Rogier Verbeek was a Dutch geologist and natural scientist, located in the Dutch Indies due to his work for the Royal Dutch Geography Society. Therefore, his work is part of a broader scholarly effort to get a better understanding of the geography of the Dutch colonies.KNAG Expedities, URL: http://www.knag-expedities.nl/pages/tijdgeest/tijdgeest1.php In that time, the focus was mainly on the micro-geography of certain Dutch areas. This case study tries to give an overview of the cause and impact of the 1899 earthquake and tsunami, indexing the specifics of the natural disaster for the entire Ceram area. However, Verbeek's presence in the Dutch Indies was not merely scholarly in nature. There was also an imperialistic incentive to have Dutch scholars located in Dutch colonies. As the first president of the Royal Dutch Geography Society, P.J. Veth, stated, it was also a matter of pursuing and maintaining the Dutch glory, in a cultural-nationalistic sense. Dutch scholarly presence in the Indies was therefore not merely scientific, but also part of a colonial effort based on the idea of a 'Greater Holland'.
