SCIENCE, MEDICINE AND ARBITRATION

PIETER EIJKMAN’S WORLD CAPITAL IN THE HAGUE

Geert Somsen

Introduction

In the spring of 1905, the Dutch physician Pieter Eijkman and his assistant Paul Horrix published a plan to establish a World Capital on the outskirts of The Hague. This Intellectual World Centre, or Athens of the Future as it was also called, was meant to stimulate world peace and to advance scien-tific research at the same time. Grouped around a Monument for Interna-tional Brotherhood, the city included a Peace Palace, housing an interna-tional court of justice, an international congress hall, and three international academies for various branches of science – Eijkman mentioned Anthropol-ogy, Economics, Hygiene and Pedagogy. Every academy also possessed a separate ‘Institute’ with state-of-the-art research facilities where ‘the most eminent scientists of all civilised nations’ would come to work for ‘say, one week a year’.1 Over time, Eijkman expected the World Capital to expand further to include more and more disciplines as well as the headquarters of major international scientific organisations – most importantly the all-encompassing International Association of Academies which had been es-tablished six years before. The rising young architect Karel de Bazel had turned the grand vision into a detailed design (fig. 1).2

1 ‘Den Haag als wereld-hoofdstad (intellektueel wereld-centrum)’, De Hollandsche Revue 11 (1906), pp. 107–110, p. 108. This and all subsequent translations are mine. 2 From May 1905 onward, Eijkman introduced the plan in several essays and inter-views, while De Bazel published it in architecture journals. See e.g. P.H. Eijkman, ‘Reorganisatie der internationale congressen’, Vragen van den dag 20 (1905), pp. 866–871; ‘Den Haag als wereld-hoofdstad’; Frans Netscher, ‘P.H. Eijkman, Arts’, De Hollandsche revue 11 (1906), pp. 179–189 and pp. 249–264; P.H. Eijkman and P. Horrix, Internationalisme en de wereld-hoofdstad (The Hague, 1907); P.H. Eijk-man, Over internationalisme (The Hague, 1908); anonymous, ‘Plannen van interna-tionalisme’, De opmerker 40 (1905), pp. 305–310; and K.P.C. de Bazel, ‘Stiftung für Internationalismus’, Der Städtebau 3 (1906), pp. 36–39. A.W. Reinink chroni-cled the unfolding of the plan in detail in K.P.C. de Bazel – architect (Leiden, 1965), pp. 118–123. On the whole project, see also J. Trapman, Het land van Erasmus (Amsterdam, 1999), pp. 122–143.

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In some ways Eijkman’s World Capital was closely related to other utopian conceptions of the past and of its own time. De Bazel had modelled his design on Italian renaissance attempts to create an ‘ideal city’, while also drawing on contemporary theosophical ideas and pacifist symbolism.3 Moreover, as a place where humanity would be united and from which world peace would be spread, Eijkman’s ‘secular Vatican’ also bears a striking resemblance to Frederik van Eeden’s ‘City of Light’ (discussed by Luc Bergmans in this volume). Yet the World Capital also differed from such utopias in significant ways. Firstly, the plan was concrete and precisely elaborated. Not only was the exact location specified from the outset, Eijkman also presented a detailed finance scheme for his proposal, which was ambitious but not completely unrealistic.4 Secondly, while Eijkman and Horrix were certainly idealists, they were not just vague dreamers. Between 1905 and 1912, they vigorously and strategically campaigned to make their plan happen, and in the process they gained the support of the world’s most prominent pacifists as well as several architects and politicians, home and abroad. Their plan did fail in the end, but this was not because they were never taken seriously.

What made the World Capital most unusual, however, was the way it was built around science. In this, it is partly reminiscent of the ‘City of In-tellect’, proposed by the Belgian bibliographer Paul Otlet in 1910, which was set up around a universal scientific information retrieval system.5 How-ever, Eijkman’s World Capital was not just intended to store knowledge, but to perform experiments, organise conferences and coordinate the scien-tific community in its various branches. Moreover, these activities were fully integrated with the practice of international law – research facilities and peace institutions stood side by side. In itself, the association of science with the advancement of peace was not new in Eijkman’s time. However, the way in which he integrated the two and the scale at which this was done, were quite unique.

In the following I will try to explain the World Capital’s peculiar fea-tures – its integration of science and pacifism, its grandiose scale, its spe-cific make-up, and its location in The Hague of all places. I will relate these to contemporary international politics, to Dutch cultural debates and to

3 The floor plan’s shape of a cross with uneven arms, for example, was supposed to represent ‘hard-won peace which conquers the world’ – Bazel, ‘Stiftung’, p. 39. For more on the architecture of the plan, see Reinink, De Bazel, pp. 113–116. 4 See e.g. Trapman, Land van Erasmus, p. 141. 5 In 1929, Otlet made an even more elaborate second plan with Le Corbusier: a Cité Mondial to be built near Geneva, also on the basis his information retrieval system, the ‘Mundaneum’.

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Eijkman’s personal background, for in the final analysis his utopia very much reflected a physician’s view of the world. Doctor Eijkman

Pieter Hendrik Eijkman was born in Zaandam in 1862, the eighth child of a schoolmaster.6 Three of his siblings also pursued scientific careers, most famously his brother Christiaan, who received the Nobel prize for medicine in 1929.7 Pieter Eijkman also studied medicine, after which he set up prac-tice in Koog-Zaandijk, near his home town. However, his range of activities soon exceeded those of a general practitioner to include initiatives in public health. Eijkman organised the establishment of public and school baths in his city, he initiated the creation of holiday homes, and he secured the intro-duction of public nursing provisions. After several years he quit his job to study natural medicine with Father Kneipp in Wörishoven, Bavaria and later in Munich and Dresden.8 On his return in 1894, he founded ‘Natura Sanat’, the first ‘physiatric institute’ in the Netherlands, in a suburb of The Hague, near Scheveningen. Here he provided hydrotherapy, ‘lightbathing’ and other forms of natural medicine, he experimented with the X-ray heal-ing of cancer patients, and he published on various other investigations in medicine and physical anthropology.9

Eijkman’s assistant in the clinic and with his plan for the World Capital was Paul Horrix, a descendant of a wealthy family of furniture manufactur-ers, whose own fascinations lay less with business than with natural healing, spiritism, vegetarianism, freethinking and pacifism. It was a set of interests typical of Dutch progressive elites at the turn of the century, especially the

6 On Eijkman’s biography, see Netscher, ‘Eijkman’, pp. 180–181; A.B. van der Vies, ‘Groote dooden’, Vrede door recht 15 (1914), pp. 152–153; and Trapman, Erasmus, pp. 123–125. 7 Christiaan shared the prize with F.G. Hopkins and received it ‘for his discovery of the antineuritic vitamin’. 8 Father Sebastian Kneipp was a Bavarian priest who introduced several spa-based forms of therapy (water, open air, sunbathing, herbs, movement, diet and conscious living). 9 P.H. Eijkman, Koud water voor gezonden en zieken (2Leiden, 1896); Kanker en röntgenstralen (Haarlem, 1902); Krebs und Röntgenstrahlen (Bonn, 1902); Kurzer Inhalt des Vortrages über ein neues System fur die Anthropologie (The Hague, 1902); Het vaccinatievraagstuk (Amsterdam, 1902); Reformkleeding (sl, 1903); Der Schlingact, dargestelt nach Bewegungsphotographien mittelst Röntgen-Strahlen (sl, 1903); Un nouveau système graphique pour la craniologie (sl, 1905); Bewegungsp-hotographie mittelst Röntgenstrahlen (Amsterdam, 1908); Nieuwe toepassingen der stereoscopie (Amsterdam, 1909).

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followers of Frederik van Eeden, whom Horrix indeed admired.10 Eijkman and Horrix’s internationalist endeavours also fit this picture, as will become clear later.

According to one source, Eijkman had conceived his World Capital shortly after he landed in The Hague, but the plan only became known after 1904, when he and Horrix started to discuss it with influential figures and sent it to periodicals to be publicised.11 These publications drew a lot of at-tention. The Dutch daily newspapers’ response was predominantly negative, as was that of most politicians. An important exception was Prime Minister Abraham Kuyper, but his foreign policy ambitions were not widely shared and he had already left office in August 1905 – too early to be of much help.12 More enduring support came from well-known architects, as well as from leading pacifists such as the British journalist William Stead and the Austrians Alfred Fried and Bertha von Suttner.13 Eijkman and Horrix also attracted the attention of Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-American steel ty-coon and philanthropist, who had just begun to spend his enormous wealth on pacifist projects. They visited Carnegie in March 1905 and found he had a genuine interest in their plan, but no interest in providing financial assis-tance in relation to their need to raise 20 million dollars.14 Eijkman and Hor-rix nevertheless continued their campaign. They started a ‘Foundation for Internationalism’, of which they themselves formed the ‘preliminary bu-reau’. They edited a Review of Internationalism, which also appeared in French, German and Dutch. They travelled around giving lectures, organ-

10 M. Horrix, ‘Wat drie generaties opbouwden’, Jaarboek Die Haghe 44 (1956), pp. 61–111, pp. 108–109. 11 The source is the Norwegian author and Nobel laureate Björnstjerne Björnson, ‘Een Grootsch Plan’, Revue voor Internationalisme 1 (1907), pp. 6–8: 6. His words, however, seem to have been dictated by Eijkman himself – see Reinink, De Bazel, p. 117. 12 The newspaper De Maasbode reported that Kuyper put his ‘heart and soul’ into the idea. Quoted in Horrix, ‘Drie generaties’, p. 109. On other politicians’ responses, see P. Brooshooft, ‘Schevingen wereld-centrum?’, De beweging 2 (1906), pp. 172–194. 13 See the architecture publications mentioned in note 1. The Royal Institute of Brit-ish Architects sent a delegation to The Hague that reported favourably on the pro-ject. The pacifists’ support can be found on the pages of Eijkman’s Review of Inter-nationalism and also in William Stead’s plea, ‘La Haye, la capitale des États-Unis du Monde’, Courrier de la conférance de la paix no. 50 (August 11, 1907), supplé-ment, pp. 5–10. 14 Carnegie was first unwilling, but changed his mind after American newspapers began to report favourably on the Dutchmen’s plan. They ended up taking the same ship to Europe, frequently discussing ‘world issues’; Brooshooft, ‘Scheveningen’, pp. 183–185; Netscher, ‘Eijkman’, pp. 253–256.

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ised picnics on the prospective premises, acquired supporting signatures from hundreds of prominent European intellectuals (including Richard Strauss, Auguste Rodin, and eighteen professors from Leiden), and col-lected masses of data on any serious kind of international organisation. Eijkman published the data in the books L’Internationalisme Médical and L’Internationalisme Scientifique, in 1910 and 1911 respectively.15 By 1911, however, there was little hope left of realising the World Capital plan, as it failed to receive the required support from the Dutch government, whose policies actually opposed the scheme on some points.16 Eijkman fell ill and died at a German spa in May 1914. Horrix lost most of his money and died poor in 1929. World Peace c.1900

One of the most important contexts of the World Capital initiative, which will also explain why The Hague was its chosen location, was the develop-ment of the peace movement around the turn of the century. Pacifist organi-sations had existed in most European countries since the early nineteenth century, but by 1900 something of an international movement had grown out of them. Peace advocates such as Von Suttner and Stead were well known across the borders, and 1889 saw the foundation of the Interparlia-mentary Union, an association of parliamentarians from around the globe who gathered at annual conferences, mainly to promote arbitration: the set-tlement of international conflicts by court decision instead of war. As a whole, the pacifist movement was predominantly liberal and elitist – and fairly unsuccessful in reaching those who wielded real power in the world.17

It was much to everybody’s surprise, therefore, that in August 1898, the Russian Tsar sent a proposal to his fellow rulers to hold a Peace Conference in order to discuss arms reduction and arbitration. Apparently, the pacifist movement had struck a chord with Nicolas II, and leaders such as Von Suttner hailed the initiative as a victory for their ideals. However, most heads of state responded sceptically – at least in private, because it was dif-ficult to publicly refuse cooperation with such a benign and honourable

15 P.H. Eijkman, L’Internationalisme Médical (The Hague, 1910); P.H. Eijkman, L’Internationalisme scientifique (sciences pures et Lettres) (The Hague, 1911). In the latter, Eijkman was still calling for a concentration of international scientific and legal organisations in The Hague – see pp. 105–108. 16 The location of the Peace Palace was the contentious issue (see below), which the government chose to locate on a spot that was incompatible with the World Capital. Brooshooft, ‘Scheveningen’; Netscher, ‘Eijkman’, pp. 249–264. 17 A. Eyffinger, The 1899 Hague Peace Conference. ‘The Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World’ (The Hague, 1999), pp. 42–69.

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cause.18 The pacifists therefore increased public media pressure (for exam-ple, Stead started a European ‘Peace Crusade’ which was widely publi-cised), and when the Russians issued a second invitation, all governments eventually complied.

From the outset it was clear that the location of the conference could not be in any of the great powers’ capitals, such as St Petersburg, since this would be unacceptable to the other powerful states. The site had to be a city in a smaller country. As a home to many international events and organisa-tions, Brussels was the primary candidate, but the Russians also considered The Hague and finally decided upon it. Historians are not entirely clear why the Dutch residence entered the picture. One factor mentioned is that the Tsar’s councillor De Martens had had some good experiences at previous international meetings there. The Netherlands was also associated with the seventeenth-century international law pioneer Hugo Grotius. And perhaps Nicolas even thought of the family ties to his third cousin, the young Dutch queen Wilhelmina.19 There is also a rumour that King Leopold II was strug-gling with a foot problem when the Belgian candidacy was brought to his attention, but whatever really tipped the balance, The Hague it would be.20

Wilhelmina herself was not at all pleased with this choice, for she felt it marked her country with ‘the stamp of insignificance’.21 It was true that the Russians had chosen the Netherlands for its weakness on the world stage, but the queen preferred to see herself as the ruler of a great colonial empire, whose integrity, moreover, was better defended by military reinforcement than by peace talks. However, the Dutch government decided to accept the invitation, and Wilhelmina was forced to provide her own palace for the conference meetings. In protest, she refused to open or even attend any of the sessions, and the organisers had to look for another chair.

Once the Peace Conference had started, on 18 May 1899, the great powers proved to be no less sceptical than Wilhelmina, and on the issue of arms control they turned down every Russian proposal. The subject of arbi-tration met with no great enthusiasm either, but in order to avoid a complete failure, or perhaps to save face for Nicolas, the conference did in the end consent to the establishment of a Permanent Court of Arbitration, also to be located in The Hague. This court started as a paper tiger, but in subsequent

18 Idem, pp. 25–39. The Prince of Wales, Edward II, called the proposal ‘the greatest nonsense and rubbish I have ever heard of’, and Kaiser Wilhelm II spoke of a ‘Con-ferenzkomödie’. 19 A. Eyffinger, Het Vredespaleis, 1913–1988 (Amsterdam, 1988), pp. 17–18. 20 Eijkman claimed to have heard this from Stead, see Eijkman, Over international-isme, p. 28. 21 C. Fasseur, Wilhelmina. De jonge Koningin (Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 392–396, esp. 393.

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years several powerful Americans began to develop a genuine interest in its functioning. The Roosevelt administration brought the first case before it in order to start its operation (a minor dispute with Mexico). Congressman Richard Bartholdt became an ardent promoter of arbitration in general – as well as the president of the Interparliamentary Union. He and Roosevelt called for a second Peace Conference in The Hague, which would indeed be held in 1907. They also persuaded Carnegie to support this kind of paci-fism, and in 1903 he bequeathed 1.5 million dollars to build a Peace Palace in order to accommodate the Permanent Court of Arbitration.22

It was at this moment that Eijkman stepped in. Thus far, the Dutch gov-ernment had at most accepted the country’s growing status as a centre of pacifism – or sometimes even rejected it: foreign affairs minister Melvil had at first declined Carnegie’s offer.23 However, Eijkman argued that the Neth-erlands should seize the opportunity and actively expand its new role by surrounding the Peace Palace with an entire set of international institutions – the World Capital.24 In order to advance these ideas, he and Horrix ap-proached the committee overseeing Carnegie’s bequest, visited the philan-thropist in the United States and launched their campaign of interviews, publications, signatures and picnics. During the second Peace Conference they even opened a club for the delegates, the Cercle International, where tea was served every day at five, and conference officials could talk infor-mally with each other and with journalists, who were not permitted to attend the conference meetings.25 The club became an important meeting place for arbitration enthusiasts such as Bartholdt and other leading pacifists such as Von Suttner, Fried and George Francis Hagerup, the leader of the Norwe-gian delegation and president of the Nobel peace prize committee. There were lectures, debates and photoshoots at the Cercle, and Stead used it as the basis for publishing his daily Courrier de la Conférence de la Paix – including articles on his hosts’ World Capital plan. Battles at Home and Abroad

Through initiatives such as the Cercle, Eijkman tried to hook up with the peace movement and the sudden rise of The Hague as a seat of international

22 Eyffinger, Vredespaleis, pp. 28–35, 49–52. 23 Brooshooft, ‘Schevingen’, p. 173. 24, In ‘Reorganisatie’, Eijkman explicitly built the argument around the American initiatives. Eijkman later claimed that the World Capital plan had already been fin-ished before there was any discussion of a Peace Palace in The Hague, but nothing is known about these early plans, Netscher, ‘Eijkman’, p. 186. 25 ‘Le Cercle International’, Courrier de la conférence de la paix (June 15, 1907), p. 5. Visitors are mentioned in subsequent issues.

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institutions. However, the Dutch residence was not the only candidate for such functions. It still had to compete with other cities. There were plans for other world capitals in Washington and Paris, and the Belgian senator Henri de la Fontaine even proposed building a ‘District of Columbia of the United States of the World’ on the Waterloo battlefields outside Brussels.26 Most of these were far more attractive places. In an article discussing the different rivals, Stead summed up many of The Hague’s advantages, but added that it could also be depicted in a less advantageous light. From the viewpoint of other European cities:

La Haye n’est qu’un village de campagne endormi, investé de malaria et traversé et retraversé de canaux aux odeurs peu agréables, loin de Paris – le centre des désirs du monde –, dépourvu de l’esprit internationaliste, la capitale d’une sorte de Sibérie maréeageuse, où il serait cruel déxiler l’élite de l’humanité.

(The Hague is only a sleepy country village, infested with malaria and cut through by canals with fairly unpleasant odours, far removed from Paris – the centre of the world’s desires – deprived of the internationalist spirit, like a kind of Siberia on a rough seashore, where it would be cruel to exile the elite of human-kind.)27

If Eijkman wanted to advance his plans he had to develop more positive ar-guments and find ways to discredit the competing locations.

This was easiest with the capital cities of great powers since these would never be fully acceptable to all other states. Fiercer competition came from other small countries such as Belgium and Switzerland, which already hosted many more international organisations – the Netherlands and also Norway and Sweden were only beginning to enter the game. These states shared the advantages of being neutral and insignificant on the world stage, so Eijkman used other points against them in his speeches and publications. Switzerland, he argued, was too unstable, as it was a republic, and as such subject to frequent regime change. Moreover, it had recently become a ha-ven for terrorists, such as the Italian anarchist who had murdered the Aus-trian empress Elisabeth in Geneva in 1898.28 According to the American delegate Andrew Dickson White (another member of the Roosevelt/-Bartholdt camp), this was also the reason why the Russians had not consid-ered Swiss cities for the first Peace Conference in 1899.29

26 Brooshooft, ‘Scheveningen’, p. 186; Stead, ‘La Haye’, p. 7. 27 Stead, ‘La Haye’, p. 7. 28 Eijkman, Over internationalisme, pp. 27–28. 29 A.D. White, Autobiography (London, 1905), volume II, p. 250.

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Belgium was much more difficult to deal with. It had a strong tradition of hosting international events and organisations, fully backed, also finan-cially, by Leopold II and private benefactors such as Ernest Solvay. As a consequence, Brussels surpassed any other city as a seat of international in-stitutions. Nevertheless, Eijkman argued, the country’s eagerness and pride as a world centre could also put off other nationals. The Belgians’ insistence on speaking a world language, for example, did not always serve them well outside the francophone sphere. The fact that the Dutch did not expect any-body to speak their barely known language actually enhanced their accessi-bility, for ‘[t]he Germans, English and Americans feel much more at home in the polyglot Netherlands than in Belgium, which for them speaks a for-eign language’.30 Belgian intellectuals also seemed to have a certain predi-lection toward France, and hence their internationalism was not always con-sidered to be entirely neutral. With arguments such as these, Eijkman turned the colourlessness of the Netherlands into a rhetorical advantage. It was the insignificance of the Dutch language, the country’s lack of eagerness to play a role on the world stage, and The Hague’s distance from the excite-ment and political turmoil of other European cities, that made it such an eli-gible international meeting ground. Stead had actually made the same point in the article that highlighted The Hague’s dullness. It was the Dutchmen’s typically ‘solid, calm, serious way of behaving’ that made them so attractive as neutral mediators.31

However, Eijkman was not only competing with foreign rivals, he was also fighting a battle at home. Perhaps the Dutch lack of eagerness to be-come an international centre could be used as a selling point abroad, but within the Netherlands Eijkman needed other arguments to gain support. One option he had was to stress the economic benefits to be gained from international activity. Hotels and restaurants had profited enormously from the Peace Conferences (their prices had risen so high that the Daily Tele-graph had compared them to the horrors of war), and the World Capital would clearly bring in more of such money. However, while Eijkman in-cluded these expectations in his financial-backing plan, he did not champion economic arguments in trying to win people over to his schemes. He some-times referred to a national interest, arguing that being a seat of important international institutions would guarantee the Netherlands’ security (better in fact than military defence, which could never really compete with the great powers anyway).32 However, most of all, Eijkman emphasised the na-

30 Eijkman, Over internationalisme, pp. 31–32. 31 Idem, p. 28; Stead, ‘La Haye’, pp. 6–7. 32Stead, ‘La Haye’, p. 8. Others put more emphasis on the national defence argument. Architecture journal De Opmerker, for example, claimed that the World Capital could

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tional honour to be derived from having a role as an international host. Re-ceiving the world’s nations and leading the way towards peace did not belit-tle the Dutch, as Wilhelmina had thought, but on the contrary commanded respect and esteem from other countries. Eijkman repeatedly stressed that internationalism was not at all at odds with nationalism, but actually en-hanced a nation’s pride and standing.33 Arbitration was the highest fruit of human civilisation, and it would be of great honour for the Netherlands to become its basis. In ‘The Capital of the World’, Eijkman’s publisher and supporter Nico van Suchtelen reminded Dutch leaders of the enormous privilege that had come their way:

Slechts dit heb ik willen betoogen: dat de Idee van het Internationalisme leeft; zij leeft en werkt in de geesten aller volken. En de wereldhoofdstad, symbool harer machtige schoonheid, middel tot haar harmonieuse volmaking, is niet langer de fantastische droom van enkelen, maar een mogelijkheid door de diepst-voelenden en verst-schouwenden der menschen erkend en gewild. Gij rijke en groote geesten van Nederland, als straks uw broeders van alle landen tot u komen om met úw hulp en in úw midden hun grootschen Eenheidsdroom te verwerkelijken, hoe zult ge hen ontvangen? Regeering van Nederland, als straks de Menschheid u haar schoonste schepping, het hoogste symbool harer kultuur ten geschenke biedt, hoe zult gij die gave aanvaarden?

(All I want to say is that the Idea of Internationalism is alive; it lives and works in the spirits of all nations. The world capital, symbol of its magnificent beauty, in-strument for its harmonious perfection, is no longer the fantastic dream of indi-viduals, but an opportunity acknowledged and desired by the most profoundly sensitive and the farthest-seeing of all people. Rich and great minds of the Nether-lands, when your brothers from all nations soon come to you in order to realise the grand Dream of Unity with your help and in your country, how will you re-ceive them? Dutch Government, if Humanity shortly offers you its finest creation, the highest symbol of its culture, how will you accept this gift?)34

These were the pertinent questions, for perceiving the great task and appre-ciating the honourable opportunity that had befallen the Netherlands re-

perhaps eternally guarantee ‘our nation’s autonomous existence’ – see ‘Plannen’, p. 308. Journalist P. Brooshooft mentioned the same point as the first advantage of Eijkman’s plans – see ‘Scheveningen’, p. 186. And law professor Cornelis van Vol-lenhoven would use similar arguments in his calls for a Dutch-based international peacekeeping force, ‘Roeping van Holland’, De Gids 74 (1910), pp. 185–204. 33 Eijkman, Over internationalisme, p. 7. 34 N. van Suchtelen, ‘De hoofdstad der wereld’, Revue voor internationalisme 1 (1907), pp. 9–19: 19.

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quired a vision and a greatness of mind that Eijkman found to be scarce among his compatriots. Many of his and his allies’ writings incessantly criticised the small-mindedness of the Dutch people – their lack of ambi-tion, their limited perspective, their aversion to undertaking anything gran-diose – ‘that small mindedness!’, as Eijkman repeatedly exclaimed in inter-views.35 It was time for a new type of Dutchman, with a greater perspective and bolder plans – a ‘Groot-Hollander’

... die over dijken en dorpstorentjes heenkijkt, voor wien de Kalverstraat niet de drukste straat en de Dam niet het grootste plein van de wereld is, die verder durft te denken dan van de Wadden tot de Schelde ...

(who looks over the dikes and the little village towers, for whom the Kalver-straat is not the busiest street and the Dam is not the largest square in the world, [and] who dares to think further than the Frisian islands and the Scheldt.)36

This is how Eijkman saw himself and how others portrayed him. Their task was to wake the nation and to start it thinking and acting on a grand scale.

Yet for all its rhetoric of a fresh beginning, the attitude that Eijkman and his colleagues displayed had been around for a number of years, and was widely expressed by the turn of the century. It was the same mentality that the literary ‘movement of the 1880s’ expressed, when it portrayed pre-existing Dutch poetry as the art of small-time country parsons. It was also the outlook an historian such as Johan Huizinga demonstrated, when he characterised Dutch culture before his time as one of narrow-minded shop-keepers, whose only value was usefulness. And it was the type of discourse that early twentieth-century Dutch scientists employed, when they likened their own accomplishments to those of the Golden Age of the seventeenth century, and described the time before their arrival as a period of stagnation and lack of excellence. Recently, Willem Mijnhardt has warned against tak-ing these characterisations at face value by replicating their story of nine-teenth-century stagnation and turn of the century revival. Instead, he argues, these utterances should be seen as a form of self-fashioning of a new cul-tural elite that was more professional and more elitist than the previous gen-eration. Through most of the nineteenth century, Dutch intellectuals had

35 For example: ‘God, everything is always done so tinily here, so ti-ni-ly!’, and with respect to the Dutch government: ‘Are such Dutchmen actually worthy of a Peace Pal-ace? They have no guts, no feeling for greatness left … the village people of Europe is what they are! … that smallish behaviour, that tiny acting, that clumsy hustling for the face of the entire world!’ Netscher, ‘Eijkman’, pp. 181, 253. De opmerker spoke of ‘our national cautiousness’, ‘Plannen van Internationalisme’, p. 307. 36 Netscher, ‘Eijkman’, p. 179.

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considered the dissemination of useful knowledge to the lower classes as their principal task. However, around 1900, this mission to uplift society came to be seen as lowly, uncreative, small-minded, and not at all grand. Great works and excellence became the new objectives for purveyors of culture, and the yardstick was no longer practical utility but international acclaim.37

It is clear that Eijkman’s plans fit this picture. They were ambitious, they were international, and they were geared to challenge the small-mindedness that was presumed to prevail among the Dutch. Nor is it a coin-cidence that they corresponded to the new cultural ideals, for Eijkman and Horrix moved in the vicinity of the new intellectual circles. Their publisher was Van Suchtelen, a friend and former collaborator of Van Eeden, whom Horrix also admired. Their support came for example from a journal such as De Beweging, which also came out of the 1880s movement, and was edited by Albert Verwey, another one of its spearheads.38 In addition, Eijkman and Horrix were in contact with physicists such as Hendrik Antoon Lorentz and Heike Kamerlingh Onnes, self-conscious representatives of the ‘Second Golden Age’ of Dutch science, so they were very much surrounded by rep-resentatives of the new cultural ideals.39 While on the one hand, then, the World Capital plan was part of the international development of pacifism, on the other hand it reflected profoundly local concerns: the self-fashioning of a new intellectual elite and its cultural battles within the Netherlands. Scientific Internationalism

Nevertheless, while these local culture wars may explain the grandiose na-ture of Eijkman’s plan, and the pacifist developments can clarify its location as well as its inclusion of the Peace Palace, none of these contexts as yet make clear why scientific institutions were to have such a prominent place in the World Capital, and why the centre of international brotherhood should also be a nucleus of science. In order to understand this, we need to look at another development: the fervent multiplication of international sci-entific organisations in the late nineteenth century.

37 W.W. Mijnhardt, ‘De Akademie in het culturele landschap rond 1900’, in K. van Berkel (ed.), De Akademie en de Gouden Eeuw (Amsterdam, 2004), pp. 15–41, pp. 36–37. 38 De beweging was a continuation of De nieuwe gids, the original periodical of the movement of the 1880s. 39 Kamerlingh Onnes was one of the Leiden professors who lent their signatures to the World Capital plan. Lorentz adopted some of Eijkman’s ideas in ‘De internatio-nale wetenschap bevordert de wereldvrede’, Vrede door recht 14 (1913), pp. 5–6.

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It is sometimes claimed that science is by nature international, but in-ternational institutions have certainly not always accompanied science. In fact, many of them only developed in the second half of the nineteenth cen-tury, especially after the rise of the scientific conference. Conferences star-ted to be held for a number of reasons and in various branches of science and technology, and once they became recurrent phenomena in a particular field, they were often more firmly institutionalised. Permanent offices were created to organise them, sometimes with a permanent seat in one or an-other country, and in some cases, international unions or associations were formed, complete with membership, journals and subcommittees.40

Eijkman also wanted to jump on the bandwagon of this development, as is clear from his desire to locate the permanent offices of all international scientific organisations in his World Capital, most prominently the Interna-tional Association of Academies. However, he did not present this accom-modation of science as a separate function of his projected city – it was in-timately associated with the aim of world peace. Eijkman regarded the ever increasing international organisation of science (what he called ‘interna-tionalism’) as an inevitable process, advancing with the necessity of natural law.41 The reason why this internationalisation proceeded automatically was that scientists, by the nature of their work, simply needed international co-operation – research just could not do without it. However, because of this, science was a much better guide in attaining international brotherhood than regular pacifism. Eijkman repeatedly argued that one of the flaws of most forms of pacifism was that they were too sentimental – merely based on idealism and the hope that people would do good. International cooperation in science, by contrast, was not an ideal but a necessity, and hence science was a much more solid promoter of world peace than any pacifist ideology could ever hope to be. The exception was the pacifist pursuit of arbitration, which Eijkman did not regard as a sentimental endeavour but as a pragmatic and rational development, on a par with international cooperation in sci-ence.42 Both in their pragmatic ways and in their peaceful effects, science and arbitration were quite comparable in Eijkman’s view, and this is one

40 A. Rasmussen, ‘Jalons pour une histoire des congrès internationaux au XIXe Siècle: régulation scientifique et propagande intellectuelle’, Relations internation-ales 62 (1990), pp. 115–130. 41 In his travelling lecture, Eijkman quoted Fried, who even compared the process of internationalisation to the natural fact of the rotation of the earth. Just as Galileo could not deny that fact even when forced to by the inquisition, secretly whispering ‘and yet it moves’, the current-day observer simply had to conclude about interna-tional cooperation: ‘and yet it organises itself’. Eijkman, Over internationalisme, pp. 4 and 12. 42 Eijkman, Internationalisme scientifique, pp. 102–103.

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reason why scientific academies and the Peace Palace stood side by side in his plan for the capital.

Still, accommodating international organisations was just one scientific function of the World Capital. Another was the actual practice of research. Throughout his utopian city, Eijkman planned various kinds of facilities for performing experiments, testing theories and applying new scientific in-sights. The city’s pedagogical institute, for example, possessed an experi-mental boarding school where new methods of coeducation, open-air classes and sports instruction could be tested. The medical department in-cluded a hospital and sanatorium, small in size but set up according to the most modern standards, where the latest medical advances could be applied. The economic institute disposed of an entire ‘Workers Garden City’, where scientists could experiment on ‘living test material’ (that is, the World Capi-tal’s service personnel who lived there), with socioeconomic innovations such as cooperative production, collective eateries and joint laundry provi-sions. The Anthropological Academy would be able to take advantage of the many nations present in the World Capital, studying their different cul-tures, but Eijkman did not further elaborate its programme.43

At no point did Eijkman discuss such disciplines as biology or physics. In fact, his definition of science seems to coincide to a large extent with the fields in which he was practising himself: medical research, public health and anthropology. The coincidence becomes even more striking if one con-siders the precise location of the future activities: right next to his own house and clinic on the outskirts of The Hague. In fact the whole landscape of the World Capital, with freestanding estates in a park-like environment, was a very close replica of Eijkman’s own neighbourhood, Van Stolkpark (figs. 2 and 3). From a cynical point of view then, the entire World Capital was nothing but a gigantic enlargement of his own daily existence – Eijkman extended his home and made it the centre of the universe.

It would seem then that Eijkman’s perspective was not so grand at all, and that he was actually no less narrow-minded than he presumed his fellow countrymen to be. However, his plans can also be read in a different way – as reflecting a conception of science and its role in the world that he fol-lowed in his own practice and tried to realise in the World Capital on a large scale. This conception was rooted in his job as a physician. According to Eijkman, the work of a doctor was not restricted to curing individual pa-tients, or ‘spiriting off diseases with little prescriptions’.44 The modern prac-titioner had a broader social task, including public health measures such as

43 See Eijkman, ‘Reorganisatie’, p. 868; ‘Den Haag als wereld-hoofdstad’, pp. 108–109; Netscher, ‘Eijkman’, pp. 184–186. 44 ‘Den Haag als wereld-hoofdstad’, p. 107.

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combating alcoholism, providing vacation facilities, food inspection and housing improvement. Eijkman saw this social task as the application of scientific insights to the welfare of society – a typical hygienist point of view, which he had held from the beginning of his career. It had already in-formed his initiatives as a physician in Koog-Zaandijk, but it was also ex-pressed in the physical layout of the World Capital. In his instructions to De Bazel, Eijkman made sure that the city would be spacious, with plenty of green spaces as well as wide boulevards (some up to 100 metres wide), so that the sea breeze could reach the city and provide fresh air. It would be ‘from the viewpoint of hygiene the healthiest terrain that there is’.45

However, Eijkman’s hygienism was not only expressed in the World Capital street plan, but also in his wider views of science. For him, hygiene was not a branch of medicine but, conversely, embraced regular medicine in its much larger social task. In fulfilling this duty, however, the hygienic physician quickly ran into problems of an even larger scope: issues such as work organisation, food production, poverty and education. These issues belonged to such fields as economics and pedagogy – two sciences that Eijkman indeed brought together with hygiene in a single International Academy. However, he did not stop there. Although Eijkman did not elabo-rate on them as much, he did envision all kinds of disciplines to be present in his World Capital – from architecture and anthropology to technology and traffic studies.46 What these various fields had in common was that their work, in one way or another, benefited humankind. These benefits could come in the form of cultural products (Eijkman mentioned areas such as fine arts and even ‘pure intellect’), but they could also be of a more practi-cal nature, and these were clearly at the forefront of his mind.47 In one of his articles he described how the International Tuberculosis Congress was cur-rently devising ways to combat the disease (proposing hygienic measures), after which he went on to generalise about how this way of working could be applied to all sorts of problem areas: experts could meet, discuss possible solutions, and then test them.48 This was the kind of practice that the World Capital would institutionalise. The Academies would be ‘permanent confer-ences’ (Eijkman literally called them that), and the Institutes would be test-ing grounds for the solutions that the Academies came up with.49 As Eijkman declared in an interview, his entire plan for science and its social mission was an extension of his activity as a physician. 45 Eijkman, ‘Reorganisatie’, p. 871; Internationalisme en de Wereld-Hoofdstad, pp. 4–5. 46 ‘Den Haag als wereld-hoofdstad’, p. 109. 47 Netscher, ‘Eijkman’, p. 186. 48 ‘Den Haag als wereld-hoofdstad’, pp. 107–109. 49 Eijkman, ‘Reorganisatie’, p. 864.

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Global Government

However, the World Capital was more than a coherent whole of scientific organisations, research and a Peace Palace. It also had a general political dimension. For Eijkman, in their beneficial work for humanity, scientists inevitably found themselves handling problems that were ordinarily under-stood to be the province of politics. In a sense, Eijkman stated, the scientific or medical practitioner ‘contributes to the great divisive issues of political life, but, in his politics, stands above the battles driven by party interests’.50 Science and medicine entered the political realm, but they dealt with prob-lems in ways that were beyond ordinary party struggles – less partisan, more disinterested, and much more efficient than regular politics. Because of this, Eijkman felt that science should be given a form of political author-ity. The Academies of various disciplines should not just devise solutions to practical problems, nor should they merely publish these and promote them so that the public would understand their benefit (although this was also an important task).51 They should above all decree the solutions as policy measures that could be officially implemented. Eijkman’s International Academies ‘should be granted particular rights and powers, by which they could have an official role in international government’.52 Hence the World Capital, as a collection of Academies in all sorts of fields, was really meant to be a capital in the sense of the seat of an administration. It would not merely organise science but truly govern the world.

Eijkman’s model here was the International Court of Arbitration. After all, it did not merely study the law, but also issued verdicts on particular cases, which were to be implemented globally. Eijkman saw close parallels between the Court and his Academies, both in their work and in how they were the products of the advancement of reason in public affairs. The way international relations had been handled before the Court’s time was not simply unregulated but also unreasonable, in Eijkman’s view. The fact that some people believed that war was beneficial to the health of nations was not just wicked but actually absurd. Eijkman repeatedly tried to show the irrationality of opinions such as this, claiming, for example, that he had never seen its adherents accept the logical consequences and organise a brawl for their own personal benefit. He said that when an old professor told him that it was honourable to fight for one’s nation, he replied that he wished for him to die on the battlefield – a deduction, he added, that did not

50 ‘Den Haag als wereld-hoofdstad’, p. 107 (emphasis added). 51 Eijkman and Horrix, Internationalisme en de wereld-hoofdstad, p. 2. 52 Eijkman, ‘Reorganisatie’, p. 868.

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receive the endorsement ‘which I could logically expect’.53 The fact that most countries spent thousands of times more money on weaponry than on art and science reminded Eijkman of the household choices of a drunk.54 And from the point of view of a physician (always his favourite perspec-tive) who was educated to save lives, the slaughters of war were both an ab-surdity and a waste.55

However, Eijkman now claimed that reason had made its way into in-ternational relations and the rational alternative to war was arbitration. Con-flicts were no longer to be decided by violence and mistrust, but handled by legal experts at an international court. These experts represented precisely the sort of scientific attitude that Eijkman saw advancing in all of his disci-plines, and this is also why the Peace Palace was a natural neighbour of Academies in economics and anthropology, for example. Arbitration was for international relations what hygiene was for social policy.

Thus, the World Capital was to be completely filled with comparable institutions. They all advanced knowledge, served humanity and issued de-crees based on their expertise, in the fashion of a true global administration. The only exception seems to be the projected International Congress, which consisted of an ‘International Senate’ and an ‘International Parliament’ as ‘two Chambers of World Government’.56 These institutions seem to be modelled on regular politics. However, what Eijkman probably had in mind was something like the Interparliamentary Union, which he hoped (and at one point claimed) would be established in The Hague.57 It is true that the Interparliamentary Union was a gathering of ordinarily elected parliamen-tarians, but it was also an institution closely associated with the cause of ar-bitration. Moreover, in its planned congress hall, it would resemble the kind of permanent conferences that the Academies were supposed to be. As such it stood precisely at the conjunction of science and arbitration that was so central to Eijkman’s World Capital. Conclusion: Colourless Politics

Looking at the overall coherence of Eijkman’s World Capital, we may fi-nally ask the question: what kind of a utopia was it? It was certainly ambi-tious, like any utopia, but in its time it was not as outlandish as it might ap-pear today. Eijkman’s association of science with arbitration was not

53 Both examples are from Eijkman, Over internationalisme, pp. 11–12. 54 Idem, pp. 12–13. 55 ‘Den Haag als wereld-hoofdstad’, p. 107. 56 Quoted in Reinink, De Bazel, p. 114. 57 Eijkman, Over internationalisme, p. 40.

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uncommon, and reappeared, for example, in the work of the American dip-lomat White, who was briefly mentioned above. White led the American delegation to the first Peace Conference in The Hague and became an ar-dent promoter of arbitration. At the same time, he strongly believed in the progress of science and the overthrow of irrationality in the fields of learn-ing and public affairs. His famous History of the Warfare of Science with Theology (1896) was an account of exactly that process in various realms of human endeavour, including hygiene.58 Similar connections can be de-tected, for example, in the heritage of Alfred Nobel. Nobel designed his prizes to reward those whose discoveries were of scientific benefit to hu-manity, but also ‘for the holding and promotion of peace congresses’ – which was literally how the aim of the peace prize was stated in his will.59 Things were different thirty years after Eijkman’s day, when the influential writer H.G. Wells campaigned for a comparable kind of world government based on science.60 However, Wells’s socialist scheme left no place for separate nation-states, and hence there was no longer any need for arbitra-tion. Eijkman’s World Capital would not have fitted into such a socialist world.

This raises the question as to what kind of utopia the World Capital was politically. Eijkman himself presented his plans as apolitical, being based on science and reason and transcending political party divisions. However, like any claim to apoliticalness, this one should be read as a political state-ment in its own right, and it should still be asked what politics the World Capital actually did embody. In the context of his travelling lecture, Eijkman inadvertently gave some indication when he reported how his pleas were received by his audiences in Germany. In those circles, he said, inter-nationalism tended to have a negative ring as it was associated with what were basically the three Reichsfeinde of the Wilhelminian empire. The first fear was of the ‘red internationalism’ of the social democrats and their be-lief in a future classless world state. In second place was the ‘black interna-tionalism’ of the Catholic clergy and its global network led by Rome. Fi-nally there was the menace of a ‘gold internationalism’ of mainly Jewish businessmen, whose capitalist corporations also gave them power in the world. Eijkman’s answer to these fears was that he had nothing to do with any of these groups, and that what he promoted was a ‘colourless interna-tionalism’.61 However, this colourlessness was defined in contradistinction 58 A.D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (repr. Buffalo, 1993). 59 Quoted in R.M. Friedman, The Politics of Excellence. Behind the Nobel Prize in Science (New York, 2001), p. 14. 60 G. Somsen, ‘De metawetenschap van H.G. Wells’, Gewina 29 (2006), pp. 293–305. 61 Eijkman, Over internationalisme, pp. 1–2 (original emphasis).

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to other political movements, and in this way Eijkman revealed something of his own position.

Eijkman’s internationalism was indeed in no way a socialist ideology. The changes he envisioned were supposed to take place within the existing economic order, and he never spoke of revolution as leading to the desired goals. Nor did he focus on an exploited proletariat, rather his attention was fixed on the educated upper class, the ‘aristocracy of the mind’ who ad-vanced society along the road of reason and internationalisation.62 As far as class structure was concerned then, Eijkman did not plan any change. How-ever, neither was he a conservative in the sense of confessional politics. He did not adhere to any organised religion, and in his plans for future peda-gogy, he proposed keeping religion out of education. Stead’s characterisa-tion of the World Capital as a ‘Vatican laïque’ was on the whole quite accu-rate. It is true that Eijkman did want to include the study of religion in his Academies, which could have been a reflection of his theosophical belief in the value and unity of all religions, also shared by his architect De Bazel.63 However, Eijkman said very little about this, and about religious matters of any kind, and was much more outspoken on his faith in science. As to gold internationalism, finally, there is no sign that Eijkman distanced himself from its components, in the sense that there is no anti-Semitism in his writ-ings and no critique of world-wide capitalism. On the contrary, the existing forms of trade and commerce would only be better organised in Eijkman’s plans, not controlled or abolished.

On the whole then, the World Capital appears to be the dream of a group of liberal elites, who saw themselves as fully oriented towards the future, and as having turned away from the conservative forces of milita-rism and organised religion. Progress was inevitable and its path predeter-mined, not by the laws of dialectic materialism but by the steady advance-ment of science. If anything, Eijkman was a positivist, who saw science and reason coming to dominate in more and more fields – from public health and economics to the management of international conflict. It was perhaps a blessing for him that he died three months before the First World War. Acknowledgements

Versions of this paper were presented in Groningen, Maastricht, and at the Institut für Geschichte der Medizin in Düsseldorf. I would like to thank all of the commentators at these occasions, but especially Heiner Fangerau for his comments on the medical aspects of the paper.

62 Eijkman, ‘Reorganisatie’, p. 871. 63 Netscher, ‘Eijkman’, p. 185.

1. De Bazel’s sketch of the area between the North Sea coast (top) and The Hague

(bottom) with the World Capital to the right of point R. The Monument for Inter-

national Brotherhood is at X, the Peace Palace at A, and the three International

Academies are at Z, W, and the point above X mirroring Z. The research institutes

were all located in the Worker’s Garden City to the right of W. Source: Eijkman en

Horrix, Internationalisme en de Wereld-Hoofdstad.

2. Eijkman’s clinic Natura Sanat (left) and home (right) in the luscious Van Stolkpark.

Source: Eijkman, Koud Water voor Gezonden en Zieken.

3. Sketch of part of the projected World Capital and Eijkman’s own residence. The

Peace Palace is planned at A (from where the World Capital stretches out to the right,

most of it not drawn here). Eijkman’s home and clinic are in the Van Stolkpark, left

of point C. Source: ‘Plannen van Internationalisme’, De Opmerker 40 (1905), p. 309.