The Sherman Murders (#podcastpairings)
19 March 2023
In December 2017 a Canadian billionaire couple, Barry and Honey Sherman, were found dead in their Toronto home. At first the police suspected a murder-suicide, but after protests from...
Podcast Pairings (#podcastpairings): A Preview of More Posts (2023)
4 March 2023
This blog is focused on my research specialty: the history of Dutch- and German-speaking adult baptizing Protestants (Mennonites, Doopsgezinden and those maligned as “Anabaptists”)...
“Reading” Early Modern Dutch Texts in Voyant Tools: Three Revolutionary Mennonite Sermons from 178
25 February 2023
In this post I have several interactive windows from Voyant Tools. The texts I use in each are 3 sermons from the anti-Orange activist and Dutch Patriot Movement leader François Adriaan...