Special Collections - Maastricht University Library

Special Collections - Maastricht University Library The Maastricht University’s Special Collections. Delve into Philosophy, History, Literature and more.

📞 Hi, we've been trying to reach you about your car's extended insurance... WAIT - do not hang up on us just yet. We wan...
17/06/2026

📞 Hi, we've been trying to reach you about your car's extended insurance... WAIT - do not hang up on us just yet.

We want to show you our 1784 edition of Ricard's classic on commerce, finance, and insurance, including commercial laws and customs, with an emphasis on the Low Countries (Netherlands). And albeit insurance is mentioned, you do not need to worry; the terms of your car insurance were not set in stone in the 18th century. In fact, this book rather addresses regulations on marine insurance. ⛵

Samuel Ricard (1637-1717) was a French-born merchant who settled in Amsterdam and became a citizen there in 1685. His "Traité général du commerce" is one of the major commercial handbooks of the early modern European trading world. First published in 1700, the work has been revised, enlarged, and updated in later editions like the one we have here.

This book is important because it standardized commercial knowledge for merchants operating internationally and documented European trade practices at a time when no centralized commercial regulations existed yet. Nowadays, we can use it to gain insights into 18th-century commerce since it preserved information about trade networks, prices, insurance systems, and financial practices, including Amsterdam's central role in global trade.

🌐📚 Let's take a look back at our collaboration with Wikimedia Nederland throughout the years >>Happy 25th birthday 🎂 ...
16/06/2026

🌐📚 Let's take a look back at our collaboration with Wikimedia Nederland throughout the years >>

Happy 25th birthday 🎂

12/06/2026

There's nothing like a deep breath of dusty cold archive air for your mental health 📚

10/06/2026

Have you ever seen such an unusual preface to a book? ✒️

💌 It is, one must say, quite fitting for this travel account, which is fully rendered as a series of lively and witty letters to a friend.

🗺️ "Promenade autour du monde" documents one of the most important explorations of the Pacific: the l'Uranie's expedition from Toulon to Gibraltar, Tenerife, and Rio de Janeiro, then past Cape of Good Hope to the Mascarene Islands, Western Australia, Timor, New Guinea, the Mariana islands, the Caroline islands, the Sandwich islands, New South Wales, New Zealand, Tierra del Fuego, and the Falklands, where the ship was unfortunately wrecked. Luckily, In 1817, Captain Freycinet, who had been commandeering the l'Uranie in her mission to collect natural history specimen, and gather information in the fields of geography, ethnology, astronomy, terrestrial magnetism, and meteorology, was able to acquire a new ship and sail back to Le Havre.

📖 The book was written by Jacques Etienne Victor Arago (1790-1855), the draughtsman of the expedition, and includes many insightful comments on the places visited, in particular on Western Australia and Hawaii. As it was less technical than Freycinet's own account of the voyage, Arago's version, published in 1822, became more popular.

Happy Best Friends Day! 🫂 How are you honouring your bestie today? 🫰🏼🌞 The Liber Amicorum (Latin for “book of friends”) ...
08/06/2026

Happy Best Friends Day! 🫂 How are you honouring your bestie today? 🫰🏼

🌞 The Liber Amicorum (Latin for “book of friends”) was presented to Pierre Kemp for his 70th birthday in 1956, marking an eventful trip around the sun for the Maastricht poet.

🏆 That same year, Kemp was awarded the prestigious Dutch literary Constantijn Huygens Prize.

🎨 He also published his poetry collection Engelse verfdoos (English Paintbox), which is often considered one of his most inventive works. The collection contains sixty poems, each inspired and titled after a colour in an English watercolour set offered in a Dutch department store catalogue. In each poem, Kemp describes the associations and impressions that that colour evoked in him, revealing how strongly he connected colour with imagination, rhythm and poetry.

🖋️ The Liber Amicorum contains handwritten contributions by leading writers and poets, complemented by original painted and drawn works by various artists. One of the contributers was Dutch-Indonesian artist Wim Yo Bwan Tjong, whose artistic practice shows interesting links to Kemp’s. Like Kemp, he had a strong interest in colour, atmosphere and a subtle, sometimes “Eastern”-tinged sensibility. Both were also connected to the cultural milieu of Maastricht.

A memorable year, honoured through a truly special present. 📖

Whom would you gift a friendship book? Tag your bestie(s) 👇🏼

📸

Happy Best Friends Day!🫂How are you honouring your bestie today?🫰🏼🌞 The Liber Amicorum (Latin for “book of friends”) wa...
08/06/2026

Happy Best Friends Day!🫂How are you honouring your bestie today?🫰🏼

🌞 The Liber Amicorum (Latin for “book of friends”) was presented to Pierre Kemp for his 70th birthday in 1956, marking an eventful trip around the sun for the Maastricht poet.

🏆 That same year, Kemp was awarded the prestigious Dutch literary Constantijn Huygens Prize.

🎨 He also published his poetry collection Engelse verfdoos (English Paintbox), which is often considered one of his most inventive works. The collection contains sixty poems, each inspired and titled after a colour in an English watercolour set offered in a Dutch department store catalogue. In each poem, Kemp describes the associations and impressions that that colour evoked in him, revealing how strongly he connected colour with imagination, rhythm and poetry.

🖋️ The Liber Amicorum contains handwritten contributions by leading writers and poets, complemented by original painted and drawn works by various artists. One of the contributers was Dutch-Indonesian artist Wim Yo Bwan Tjong, whose artistic practice shows interesting links to Kemp's. Like Kemp, he had a strong interest in colour, atmosphere and a subtle, sometimes “Eastern”-tinged sensibility. Both were also connected to the cultural milieu of Maastricht.

A memorable year, honoured through a truly special present. 📖

Whom would you gift a friendship book? Tag your bestie(s) 👇🏼

📸 Hilterman

05/06/2026

Quite frankly, all that we can possibly get, because photo-worthy content is most definitely not in short supply at the Special Collections 📸

What did it take to drain the largest lake of Holland? 💧This book from 1736 provides insights into the first plans to dr...
03/06/2026

What did it take to drain the largest lake of Holland? 💧

This book from 1736 provides insights into the first plans to drain the Haarlemmermeer, now a polder located in the West of the Netherlands (and home to Schiphol airport!), and therefore, into part of the Netherlands' history of reclaiming land from water.

The Haarlemmermeer was a rapidly growing lake, a so-called "waterwolf" in Dutch. After merging with three neighbouring lakes due to floods that swallowed the land inbetween and with it, whole villages, the water body continued to expand in the following centuries, raising concerns about human safety and infrastructure damages. Before modern flood control, severe storms could cause flooding that wiped out whole villages in the area of a "waterwolf".

The first proposal to d**e and drain the lake was made by Jan Adriaenszoon Leeghwater (1575-1650), a Dutch millwright and hydraulic engineer in 1643. He states the advantages of the plan, finds solutions for potential difficulties, and gives an estimate of the cost. For the draining of the Haarlemmermeer, he estimated that more than 220 windmills had to be constructed, drawing on his experience from the draining of the Beemster polder in 1609-1612, which was the first lake to be reclaimed using windmills. However, Leeghwater's proposal was quickly met with various criticisms and it was not until 1839 that the work to prevent the Haarlemmermeer from further expansion really begun. The final straw were two furious hurricanes in 1836 that drove the waters all the way to the gates of Amsterdam and submerged the streets of Leiden, thereby threatening two major Dutch cities.

What happened to cowards in the 17th century? ⚔️⛵From this 1694 pamphlet announcing the conviction of four Dutch captain...
02/06/2026

What happened to cowards in the 17th century? ⚔️⛵

From this 1694 pamphlet announcing the conviction of four Dutch captains for their cowardly behaviour during the Battle of Texel we know that the punishement was not for the fainthearted either.

Because they could be printed quickly and cheaply, pamphlets in the 17th century were a popular tool to inform the masses about matters of public concern. This pamphlet was used to spread the word about Govert van der Weppelen, Simon Holthuysen, Anthony van der Lith and Cornelis van der Hoeven's sentencing to imprisonment until they paid a fine of a thousand silver ducatons as well as their removal from their functions.

⛵ Which battle was their downfall?

During the early morning hours of June 29 1694, French privateer Jan Baert (1650–1702) attacked Dutch Navy Officer Hidde Sjoerds de Vries' flagship. Despite having fewer guns and ships than the Dutch, Baert and his fleet won after a brief but fierce battle. They recaptured 120 grain ships, which had previously been taken by the Dutch immediately after leaving Norway. Baert had been instructed to es**rt the grain convoy from Norway to France as France was suffering under acute famines due to grain shortages amidst the Nine Years' War but the ships had set sail without waiting for Baert's arrival. Following his victory, Baert was able to fulfill his mission and deliver the much-awaited grain to France, where he was celebrated as a hero and even raised into the nobility by King Louis XIV.

On the contrary, the four Dutch captains convicted of cowardice were said to have failed to come to the aid of Hidde Sjoerds de Vries, remaining idle and then then retreating after the Dutch flagship was overwhelmed by the French squadron, thereby abandoning their duty of supporting their superior.

Have you ever heard of Den Briel? 🗺️Located on the island of Voorne, it was the first city to be captured by the Dutch i...
27/05/2026

Have you ever heard of Den Briel? 🗺️

Located on the island of Voorne, it was the first city to be captured by the Dutch in the 80 Years' War, marking a turning point in their rebellion against Spain.

On April 1, 1572, the Watergeuzen sacked the city’s port after hearing that the Spanish garrison had left for Utrecht. As such, Den Briel is of great historical significance for the Dutch and its inhabitants continue to celebrate the city’s capture every year.

Through Cornelis van Alkemade (1654-1737) and his son-in-law Pieter van der Schelling’s (1691-1751) collection, we get unique geographical and historical insights on Den Briel. Next to their detailed descriptions of the city, their account chronicles the history of the noble family that governed Voorne and describes the growth of the polders on the island after the Dutch reclaimed it.

📖 Alkemade, C. v., & Schelling, P. v. d. (1729). Beschryving van de stad Briele, en den lande van Voorn.

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