Prof.dr. G.J. (Gert) Oostindie

Position:
  • Professor in Caribbean History
  • Director KITLV
Expertise:
  • Caribbean history
  • Dutch colonial history
  • Ethnicity in the Caribbean
  • Migration in the Caribbean


Telephone number: +31 (0)71 527 2295
E-Mail: g.j.oostindie@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Faculty / Department: Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen, Institute for History, Algemene Geschiedenis
Office Address: WSD
Reuvensplaats 2
2311 BE Leiden
Room number 2.26
Personal Homepage: www.kitlv.nl/​oostindie.html

Spreekuur / Hours

Na afspraak / by appointment

Fields of interest

Professor Oostindie’s principal areas of research have been the Caribbean and Dutch colonial history. He published extensively on the colonial history and decolonization of the Dutch Caribbean, on history, ethnicity and migration in the Caribbean and Latin America in general, and on the significance of colonial history to Dutch national identity.

Over the past twenty years, Gert Oostindie has published, co-published, and edited over 20 books and 150 articles with a wide range of publishers (see selected listing below). He has served on many editorial, scholarly, and governmental committees both in the Netherlands and abroad, and is a frequent contributor to the Dutch mass media on his areas of expertise. He has travelled widely in the Caribbean and Latin America and, lately, in Southeast Asia.

Curriculum vitae

Professor Gert Oostindie (1955) is the director of the KITLV/Royal Netherlands Institute of Southeast Asian and Caribbean Studies in Leiden, an institute of the KNAW/Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.

From 1993 to 2006, he also held a chair in Caribbean Studies at the Department of Anthropology of Utrecht University. In September 2006, he was appointed Professor of Caribbean History at the History Department of Leiden University.

Gert Oostindie studied history and social sciences, with a specialization in Latin American history, at the Free University of Amsterdam (graduation, cum laude, 1982). He obtained his PhD at Utrecht University (cum laude, 1989) with a doctoral thesis on slavery and the plantation economy in the Dutch Caribbean colony of Suriname. He became head of the KITLV’s Department of Caribbean Studies in 1983, a position he held until assuming the directorship of institute in 2000.

Selected publications

Postkoloniaal Nederland. Vijfenzestig jaar vergeten, herdenken, verdringen. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker 2010.

(ed.), Dutch Colonialism, Migration and Cultural Heritage. Leiden: KITLV Press 2008. 

De parels en de kroon. Het koningshuis en de koloniën. Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij 2006

Ethnicity in the Caribbean . Essays in Honor of Harry Hoetink. [Edited by Gert Oostindie.] Reprint with new Preface, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005. [Original edition London: Macmillan, 1996.] xiii+239 pp. Order form for this book | Download this book in PDF

Paradise Overseas; The Dutch Caribbean: Colonialism and its transatlantic legacies. Oxford: Macmillan, 2005

(with Inge Klinkers), Decolonising the Caribbean; Dutch policies in a comparative perspective. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2003. Order form for this book | Download this book in PDF

Institute for History
Last Modified: 25-02-2010