Waar Historie Huis Houdt
Jan Marijnissen
95 pages including index
published in 2005
Jan Marijnissen is the political leader of the Dutch Socialist Party, currently the sole properly socialist party in Dutch parliament, as well as the third biggest party in the country. He has been the driving force behind his party’s rise, it owning much of its current succes to the years and decades of hard work Marijnissen and his comrades put into building the party. In recent years this hard work has translated into a certain amount of fame for him as not just a politician but also as what you might call a public intellectual.
It’s in this later capacity that Marijnissen has become involved in the great history debate. Amongst historians there has long been concern for the lack of interest the general public shows in their field as well as the ways in which history is taught in schools. Concerns which are perhaps universal. History is after all not a practical, moneymaking subject, so often seen as expendable in school and not directly applicable to real life later on. While interest in history is certainly present in the general public, there has been somewhat of a lack if official attention to it, something that is now slowly changing. Marijnissen has been one of the people who has argued the loudest for more attention to history as
an important, central field of education needed to provide us Dutch with a sense of who we are and where we came from. It’s this role which led to this book, Waar Historie Huis Houdt, a collection of short essays in which Marijnissen sets ups his personal reasons for finding
history important.