Apart from humans, animals play a pivotal role in travel literature. However, the way they are represented in texts can vary from living companions to metaphorical entities. Existing studies mainly focus on the representation of conventional or unconventional roles that are assigned to animals from around the Napoleonic age until now, roles that have been subject to change and that tell us a lot about human reflections on encounters with non-human creatures and the position of man in this rapidly changing world. In this edited volume, scholars from the Netherlands and abroad analyse the roles that animals play in Dutch travel literature from 1800 to the present. In this way, we aim to provide new insights into the relationships between man and animals, in textual expressions and real life, and to add the ‘Dutch case’ to the flourishing international field of travel writing studies.

Rick Honings is Scaliger-hoogleraar aan de Universiteit Leiden. Momenteel werkt hij aan zijn NWO Vidi-project Voicing the Colony. Travelers in the Dutch East Indies, 1800-1945. In 2019 verscheen zijn samen met Lotte Jensen geschreven boek Romantici en revolutionairen (Bert Bakker).

Esther Op de Beek is an assistant professor in Modern Dutch Literature at Leiden University. She obtained her PhD at Radboud University Nijmegen, within the NWO-funded research project The Best Intentions, Literary Criticism in the Netherlands 1945-2005. Her research examines modern Dutch travel literature, literary criticism, and the circulation of happiness narratives in literature. She is a member of the editorial board of Nederlandse Letterkunde and delivered Cees Nooteboom. Avenue – 15 jaar wereldliteratuur (2013) and, together with Jos Muijres, Op de hielen: Opstellen over recente Nederlanse en Vlaamse literatuur (2014).

Acknowledgements 7
Introduction 9
Rick Honings & Esther Op de Beek
Part I – Colonial Encounters: Framing the Animal
Chapter 1. Roaring Tigers, Grunting Buffalo, and Slithering Snakes Along
the Javanese Road: A Comparative Examination of Dutch and Indonesian
Travel Writing 29
Judith E. Bosnak & Rick Honings
Chapter 2. Naming the World: Pieter Bleeker’s Travels and the Challenges
of Archipelagic Biodiversity 79
Johannes Müller
Chapter 3. Empire as Horseplay? Writing the Java Pony in the Nineteenth
Century through the Lenses of Mobility, Modernity, and Race 99
Mikko Toivanen
Chapter 4. The Sound of the Tokkeh and the Tjitjak: The Representation
of the Tokay Gekko and Common House Gekko in Dutch-Indies Travel
Literature 119
Achmad Sunjayadi
Chapter 5. Monkeys as Metaphor: Ecologies of Representation in Dutch
Travel Writing about Suriname from the Colonial Period 139
Claudia Zeller
Chapter 6. Becoming a Beast in the Long Run: Travelling Perpetrators and
the Animal as Metaphor for Violence 159
Arnoud Arps

Part II – Living Apart Together: Animals in Modern Travel Writing
Chapter 7. ‘Do You Really Think a Donkey Has No Heart?’ Betsy Perk and
her Cadette 183
Peter Altena
Chapter 8. Naturalist Lessons from the North: Human and
Non-Human Animals in Niko Tinbergen’s Eskimoland (1934) and
Jac. P. Thijsse’s Texel (1927) 197
Paul J. Smith
Chapter 9. The Land of the Living Fossils: Animals in Travelogues for
Dutch-Australian Emigrants, 1950-1970 223
Ton van Kalmthout
Chapter 10. A Lesson in Happiness: Animals and Nostalgia in the Travel
Stories of Leonhard Huizinga 241
Esther Op de Beek
Chapter 11. Noble Horse and Lazy Pig: Frank Westerman and Yvonne
Kroonenberg in Quest of Domestic Animals 263
Lucie Sedláčková
Notes on the Contributors 289
Index 293