Netherlands, Anthropology in the HAN F. VERMEULEN Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany Anthropology in the Netherlands developed in the wake of oriental studies and in close interaction with linguistics, history, geography (in particular, human or social geography), customary law (adatrecht), and sociology. Relations with folklore studies (volkskunde), physical anthropology, and prehistoric archaeology have been weak, with some exceptions. Tese disciplines are considered independent, as is sociology, in particular since the establishment of faculties of social sciences at Dutch universities from 1963 onward. Prior to this date, anthropology was taught in the Faculty of Arts (as ethnologie) or the Faculty of Medicine (as anthropologie); these studies were, afer World War II, designated “cultural anthropology” and “physical anthropology” respec- tively. Sociology originated in the Faculty of Law from the 1870s on; in Amsterdam sociology and social geography merged into sociographie from 1913 on. Te Netherlands is one of the smaller countries of Western Europe, with a strong overseas orientation. When the Protestant parts of the Low Countries separated from Spanish rule during the Dutch Revolt, which began in 1568, the United Provinces gained independence in 1648 as one of the frst European republics in the modern era. Afer many vicissitudes it became the Kingdom of the Netherlands in 1813–15, from which Belgium seceded in 1830–39. Seen from a Dutch colonial perspective, stretching over 350 years of trade and colonizing in the East and West Indies and covering 400 years of trade relations with China and Japan, as well as 300 years of presence in South Africa, ethnology was relatively late in arriving on the scholarly scene. Its institutionalization took place during the nineteenth century, in line with developments in other European countries and the United States. However, this was preceded by a process of conceptualization: from 1740, ethnography developed in Russia and Germany; from 1770 ethnology, physical anthropology, and folklore studies were actively pursued in European scholarly discourse, relating not only to the world beyond Europe but also including Europe itself (Vermeulen 2015). In the 1770s Dutch anthropology was clearly present, but its institutionalization took place from the 1830s on. Tis was a slow process, partly because the study moved through two basic types: general anthropology (ethnology), usually of a comparative kind, and regional anthropology (ethnography), predominantly of Indonesia but also of Surinam and the Netherlands Antilles. Because ethnography was embedded in the military and colonial civil service training programs from 1836 onward, ethnology was not easily established. Te frst university chair in the ethnography of Indonesia was founded at Leiden in 1877; a chair in general (comparative) ethnology was founded in Amsterdam only in 1907 and at Leiden in 1922. Te International Encyclopedia of Anthropology. Edited by Hilary Callan. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. DOI: 10.1002/9781118924396.wbiea2225