Inleiding: Techniekgeschiedenis tussen de zusterdisciplines

Abstract

History of technology between her sisters in history and technology The recent fashion among historians of technology to write so-called 'contextual' histories of their subject and the increased attention paid to technology by students of other historical specialties, have profoundly changed the relationship between the history of technology and her neighbouring disciplines. In order to assess the state of the field in the Netherlands, a conference was held at Delft on 13 May 1995, on the occasion of the publication of the sixth and last volume of the series Geschiedenis van de techniek in Nederland (on Dutch technological development between 1800 and 1890). Speakers representing different historical and technical disciplines - viz. engineering (Oele), economic history (Horlings), history of science (Theunissen), political history (Stuurman), and history of technology (Davids) - evaluated the historical approach of the volumes and put forward their ideas on promising new avenues for historical investigation. The re-worked texts of their papers are published in this special issue of Gewina (and, identically, in the NEHA-Jaarboek). As an introduction to this special issue, we briefly characterize the contents of the five conference papers mentioned, the two introductory papers to the issue, written by Homburg and Wolff and the reply to the commentators written by the editors of the series (Lintsen et al.).