dr. GP (Gijs) Dreijer, MA

Biography

I am an historian presently working on Dutch entrepreneurs in the Scramble for Africa (1850s-1910s), but with a broad interest in business, maritime and economic history of colonialism between 1500 and 1914, as well as a side interest in legal history. Before coming to Erasmus University as a lecturer and researcher, I have worked at Leiden University as a postdoctoral researcher and lecturer (2021-2025) and at the University of Exeter and the Vrije Universiteit (2017-2021) where I obtained my dual PhD degree in History and Law with a thesis on sixteenth-century maritime law in Antwerp.

My first book based on the dissertation was published by Brill in 2023, and the thesis won the Frank Broeze Prize for Outstanding Doctoral Thesis in Maritime History, awarded by the International Maritime History Association in 2024. My second book on Dutch entrepreneurs in the Scramble for West and West Central Africa is set to appear in early 2026 with Palgrave MacMillan in Open Access (see here). Besides these two books, I have published broadly on sixteenth-century maritime law, the eighteenth-century Ostend Company and on Dutch entrepreneurs in nineteenth-century Africa.

In my current research project, I research Dutch entrepreneurs in Mozambique and South Africa between the 1870s and 1910s. The project is funded by the German Gerda Henkel Foundation, and runs from May 2025 to April 2027.