E. J. Brill

Properties2
tagsorganization, dutch, publisher, printer, academic, colonial, 17th-century, 18th-century, 19th-century, 20th-century, leiden, netherlands, koloniaal-instituut, atjeh-instituut, kreemer, snouck-hurgronje, university-press
aliasesE. J. Brill, E.J. Brill, Brill, Brill (publisher), Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E. J. Brill, E. J. Brill Leiden, Brill Publishers, Brill Academic Publishers

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E. J. Brill — Brill Academic Publishers — was a Dutch academic publishing house and printing firm at Leiden in the Netherlands, founded in 1683 as the Luchtmans press and renamed E. J. Brill in 1848 after its then-owner Evert Jan Brill. Brill was the principal Dutch academic publisher of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, with a particular specialism in the Oriental and colonial scholarly literature of the Netherlands. The firm printed and published some of the most important works on Atjeh and the Netherlands Indies, including J. Kreemer’s *De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden* (1918) and *Atjèh* (1922-23), C. Snouck Hurgronje’s *De Atjèhers* (1893-94) and Het Gajöland en zijne bewoners (1903), and the journal Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap.

Founding and History

The firm was founded at Leiden in 1683 by the printer Jordaan Luchtmans, and was known for its first century and a half as the Luchtmans press. In 1848 the press passed to Evert Jan Brill, a Leiden bookseller, who gave the firm the name E. J. Brill under which it became famous. The firm remained in the Brill family for several generations, and developed over the nineteenth century into one of the principal Dutch academic publishers.

Brill’s specialism was the Oriental and colonial scholarly literature of the Netherlands. The firm printed and published the principal works of the Dutch Orientalist tradition — the edited texts and translations of Arabic, Persian, Sanskrit, Chinese, Japanese and Southeast Asian sources — and the principal works of the Dutch colonial scholarly tradition, including the ethnographies, dictionaries and historical studies of the Netherlands Indies. Brill also printed and published the principal Dutch colonial journals, including the Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap (the journal of the Royal Dutch Geographical Society) and the Bijdragen tot de Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde van Nederlandsch-Indië (the Contributions to the Language, Geography and Ethnology of the Netherlands Indies, journal of the Koninklijk Instituut).

Brill and the Atjeh Scholarly Literature

Brill was the publisher of some of the most important works on Atjeh and the Netherlands Indies in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. The principal Atjeh-related Brill publications include:

Brill and the 1918 Kreemer Rice Monograph

The 1918 offprint of J. Kreemer’s De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden — issued as Mededeelingen No. 6 of the Atjèh Instituut from the Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, deel XXXV (1918), afl. 3 — was printed at Leiden by the “Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E. J. Brill” (the Bookshop and Printing-works formerly E. J. Brill). The imprint records the transitional state of the firm: the business had been the Luchtmans press in its earlier form, had been renamed E. J. Brill after Evert Jan Brill, and at the time of the 1918 Kreemer offprint was operating under the corporate form “Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E. J. Brill” (Bookshop and Printing-works formerly E. J. Brill) — a corporate-form transition that preserved the Brill name in its older commercial style.

The same Brill imprint printed J. Kreemer’s later, much larger, two-volume *Atjèh* (1922-23) — published by “N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill” in Leiden. The Kreemer Atjèh would become, with Snouck Hurgronje’s De Atjèhers (also Brill), one of the two principal Dutch scholarly syntheses on Atjeh as a country and people.

Significance

E. J. Brill is significant for the encyclopedia of Aceh history as the publisher and printer of the principal Dutch scholarly literature on Atjeh — the literature that, from the late nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, defined the European scholarly understanding of the Atjeh region. The firm printed and published Snouck Hurgronje’s foundational ethnographies, Kreemer’s monographs, the dictionaries of Djajadiningrat and Hazeu, and the journals of the Royal Dutch Geographical Society and the Koninklijk Instituut. The 1918 Brill offprint of Kreemer’s De rijstcultuur is a representative specimen of the Brill colonial-scholarly production of the early twentieth century.

See Also

Source

De rijstcultuur in het gewest Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, by J. Kreemer, Archivaris van het Atjeh-Instituut. Mededeelingen betreffende het Onderzoek van Atjeh en Onderhoorigheden, No. 6. Overgedrukt uit het Tijdschrift van het Koninklijk Nederlandsch Aardrijkskundig Genootschap, deel XXXV (1918), afl. 3. “BOEKHANDEL EN DRUKKERIJ voorheen E. J. BRILL” — Leiden, 1918. OCR-filename: 20260801_233856_DLP-151-De_rijstcultuur_in_het_gewest_Atjeh_en_Onderhoorigheden_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, title page. Also: Kreemer’s *Atjèh* (1922-23), published by N.V. Boekhandel en Drukkerij voorheen E.J. Brill, Leiden.

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