ABSTRACT
The Rijkswaterstaat is the agency for infrastructure management and water management in the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment. Its core tasks are national flood safety, the provision of clean and sufficient fresh water and the facilitation of quick and safe traffic flows. With nearly 8,400 staff (in 2015) the Rijkswaterstaat is one of the largest central public agencies in the Netherlands. As the organisation focuses on building and maintaining national engineering structures, it is not at all obvious why it should have a lasting commitment to history. Moreover, a systematic interest in the past is not generally a feature of public agencies in the Netherlands, with the exception of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Defence; the latter has a large history staff, fitting into a strong network of military history research and higher education (Hoogerwerf 1989: 63-74). Although the Rijkswaterstaat cannot boast about spending similar amounts on corporate history, it has been funding a small history unit since 1981. The Rijkswaterstaat’s history programme has developed continuously since then, and over the last decade learning from history has been a conspicuous strand within it.
