Foreword

Jan de Hond is a curator in the Rijksmuseum’s history department, specializing in the cultural history of the nineteenth century and relations between the Netherlands and the non-western world. He obtained his doctorate in 2008 with the dissertation Verlangen naar het Oosten. Orientalisme in de Nederlandse cultuur ca. 1800-1920. De Hond is the curator of the exhibition Trade Goods and Souvenirs - Islamic Art from the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam in the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden (20 April -4 September 2011).