In Navigating History: Economy, Society, Knowledge, and Nature the contributors present new research that touches on the core themes developed in Karel Davids's work. Major themes include resources of knowledge, cultures of learning, and humans and their natural environment. Together, these fourteen essays provide a fascinating panorama of social, economic, and environmental history of the past millennium.

Pepijn Brandon is Assistant Professor in Social and Economic History at VU Amsterdam and Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History. He obtained his PhD from the University of Amsterdam in 2013. His research focuses on connections between capitalist development, war, and slavery. He is author of War, capital, and the Dutch state (1588-1795) (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2015), and a member of the editorial committee of the International Review of Social History.
Sabine Go is Assistant Professor of Accounting at the School of Business and Economics of VU Amsterdam. She is particularly interested in the emergence and development of economic institutions during early modern and modern times in the Low Countries. Her current research focuses on contract enforcement and governance issues. She collaborates as Senior Visiting Fellow in an ERC Consolidator Grant Project on General Average, Transaction Costs and Risk Management during the First Globalization.
Wybren Verstegen is Assistant Professor in Economic and Social History at VU Amsterdam. He teaches Global History, the History of the United States and the US South. His dissertation about nobility and society in the revolutionary era in Veluwe-district (in the east of the Netherlands) was published in 1989. He has written many scientific and newspaper articles concerning environmental history and sustainability. Recently he published the book Vrije wandeling. Het parlement, de fiscus en de bescherming van het particuliere Nederlandse natuurschoon tussen 1924-1995 (Groningen: Historia Agriculturae, 2017) as well as several articles about nature protection on estates in the Netherlands in the twentieth century.