4. Pieter Geyl and the Institute of Historical Research

Stijn van Rossem

When Pieter Geyl was appointed professor of Dutch studies at University College and Bedford College for Women in 1919 he had already lived in London for five years.1 His position as London correspondent for the Nieuwe Rotterdamse Courant (NRC), one of the biggest-circulation Dutch newspapers, had allowed him to become acquainted with the British capital’s political and industrial circles. During his years in English academia Geyl continued to influence public opinion and the political agenda both in the United Kingdom and in the Low Countries. As the London representative of the Nationaal Bureau voor Documentatie over Nederland, a Foreign Affairs agency with ‘silent attachés’ on its payroll, Geyl reported on the whispers in political corridors and wrote many anonymous opinion pieces in order to improve the image of the Netherlands abroad. At the same time, he supported the Greater Netherlands movement, advocating the unification of Flanders with the Netherlands, and travelled to Belgium regularly to meet with champions of the Flemish cause and to give public speeches, resulting in him being banned from travelling to Belgium between 1929 and 1931.

In contrast to his political connections, Geyl’s network in British academia was limited. Initially, he was reluctant to develop meaningful connections in this field and was not really interested in the social advantages of the gentlemen’s clubs in or outside the university. His difficult character and lack of humility nearly resulted in the termination of his contract at the end of his first five-year appointment. Saved more through the intervention of powerful friends than by his own persuasiveness, Geyl had learned his lesson and became more careful and sociable.

This chapter aims to emphasize the important role that the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) played in the development of the academic career of one of the most important historians of the twentieth century. Geyl had shown interest in the newly founded postgraduate school since its opening in 1921 but engaged with it only after avoiding the premature end of his academic career. The pivotal role of the IHR in Geyl’s career has never been underscored or analysed, although Geyl is one of the few historians whose life is studied as much as his work. In his autobiography, written while held prisoner by the Nazis during the Second World War, the few positive passages on his career in London are dedicated to the institute.2 In addition to this autobiography, this chapter relies heavily on records in the IHR archive, which contains many unknown letters from and to Geyl.

Geyl’s connection to the IHR made his tenure in London a success and enabled him to secure an important professorship at Utrecht University (1935), but he also gave something back to the IHR. As one of the first international historians to be attached to the new institute, he helped to build its global character. He played an active role in the academic life of the IHR and created a legacy by buiding one of the most important reference libraries for the history of the Low Countries outside of the Netherlands and Belgium.

Chair of Dutch studies

During the First World War London became a hub for many international government officials, captains of industry and cultural agents. By the end of the war it had emerged as the political and cultural centre of Europe, and many countries chose to institutionalize the spirit of cultural exchange by establishing university chairs in London to promote the study of their language, literature and history. In the case of the chair in Dutch studies, the initiative was taken by expats from the Netherlands. Key figures were René de Marees van Swinderen (1860–1955) and Frederik Cornelius Stoop (1863–1933). Marees van Swinderen had been Minister of Foreign Affairs until 1913 and had resided in London since 1914 as the Dutch envoy to Great Britain. Stoop, the brother of the oil magnate Adriaan Stoop, was a stockbroker and art collector who had moved to London in the 1880s.

In 1918 the University of London approved the formation of a committee for the promotion of Dutch studies with Marees van Swinderen as honorary president and Stoop as honorary treasurer, ‘to advise the Senate through the University College Committee and the Bedford College Council as to the steps to be taken for the development for the endowment of a Chair of Dutch, the Professor to teach at University and Bedford Colleges’.3 Originally, the capital sum needed to endow the chair was estimated at £25,000. The committee was able to raise £21,000 quickly, and appointed Geyl as professor in September 1919, followed by Pieter Harting (1892–1970) in 1920 in the capacity of reader.

Because the salaries of Geyl and Harting ate more than the endowment was able to produce, the committee approached the Dutch government in 1920 for additional financial support. New calculations by the University of London pointed out that at least £30,000 was needed to meet the minimum salary requirements of a professor and a reader. Using Marees van Swinderen as a go-between, the committee asked the Dutch government to match the missing funds, either by adding to the endowment or through an annual donation. In its requests, the committee refers to similar contributions from the Italian, Portuguese and Greek governments to their respective chairs at London institutions. The committee pointed out that:

It [the new chair] can be regarded as helping in a very definite and real way to represent intellectual and cultural sides of Dutch life and thought to the people of Great Britain. It is not merely a case of teaching the Dutch language, though that is done most effectively: it is a case of spreading a knowledge of Dutch Literature, History and Art in the centre of the British Empire, and so, indirectly, throughout that Empire.4

From its conception, the budget for the chair included funds to create a Dutch studies library. The limited funds in the first years of the chair, however, left little to no money to develop this library. In 1921 the Dutch government approved the sum of 2,500 guilders (£212) earmarked for the library of the Dutch studies department. The subsidy grew to 5,000 guilders by 1931, with 1,000 guilders to be spent on acquiring books.5

With the funds and the staff now in place, the Dutch studies programme was fully developed in the academic year 1921–2.6 The junior class ‘Grammar, translation and composition’ was taught by Harting as a biweekly introductory course in the Dutch language. Five senior classes were offered. Historical grammar was co-taught by Geyl and Harting. Harting also offered a class on medieval Dutch texts, and the other three courses were all taught by Geyl, covering modern Dutch literature, colonial history and Dutch–English political relations in the Dutch Golden Age. In addition, Harting and Geyl organized two public lectures. Harting’s classes were held exclusively in Bedford College, while Geyl alternated between teaching in Bedford College on Thursdays and at University College on Fridays. At the same time, only a few blocks away, the new Institute for Historical Research opened its doors.

A history laboratory in the heart of London

The creation of the Institute of Historical Research was the lifelong project of Albert Frederick Pollard (1869–1948), professor of constitutional history at University College London (UCL). In his inaugural address of 1903 he called for the creation of a postgraduate school of historical research. In his vision, the institute would not only want to ‘make historians but to discover and spread historical truth’.7 The outbreak of the First World War delayed the plans, but as early as May 1919 Pollard repeated his request for the establishment of an Institute of Historical Research:

Hitherto no University in the British Empire has made adequate progress in the specialisation for the post-graduate study of historical, political and legal science […] It has been a matter of public comment that it was not found possible in this country […] to improvise a Board of National Historical Service for the purpose of bringing to bear upon present problems the light of historical knowledge and experience.8

In February 1920 the University of London approved the plan to secure ‘two, or possibly three houses in the neighbourhood of the British Museum’.9 An appeal to find the necessary budget of £20,000 was only moderately successful, and the majority of the required funds were donated anonymously, although it is now known that the donor was Sir John Cecil Power (1870–1959).10 In the summer of 1921 the institute officially opened its doors.

In his overview of the first decade of the IHR, historian Joel T. Rosenthal explains the five pillars on which Pollard’s IHR was built:

1) the seminar, that regular gathering of teachers and students wherein methods and sources were explicated, research findings and ideas and projects discussed with colleagues regardless of rank, status, or gender, 2) the library, 3) the Anglo-American Conference, 4) the Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research (BIHR), a regular scholarly outlet and 5) the Thursday evening mini-conferences in the IHR to which both committed friends and would-be supporters, invited and coming from many walks of public and academic life, might be induced to join the ranks.11

The failed transfer of the Dutch studies library (1921)

Right from the start, Geyl showed an interest in the Institute of Historical Research. In October 1921, only months after it opened, Geyl launched a request that the historical section of the library of the Dutch department (housed in Bedford College) be moved to ‘the room provisionally allotted to Netherlands History’ (‘provisionally’ is added in pen by the IHR librarian).12

The earliest plans for the temporary IHR building, dating from November 1920, do indeed mention a room dedicated to the Netherlands, next to and – interestingly – separated from the large European room located centrally in the building (see fig. 4.1). Apart from the rooms dedicated to British history, it was intended that only France, Russia and the Balkans were to have their own room. The reason for this is unclear, but it is plausible that these rooms were created to house other collections that were in the process of being donated to the new institute. This could mean that Geyl started negotiating the housing of the library attached to his chair well before the opening of the IHR; this would have been possible shortly after the plans for the foundation of the institute were approved on 12 February 1920. In any case, Geyl’s proposal indicates the potential he saw in connecting his new chair and library to a new and ambitious institution, as he admitted in his initial letter: ‘I am very anxious indeed to transfer these books to the Institute, as I am convinced that there can be no place where they could be of greater use to historians in general, and I venture to say that they would form a real asset to the Institute.’13

Both parties agreed the transfer would be mutually beneficial and were able to arrange the practicalities quickly – except one. Contrary to the general policy of the IHR library, Geyl wanted the books from the collection to be available to people wanting to borrow them: ‘As this library is unique of its kind in London and will certainly prove of great use to all students of Dutch History, I should not feel justified in placing it under conditions which would preclude anyone from taking books home.’14

Knowing that this request went against the regulations, he offered his collaboration in order to implement the policy:

I should be willing to remain personally responsible for the books and to accept a rule that books could be taken out only with my consent. No difficulties are likely to arise from such an arrangement. As most of the books apart from publications of sources are written in Dutch, they will only appeal to a small number of serious workers, all of whom will be personally known to me.15

The request was immediately rejected by Pollard himself: it would set an unwanted precedent for the other collections.

Fig. 4.1: Provisional plan of the IHR from November 1920 (IHR Archive, IHR/11/1/1)

But there were also institutional obstructions, as Geyl had taken the initiative without the approval of the owner of the collection, the Dutch government in the form of the Dutch studies committee.16 The committee agreed to the books being moved on 15 November, as long as they remained the property of the committee. They were to be placed in a separate room and the IHR had to provide the bookcases.17 Geyl wrote to Pollard one week later to tell him the good news, and repeated his request that the books could be checked out to readers, asking Pollard to try the policy for a year to see if it would create any inconvenience. The IHR consequently agreed to the terms ‘on the understanding that no books may be borrowed from the library for any purpose’.18 At this point it became clear that Geyl had not informed the committee of the position of the IHR, as its reaction was one of surprise and a desire to discuss the matter with Geyl and the members before taking further action. As no other correspondence on the matter was forthcoming, the books remained in Bedford College; apparently the IHR no-lending policy was a deal-breaker for both Geyl and the committee.

Geyl’s academic struggles (1922–4)

As mentioned above, the first years of Geyl’s professorship were far from successful. His autobiography speaks at great length about the reasons for his initial difficulties. Geyl points firstly to his inexperience as an academic, especially in the English context. Feeling insecure and unproven, he had wanted to show his worth through his work and publications before stepping into the foreground of the academic social circle. Looking back, this proved to be a great mistake: Geyl already felt cut off from the rest of the history department because of the exotic remit of his chair, and his feelings of social inadequacy only added to this:

I was pretty isolated in these first years. Neither did I attend the monthly college dinners, even later I rarely did. I did not like the eternal chatter; I hated drinking too much wine. Even after I was well acclimatized, I was never able to shake off the feeling that I was not fully accepted, that I could not contribute to most conversations on important and less important university issues, and that, ultimately, they saw me as a foreigner … as a representative of a minor subject, as the third wheel.19

Furthermore, Geyl’s relationship with the committee for Dutch studies seems to have deteriorated quickly. Characterizing the committee as a charade, Geyl criticized the members for daring to intervene in academic matters. In 1922, both Stoop and Marees van Swinderen voiced concern about the fact that Geyl and Harting were teaching their students a simplified form of spelling. Geyl defended the decision vehemently by stating that this simplified spelling was gaining traction among scholars and that it had obvious benefits when teaching foreign students. The fervour of his defence, based on the conviction that it was his prerogative as head of the department, soured his relationship with the committee to the point that he described Stoop as a ‘dim-witted but self-conscious moneybag’ and Marees van Swinderen as a ‘little man full of life, a fast mind with little solid knowledge’.20

The third and most problematic issue involved his relationship with the University College provost, Sir Gregory Foster (1866–1931, provost 1904–29, and vice-chancellor 1928–30). Foster was unhappy with the poor numbers attending the Dutch studies programme and suspected that Geyl was using the chair only to carry out his own research. Foster therefore proposed to replace Geyl at the end of his five-year term with Pieter Harting, who had more students and had integrated more seamlessly into the department.21

When Geyl learned of the plans he called out the University College representatives, the Dutch studies committee members and Harting as conspirators, even though he felt powerless. Wanting to avoid being fired, he accepted an offer from the Netherlands to lead the international office of a new newspaper and handed in his resignation, only to have to revoke it soon afterwards when it turned out that the investor in the newspaper had disappeared. In the end, it was due to the support and pleas of Margaret Janson Tuke (principal of Bedford College), the eminent professor Petrus Johannes Blok (Geyl’s ex-mentor, who met with both Marees van Swinderen and Foster) and Pieter Nicolaas van Eyck (Geyl’s friend and successor as the NRC correspondent in London) that Geyl was able to retain his position.22

The birth of the IHR Low Countries collection

The events of 1924 resulted in the separation of the chair into a Dutch-language programme under Harting at Bedford and a history programme under Geyl at University College.23 They also enforced Geyl’s decision to create institutional connections inside and outside University College.

The conflict with Foster had given Geyl some popularity among his colleagues in the history department. Two young assistants, John Ernest Neale (1890–1975) and Hugh Hale Leigh Bellot (1890–1969), introduced him to Pollard’s circle. Neale specialized in Elizabethan and parliamentary history and eventually succeeded Pollard at UCL; Bellot was an American history scholar who eventually became vice-chancellor at the University of London (1951–53). Geyl was particularly fond of Bellot, admiring his lively spirit and academic qualities and relating to him as a fellow outsider, since Bellot had not studied at Oxbridge and came from a middle-class family. As Geyl openly admitted in his autobiography, it was Bellot and Neale who helped kickstart his career by including him in the workings of the Institute of Historical Research.24

The revival of the plan to transfer the Dutch studies library from Bedford College to the IHR was the first step in this process, and an important one. Indirectly, it might have been the invitation from librarian Henry W. Meikle (1880–1958) in November 1924 to serve on the library committee for the purchase of expensive books that helped Geyl to establish a good relationship with the staff and workings of the library.25 On 8 June 1925 Geyl asked the Dutch studies committee to restart the process of transferring its collection to the IHR. The committee reminded Geyl why the move had not gone ahead in 1921 and concluded that he had reluctantly waived his request that the books be lent out.26 A new request by Geyl was that the committee rent a room for him in the IHR. The request seems vague, and was not acted upon, but it would not have been a room intended to house books but a personal office for Geyl. This only proves the extent to which Geyl wanted to break away from University College: not only did he want to move the library out, he wanted to avoid spending any time on its campus.

Since all the practicalities had already been discussed, Bedford College, the Dutch studies committee and the IHR quickly came to an arrangement and planned to move the collection in the third week of September.27 The move was completed on the twenty-ninth and went smoothly. The few books that were initially missing turned out to be in Geyl’s personal library. Some of them eventually made it into the IHR, but others, including several bibliographical works, would remain in his possession.28

The IHR as a safe haven

In Geyl’s autobiography, as mentioned earlier, the paragraphs dedicated to the IHR stand out as the most enjoyable aspect of his academic career in London. The reading room in the IHR became a place where Geyl could focus on what he most liked doing – research, as far away as possible from university politics. How much of a regular he became at the institute’s library is clear from the following example. When a student of the Amsterdam professor Hajo Brugmans approached librarian Meikle with a research question in 1926, he immediately forwarded the question to Geyl, who was helpful but also felt annoyed that Brugmans had not sent the student to him directly.29

Thanks to Bellot, Geyl also became part of another pillar of the IHR, the seminar, joining the ranks of prominent English historians such as Pollard, Neale, Eliza Jeffries Davis (1875–1943) and Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889–1975). With Robert William Seton-Watson (1879–1951, specialism Austro-Hungary) and Paul Vaucher (modern French history), Geyl formed a triumvirate of continental historians. As a regular lecturer, Geyl helped to shape the educational outlook of the IHR in its first decade.30 In 1924–5 he took over Bellot’s English diplomatic history seminar, one of the most popular.31 Under his direction, ‘English’ was dropped from the seminar’s title and an international approach was embraced. The following year Geyl co-taught a preliminary course entitled ‘Reading of Dutch historical texts’ with Jacob Haantjes (1899–1956), who had replaced Harting at the Dutch studies department.32 Even though the courses never attracted more than a handful of students, they did help Geyl to find students for his University College courses and PhD candidates.

Geyl’s favourite student was Stanley Thomas Bindoff (1908–80), who translated Geyl’s magnum opus Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche Stam (‘History of the Dutch-speaking Peoples’) into English and later became professor at Queen Mary, University of London.33 Geyl wrote a letter to Pollard to recommend him for the position of assistant librarian in 1930 and later negotiated free access for Bindoff to his seminar.34 He was also convinced that he had been instrumental in launching Bindoff’s career by persuading Neale to hire him as a reader at University College.35 Furthermore, he helped to find financial aid for the publication of Bindoff’s thesis and proudly mentioned in his autobiography that the book was dedicated to him. Another student Geyl supported strongly was R. R. Goodison, who he tutored while Goodison was working on his MA thesis on England and the Orangist party, although in this case his mentorship was less successful: Goodison was not given free access to the IHR and was unable to establish himself as an academic.36

In addition to his work for the library and the seminar, Geyl was also active in other areas of Pollard’s IHR. He was regularly invited to write reviews of publications on the Low Countries for the Bulletin (BIHR) and played a central role in the Anglo-American Conference of Historians (Fig. 4.2).37 The conference was Pollard’s brainchild and grew into the most important history conference in the UK. Held on 8 July 1921, the first of these conferences virtually coincided with the opening of the IHR. It brought the most important and best-known scholars from the United States and the UK to London.38 The conference was covered by The Times, the paper framing it within the post-war spirit of international collaboration: ‘The Conference will be the means of bringing into personal touch historians known to one another only by their publications and repute, and of increasing that individual friendship which is one of the surest guarantees of international goodwill.’39

Fig. 4.2: Geyl on the Anglo-American Conference of Historians, London, July 1926 (middle of back row in front of the UCL Portico), in The History Laboratory: the Institute of Historical Research, 1921–96, compiled by Debra J. Birch and Joyce M. Horn (London, 1996), after p. 144 (detail)

The conference was held every five years and grew on each occasion: there were close to 200 attendees in 1921; 300 participants in 1926; and 450 in 1931. Geyl was asked to serve as the secretary of the modern European section for the second and third conferences, working with Pollard to decide on the subjects for discussion and the invited speakers, and writing up a report on the work of the modern European section.40

Geyl as a librarian

The annual report of the IHR for 1925–6 proudly announced the addition of the Dutch studies collection to its library, with a total of 1,050 volumes coming from Bedford directly, supplemented by a donation of 300 volumes from the Dutch studies committee a few months later. This constitued a 5 per cent increase in the library’s total stock of books and made the Low Countries collection a substantial part of the IHR.41

From this time on, the IHR administered the annual grant from the Dutch government to expand the collection in consort with UCL.42 However, the budget was not split equally between the historical section in the IHR and the linguistic section in Bedford: two thirds of the grant went towards history, one third towards language.43

For the remaining ten years of his stay in London, Geyl continued to be very involved in the expansion of the collection. The acquisition register of the Low Countries collection in the IHR shows that many of the books were bought by Geyl personally; he then passed the receipts to the institute. He helped to negotiate good prices with the primary supplier, Martinus Nijhoff, a publisher and dealer of both contemporary and antiquarian books. Nijhoff had published both Geyl’s monographs, Christofforo Suriano (1913) and Willem IV en Engeland tot 1748 (1924), and for this reason Geyl felt the institute could bargain with them. Geyl suggested that the IHR librarian Meikle ask for a discount of between 25 and 30 per cent. Nijhoff responded that these margins were impossible on books in a minority language and made it clear that 10 per cent was the most he could offer.44 Nijhoff continued to supply books to the IHR after Geyl’s departure, largely because the firm was able to deliver not only recent publications but also out-of-print reference works and rare books.45

Fig. 4.4: Floor plan of the IHR. Back cover of the annual report (1927).

By the time Geyl had left London (1936), the collection consisted of almost 2,000 titles (see fig. 4.3). This represented 43 per cent of the total collection in 2002 (when the last entry to the accession register was recorded); under Geyl, the collection grew faster than in any later decade. The high number of volumes recorded for the years 1956–65 is because, from 1958 on, the original foundation collection, until then still officially owned by the Dutch government, was entered in the accessions register. In reality, the collection grew by only 295 titles, or six per cent, in that decade.

During Geyl’s stewardship of the collection, the IHR was able to acquire hundreds of rare books on the history of the Low Countries. Geyl made sure that the works of important early modern historians such as Ludovico Guicciardini (1521–89), Pieter Christiaansz Bor (1559–1635) and Lieuwe van Aitzema (1600–69) were made available in the original editions. Geyl also acquired more than 919 political pamphlets printed between 1602 and 1814. They are bound in fifty volumes (and therefore are counted as only fifty volumes in the statistical overviews) but represent one of the largest collections of Dutch pamphlets outside the Low Countries. The collection was acquired through Nijhoff, at two points in time: twenty volumes were part of the collection brought into the IHR in 1925; the remaining thirty were bought towards the end of Geyl’s tenure in London (1934).46

The evolution of the Low Countries room

The Low Countries room in the IHR was an important place for Geyl:

They gave me a room to put my history books, that I had built up with money from the Dutch Government, and that had until then been hidden in Bedford College […] I really liked that little library. It was really useful for my own research and it was admired by the English: even they found there a lot of useful published sources.47

It featured in the preliminary plans dated November 1920 as a separate room next to the larger European room which was located at the centre of the building (see fig. 4.1). A plan from 1927, after the transfer of the collection, locates the Netherlands room on the other side of the European room (fig. 4.4).

The original IHR buildings in Malet Street were only temporary. They were constructed when building costs were at their peak along the principles of an army hut on a concrete base with a timber frame filled in with sheets of asbestos.48 As early as 1926, the IHR was given notice to leave the premises when the government abandoned its plan for the new buildings of the University of London to be erected on the Bloomsbury site it had just acquired; the government wanted to sell the land back to the Bedford trustees. Only a vigorous international press campaign was able eventually to suppress the plans. The Council of the Historical Association, for example,

passed a resolution declaring that the destruction of the Institute of Historical Research by the demolition of its buildings and the dispersal of its library, which is threatened by the decision of the Government to return the Bloomsbury site to the Duke of Bedford, would be a national calamity.49

After the University of London had managed to secure the site, plans were drawn up for the complex that would eventually become Senate House. In 1931, the famous architect Charles Holden was assigned to the project, which was originally scheduled to take thirty years to complete. A fundraising campaign was initiated in 1935 to find the £70,000 needed.50 One of the people who did not contribute was Geyl, who apologized in a personal note to Pollard, explaining that his financial situation did not allow him to make a contribution.51 By 1938, the IHR had left its original building and moved to Senate House. By this time, Geyl had left his post at UCL and returned to the Netherlands to become a professor at the University of Utrecht. The Low Countries room, however, outlasted Geyl’s tenure and remained one of the larger rooms in the new library. Between 1938 and 1943 the IHR library was temporarily located on the third floor of Senate House. Apart from the Low Countries, only Germany, France and Eastern Europe were assigned individual rooms separate from the General European collection (fig. 4.5).

During the Second World War the IHR collections were moved again, this time to Tavistock Square. In 1946 the collection was finally able to move to its permanent location. The library was divided over the first, second and third floors of the northern block of Senate House. The second floor was devoted largely to the European collections, which were split up by country. (France, Spain, Italy, Germany). The Low Countries room was moved to the third floor, where most of the American collections were housed, opposite the upper hall. It would remain there until 2013, when renovation to the IHR led to a complete overhaul of the layout of the library, removing many of the smaller European rooms and integrating the Low Countries collections for the first time in the general European collections. The Low Countries room was converted into a computer training room.

Conclusion

By the end of his life Geyl had established himself as a scholar of international renown. The plethora of obituaries in international newspapers and journals testifies to the fame he had gained by this stage.52 They mention his combative spirit and captivating writing style, his vehement public debate with Toynbee, his book on Napoleon that gave rise to his most well-known aphorism, and much more. The anonymous obituary in The Times adds an unexpected laudation to the list of Geyl’s achievements, ranking the creation of the ‘excellent library of sources for Dutch history at the Institute of Historical Research’ at the top.53 More than thirty years after Geyl had left London, the Low Countries collection was not only still seen as a remarkable achievement, it was also still firmly connected to Geyl. This chapter has demonstrated that Geyl’s engagement with the collection was far-reaching. Geyl personally negotiated the transfer of the collection to the IHR, was heavily involved in the acquisition process and without a doubt used the collection to write the first volumes of his magnum opus Geschiedenis van de Nederlandsche Stam, and he was involved in all aspects of the IHR, from teaching through organizing conferences to sitting on library committees.

Looking at Geyl in this way also demonstrates the impact the IHR has had on the history profession. The connections Geyl made through his activities at the institute put his academic career back on track after he was almost let go from his tenure and contemplated returning to journalism in 1924. For Geyl, the IHR was a place to focus on work rather than on university politics, to enjoy the support of colleagues and to engage English scholars with the history of the Low Countries. Geyl never stopped seeing himself as much more than a historian: he did not abandon his literary ambitions, he continued to weigh in on public debates and sometimes found it hard to separate his political views from his historical work. However, thanks to his involvement with the IHR, first and foremost, he remained a historian.