Wageningen School Days

Since the State Agricultural School in Wageningen opened its doors in 1876, the Netherlands has had a school exclusively dedicated to researching, teaching, and propagating agricultural knowledge deemed important to the Dutch nation. Even though for most of its history the school has remained separate and inferior to Dutch academia – graduates of the school receive the telling title ‘agricultural engineer’ – the institution has maintained political and scientific authority, weathering recessions, hostile takeover attempts from two universities, and parliamentary costcutting measures. This is an important story, and unlike much Dutch historiography written in the Netherlands, it is available here in English. Because agricultural science was concentrated in a single institution in the Netherlands, a history of its professionalisation promises to answer questions about the relationship between agricultural science and technology, political ideologies (especially liberalism) and agriculture, and markets and state development programs. Maat tackles both the research and educational aspects of agricultural science. And he transcends boundaries held sacred by many Dutch scholars, by including in his analysis the development of agricultural science in its large Asian colony, the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia). Starting at the end of the nineteenth century, Wageningen agricultural engineers fanned out across the Dutch colony, working in both private and government enterprises. What emerges centrally in this book (translated by the author from his dissertation written in Wageningen) is the narrative of the successive leaders of the Agricultural School nimbly navigating between the interests of and demands raised by farmers, politicians, government bureaucrats, colonial planters, and academic scientists. Prin-