Dr Q.O. Somsen (Quinten)

Quinten Somsen is a lecturer in the Department of Political History at Radboud University. He specialises in the political history of early modern Europe and has a particular interest in the history of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation and the Dutch Republic. He is currently developing a research proposal on how the political traditions and practices of the Holy Roman Empire influenced the formation of the German Confederation (c. 1648–1848).

In June 2025, Quinten obtained his PhD from Leiden University with a comparative study of the princely courts of Stadholder Willem V of Orange-Nassau (1766–1795) and Landgrave Wilhelm IX of Hesse-Kassel (1785–1806). The surprising conclusion of this comparative study is that the stadholder’s court in the Dutch Republic was more densely attended and of greater political significance than the landgrave’s court in Hesse-Kassel. Precisely because the political culture of the Dutch Republic was characterised by deliberation and the stadholder depended on the regent elite, his court became a crucial political centre.

Together with Jeroen Duindam and Joost Welten, Quinten co-edited the volume Courts and Politics in an Age of Turmoil c. 1780–1830, which will be published open access by Brill in 2026. With the same publisher, he is currently preparing the publication of his dissertation: Asserting Princely Power in Hesse-Kassel and the Dutch Republic: The Courts of Landgrave Wilhelm IX and Stadholder William V in Comparison (c. 1770–1806).

Quinten studied History at Leiden University (cum laude) and received the Mr. Hugo Weiland Thesis Prize (2017) for his master’s thesis on a conflict within the Hohenzollern dynasty, mediated by the emperor’s Reichshofrat at the beginning of the eighteenth century. During his Research Master’s, he conducted archival research in Vienna and spent a semester at the University of Münster.