Why do early films present the Netherlands as a country full of canals
and windmills, where people wear traditional costumes and wooden shoes,
while industries and modern urban life are all but absent? Images of
Dutchness investigates the roots of this visual repertoire from diverse
sources, ranging from magazines to tourist brochures, from
anthropological treatises to advertising trade cards, stereoscopic
photographs, picture postcards, magic lantern slide sets and films of
early cinema. This richly illustrated book provides an in-depth study of
the fascinating corpus of popular visual media and their written
comments that are studied for the first time. Through the combined
analysis of words and images, the author identifies not only what has
been considered Ytypically DutchOE in the long nineteenth century, but
also provides new insights into the logic and emergence of national
clichés in the Western world.