ABSTRACT
The Game of the Goose (Ganzenbord) is the name of a traditional game with dice and pawns still played by many a Dutch family. Its popularity goes back to the Dutch Golden Age. You throw dice to get from field 1 to the winning field 63. Along the way you surmount various obstacles – a pit, a thorn bush, or a churchyard may throw you back or get you stuck until somebody else’s pawn lands in the same field, thus setting you free again. Some other fields assist your advance, e.g., you may throw a second time and thus keep moving your pawn ahead. I recently discovered a nineteenth-century variety of the Game of the Goose with pictures of historical events that determine both the obstacles and the chances for quick advance. If you move ahead to the picture for 1789, ‘Beginning of the Revolution’, you must start the game all over again. If, by contrast, you land on the year 656, ‘Conversion of the Heathen’, you receive a reward. This peculiar family game of 1816 makes it crystal clear that history has become common property; it has been tailor-made without more ado for the historical aim it is meant to serve. 1 We have here just one particular consequence of the changes that have meanwhile taken place in people’s conception of the past. Ordinary people have learned to deal with history. This in its turn is a consequence of history having turned public. It is as if in the nineteenth century history has moved from the closed spaces of society halls and stately rooms of well-educated noblemen to the living room, no longer necessarily stately but just run-of-the-mill. History has become part of collective memory, thus stepping into public space.
