The road towards the Fifth Centennial Commemoration of Columbus' voyage in 1492 has not been smooth and easy. By engendering discussion in every possible forum, the Latin American political and cultural establishment has succeeded in changing the essence of the Commemoration: no longer is it considered a ‘Discovery’ but rather a ‘Meeting of Two Cultures’. All vestiges of Eurocentrism have been replaced with an emphasis on the contributions of the Amerindians to the history of the continent. On a more general level the commemoration was characterized by a proud de-fence of American as opposed to European history.

In a decade marked off by the quincentenaries of the voyages of Columbus (1492) and that of Vasco da Gama (1498) or perhaps more chronologically and interculturally correctly by the 1502 arrival of three Native Americans at the court of Henry VII of England, it is appropriate to take stock of the field of ‘European expansion’ and to ask if, in fact, such a field exists, or ought to exist, or still means the same thing that it did a generation ago. The celebrations and condemnations that accompanied the quincentenary in 1992 refocused public attention on the question of European expansion and its impact on history of die Americas and of the world. Voices long suppressed and opinions never before expressed found new audiences and joined with scholarly and semi-scholarly works to make Columbus and all that followed in his wake a topic of general public concern. It is dierefore appropriate to take stock once again of what we know about die Era of European Expansion prior to die emergence of modern imperialism in die nineteenth century.

A long story could be told about the educational institutions where young Dutchmen were trained for an administrative and legal career in the Indies. This educational process started with the foundation of the Javanese Institute (Instituut voor dejavaanse taal) in Surakarta in 1832. Ten years later this institute was closed and the training of Dutch civil servants was transferred to the city of Delft in the Netherlands. A Royal Academy for Engineers has been established in that town and was subsequently made subservient to this overseas task too. The study of language at an engineering academy reads strangely but was done for reasons of economy. In the words of the Minister of the Colonies (J.C. Baud) who was responsible for this decision: the arid and unpleasant study of Oriental languages could better be accomplished in a cold climate than in the hot climate of Java which was not at all conducive to hard work and study! In 1864 the instruction of civil servants for Indonesia was transferred to a state institution in Leiden (Rijks-instelling van onderwijs in Indische taal-, land- en volkenkunde). But the municipal authorities of Delft were unwilling to lose the young hopefuls for the Indies and their wealthy parents, many of them with a colonial background themselves, who, for the sake of the education of their children, had taken domicile in Delft after their retirement. In the same year 1864 the municipal council of Delft established a local Indies Institute (Indische Instelling) of its own that turned out much more successful than the Leiden state institute which soon disappeared. On the other hand, the training of Indies lawyers and judges became a firm monopoly of Leiden University after the passing of a new law on Dutch universities in 1876.

In 1877, the Dutch parliament declared that the use of penal sanctions in a civil dispute was contrary to the classic-liberal legal principles it was eager to follow in diose days. Based on these principles was the concept of stricdy separated civil, penal and administrative jurisdiction, a concept modeled on modern legislation, guaranteeing equal justice for both civilians and authorities. As a consequence of this liberal direction, from then on the infliction of penal laws by authorities would be justified only when the general interest was at stake.

To what extent was technological choice within colonial countries deter-mined by requirements or expectations that emanated from interests located within the metropolitan powers? The quick answer, supported by a number of case studies, is that the colonial connection played a major role. The same case studies, however, demonstrate how complex and nuanced the determinants of particular technological choices in particular colonies at particular times were. Moreover, in recent scholarship many facets of the colonial experience have been subjected to considerable deconstruction such that colonialism qua colonialism has lost, for some at least, explanatory power: colonialism has become a background condition, a playing field for the contingent interplay of competing forces and interests located within a colony, a metropole and elsewhere. Without going that far but also without denying the benefits of the richer, more complex understanding deconstruction has brought this paper emphasizes the importance of colonial regimes and colonial labour processes to the analysis of technological choice in colonial contexts. The building and operation of the railways of colonial India provides the content for the arguments that follow. Colonialism as a structure of command and control will be seen to have been a powerful determinant of technological choice for the Indian railways although never independent of other considerations which included, this paper will argue, an important role for Indian railway labour.

Although never more than a junior partner or rival to the hegemonic powers Great Britain and United States, the German states and later the Reich have since independence played an important role in the foreign relations of Latin America. German-Latin American relations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have been the subject of a growing body of research over the last three decades. The interest of historians has focused on the development of these relations throughout the nineteenth century, the era of German imperialism 1890-1914, and on the infiltration of National Socialism and its Auslandsorganisation (organization for Nazi party members living abroad) in Latin America from 1933 to 1945. In addition, the reconstruction of German ties to the Latin American states after the Second World War and postwar emigration from Germany to Latin America are subjects which scholars have recendy begun to analyze.

The wonders of the computer age continue to amaze us. Much of what is purportedly new commands only scant interest, as we zap through inter-space. Sometimes, however, something worthwhile catches the eye and we read attentively. Not too long ago, we downloaded the following thread from the H-LATAM discussion list. The discussion that is reprinted below deals with the perennial question plaguing historians: how to find the right combination of facts and theory. We hope that our readers will enlighten themselves with this lively debate.

Let me start these notes with two caveats. First, apart from the many un-published sources on the Iberian involvement in Asia there is also a great number of published sources available. This is in itself a considerable repository of knowledge on Asia. Most of these source publications, though, have appeared in journals that are often riot available outside the Iberian peninsula. Though H. Scholberg, Bibliography of Goa and the Portuguese in India (New Delhi 1982) provides a considerable service to the researcher, a bibliography of Portuguese source-publications is still in urgent need. Second, I should emphasize that for this report I have not been able to look at the Spanish records on the Philippines.

The figure of the Spanish botanist Francisco Noroña has been overlooked by most historians, and the same fate has befallen his travel diary, which contains valuable information on Spanish, Dutch and French possessions in Western and Southeast Asia – the Philippines, Java, Mauritius and Madagascar. The son of a physician, Michel Noroña, and Elizabeth Smith from England, Francisco Noroña was born in Seville (Spain) in about 1748. Following his father's footsteps, Noroña studied medicine at Osuna (Seville) and Seville, completing his formation in botany, physics, chemistry and natural history at London and Paris.