Erik de Lange is an Assistant Professor in the History of International Relations at the Department of History and Art History. His work is primarily about the role of the sea in international history, operating at the intersection of diplomatic, maritime and imperial history. Some of his central research themes are the workings of diplomacy at sea, the international engagement with maritime violence and the operational aspects of overseas imperial expansionism. The Mediterranean Sea in the nineteenth century is his primary area of expertise, with a specific focus on North Africa. After the completion of his PhD at Utrecht University in 2020 (within the ERC research project 'Securing Europe, fighting its enemies 1815-1914'), he was affiliated to King's College London as a visiting postdoctoral research fellow in 2021-2024. He is a founding member and co-organiser of the Security History Network.
His first book, Menacing Tides: Security, Piracy and Empire in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean, will appear in May 2024 with Cambridge University Press. This publication explains why and how states started to work together to repress Mediterranean piracy after the Napoleonic Wars, opening the door to imperial expansionism in North Africa. Novel ideas about security were crucial to this process. The book shows how the history of European international cooperation after 1815 was directly tied to the rise of a new form of cooperative imperialism.
Selected publications:
Menacing Tides: Security, Piracy and Empire in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean (Cambridge University Press 2024). Available here.
'Navigating the Greek Revolution before Navarino: Imperial Interventions in Aegean Waters, 1821–1827', Journal of Modern European History (Special Issue: 'The Greek Revolution in International and Imperial History') 21:2 (2023), 181-198. Available here.
'The Congress System and the French Invasion of Algiers', The Historical Journal 64:4 (2021), 940-962. Available here.
'The Plague at Sea: Science, Sanitation and Corsair Captains in 1817’ in: Peter Burschel and Sünne Jüterczenka (red.), Frühneuzeit-Impulse, vol. 4, Das Meer. Maritime Lebenswelten in der Frühen Neuzeit (Cologne 2020), 687-702. Available here.
‘From Augarten to Algiers: Security and “Piracy” around the Congress of Vienna’ in: Beatrice de Graaf, Ido de Haan and Brian Vick (red.), Securing Europe after Napoleon. 1815 and the New European Security Culture (Cambridge 2019), pp. 231-248. Available here.
Other recent output:
'Opinie: Rutte rommelt ons een oorlog in en had Hugo de Groot er buiten moeten houden', De Volkskrant, 15 January 2024.
'H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable on Sluga, The Invention of International Order', 9 October 2023. Available here.
Historical consult BBC 'Who Do You Think You Are', episode 29 June 2023.
‘1817: De laatste Tunesische kapers op de Noordzee’ in: Lex Heerma van Voss, Nadia Bouras, Marjolein ’t Hart, Manon van der Heijden and Leo Lucassen (red.), Nog meer wereldgeschiedenis van Nederland (Amsterdam 2022), 345-350. Available here.
‘Het Nederlands-Britse bombardement van Algiers: Samenwerking en repressie langs de kust van Barbarije’, Tijdschrift voor Zeegeschiedenis 32 (2022), 42-59. Available here.