Seasonal Cycles of Social In- and Exclusion: Leisure Culture in Amsterdam and The Hague, 1815-1890

Abstract

During the long nineteenth century, public and semi-public venues of urban recreation were spaces where people actively shaped local social order by reinforcing, challenging, and changing patterns of social in- and exclusion in terms of class, gender, ethnicity, and other axes of social difference. Over the last decades, historians have been able to demonstrate how these tactics and patterns of social in- and exclusion functioned by focusing on different types of urban recreation. This article argues that during the long nineteenth century, the cyclical rhythm of the seasons—and their regularly shifting contexts of space, environment, weather, temperature, light, and so on—played a crucial role in the ways in which people interacted in urban recreations. Urban society actually functioned differently and was, in important ways, defined by the rhythm of the seasons. The article focuses on indoor sites of winter recreation such as theaters, concert halls, cultural associations, and balls; on sites of summer recreation such as parks, zoos, and other open air recreations; and on the annual urban fairs in between in Amsterdam and The Hague.