Pro Memorie - Volume 27, Issue 1, 2025

The article examines a digitized criminal sentence book (1692-1698) of the Court of Friesland, assessing the effectiveness of digital tools such as Atlas.ti and QGIS in the analysis of large datasets. The sentence book serves as a test case in this analysis. The study identifies patterns in the number of defendants, their geographical origins, the nature of the crimes, the convictions and the punishments imposed, including banishment and the death penalty. Atlas.ti demonstrates clear advantages by allowing for the automated organization and quantification of data, although early modern texts still pose challenges due to spelling variation. Nonetheless, its potential becomes evident when standardized codes are applied. QGIS proved especially useful in visualizing the geographical origins of defendants, enabling analysis by gender and type of offense through layered maps. This case study underscores the enduring relevance of legal historical research, even in the age of digital tools.

The text of art. 5 par. 1 sub 1 of the Civil Code 1838 was confusing. Deviating from earlier drafts in 1822 it read that people, born from parents established in the colonies, were Dutch. Leaving aside that all read this as only applying to those who had moved their domicile to the Netherlands (the Civil Code did not apply in the colonies), and that this only regarded private law rights, granted by the Civil Code, it still suggested that not only Europeans but also the natives of the colonies born there, particularly in the East Indies, were entitled. That became a question in 1850 when the Nationality Bill was discussed in the Parliament. Where the Civil Code had defined nationality for the private law, the Bill aimed at defining nationality in public and international law. Did the possibility of private law nationality suffice to incorporate all natives in the new public law nationality? The minister was against and they stayed out. In the Act on Dutch nationality of 1892, meant to supplant the two co-existing definitions of nationality, originally those with the possibility of private law nationality ex the Civil Code had been included in the unified nationality. Yet, in the nick of time an amendment took the natives of the East Indies out. As a result the act should have been adapted to this change but it did not and now the natives of the East Indies became foreigners. In 1910 this was remedied by an act which declared they were Dutch subjects (and thus not foreigners). However, they had always been and remained subjects. The final question is: were the natives unjustly treated? Only if they had ever expressed the wish for this. But the entire discussion was held without them and moreover, they always wanted to be independent, not Dutch.

This article explores the dynamics of court practice with regard to mercantile pre-insolvency in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Belgium. In 1883, the Belgian legislature introduced the proceeding of concordat préventif, making it possible for insolvent entrepreneurs to remain outside the liquidation-oriented procedure of faillite. Instead, they could declare their financial problems and propose a scheme of payment to their creditors. In spite of this goal, however, the 1883 law, along with subsequent laws of 1885 and 1887, imposed high majority voting requirements. Accordingly, in the Antwerp commercial court, the shortcomings of the legislation were amended to ameliorate its procedural and judicial practice. The new practices of the court resulted in higher rates of acceptance of applications. However, these success ratios were not evenly distributed among the groups of debtors who applied. Perceptions shared by both creditors and judges may have advantaged merchants, brokers and entrepreneurs who belonged to the higher strata of the city’s business world.

Can art provide a force to social reflection and shaping, that abstract laws and policy-making cannot reach? René Magritte (1898-1967), Belgian surrealist painter, touches upon the driving force towards a more equal society with his exploration of (gender-based) violence and sexuality. Les jours gigantesques (1928) depicts a scene of sexual abuse: a man with invisible face attempts to unwittingly overpower a naked woman. It forms a particularly dark, disturbing, and frightening image that causes a shock to the viewer. Magritte confronts the viewer with the societal position of (Belgian) women during the Interbellum: victim of not merely brutal shocking violence, but of a broader inequality that is deeply rooted in our society. This article explores how Magritte’s oeuvre is a carrier of an intrinsic force that directly causes an action (shock) in the viewers’ sphere and brings them to a higher consciousness. An analysis of Les jours gigantesques and related works unveils how René Magritte wields this shock to a higher consciousness towards the (surrealist) image of women as sexual, subordinate objects of lust. The artist’s intention to generate a greater social consciousness of (formal) equality between men and women, situated within the prevailing patriarchal zeitgeist in 1928, leads this article to see Magritte as ‘un féministe avant la lettre’.