The Politics of Memory: The Writing of Partition in the Seventeenth-Century Low Countries: 208 (Brill's Studies in Itellectual History) - Hardcover

"The book [...] represents a landmark in the study of historiography in the Low Countries. [....] The Politics of Memory does convince [...] with its encyclopaedic knowledge and its magisterial handling of a vast array of sources. [...] The book is particularly strong in presenting its many sources within their context, thus indirectly offering the bonus of a panorama of political, economic, and social developments in the early-modern Low Countries." - Pit Péporte, in: Hémecht 66/1 (2014), 120-122
"A brief summary cannot begin to do justice to the extent and subtlety of Esser's analysis and insights. So close a reading of the Dutch chorographers of the seventeenth century, conducted with full attention to the historical context and building upon recent studies of individual chorographers and their work is necessarily of critical importance and anyone studying Dutch history, historiography, civic identity, and the shaping of group memory will find reading this book an extremely stimulating and rewarding exercise." - Joseph M. McCarthy, Suffolk University, in: Seventeenth-Century News 71/1-2 (Spring-Summer 2013), pp. 25-27
"[...] Esser's work is a great accomplishment, since she manages to convince her readers of the significance in studying both the genre of the chorography and its content. [...] [H]er sharp analysis of the processes of published urban and regional histories definitely make The Politics of Memory a must-read for scholars working on civic history of the Low Countries." - Marianne Eekhout, Leiden University, in: Renaissance Quarterly 65/4 (Winter 2012), pp. 1310-1311 [DOI: 10.1086/669437]

The Eighty Years’ War and the partition of the Low Countries led to the publication of numerous chorographical works on towns and regions in the Northern and Southern Netherlands. This book offers a comparison of these histories reflecting political change and promoting new identities.