Blood is thicker than water: The Achterhoek identity in a historical perspective

In 2013, the Holland Open Air Museum rediscovered a hitherto unpublished diary. It contains 213 handwritten pages. On some pages, two to three texts are written on top of each other, as if the writer had a shortage of paper. Part of the dairy is in secret code; many pages have faded, and the edges are eaten away. It has taken a team of specialists eight years to decipher and transcribe the text. Recently, this text has been published, together with ten chapters on the main themes. The author, Eimert Papenborg (1826-1888), as it turns out was a small, isolated farmer, who lived to the northeast of the village Zieuwent, in the heart of the Achterhoek, in the eastern part of Holland. For 48 years, Eimert minutely recorded the activities of himself and his family. This enabled us to analyze two historical concepts that have recently been related to this region. Firstly, it has been claimed, that neighbourly help was a characteristic of this region and secondly, that isolation was often believed to be the driving force behind regional differences. Based on this dairy and extensive archival research, this article shows that the blood ties were far more important than neighbourly help. Furthermore, that isolation forced this family, on the contrary, to cover a large area to provide subsistence.