Around the Yemeni port city of al-Mukhâ hangs the intoxicating smell of coffee. Almost no publication can be pointed out, from popularising travel guide to elaborate research report, in which mocha is not considered the export item par excellence, or rather the icon of the city. Only during the Montpellier conference on coffee, held in October 1997, was it concluded, in a contribution devoted to the emergence of the town in the early seventeenth century, that al-Mukhâ had been neither exclusively or mainly a coffee port, nor the sole one, or even the most important one. Mocha, in fact, “was not at all synonymous with al-Mukhâ”. In subsequent years, it could be demonstrated on the basis of abundant source material that spices, textiles, minerals, porcelains and aromatics were sold in the Mukhâwi market as well.

When, early in August 1538, the lifeless bodies of the Sultan 'Âmir ibn Dâwûd and six of his confidants, by order of Sulaymân Bâshâ al-Khâdim, swung from the mainyard of the Turkish Admiral's galley for three days, not only the fate of the Tâhirid dynasty hung by a thread, but also that of the city of Aden. Afterwards, the Ottoman conquerors transformed this prospering port, a junction in the commercial network encompassing the Indian Ocean, into a military bastion. Merchants were driven away by soldiers. The entry to the Red Sea was cordoned off by guns for Portuguese intruders.

The origin of the Saint-Joseph University of Beirut, or USJ, dates back to the Seminar of Ghazir founded by the Jesuit Fathers in 1843. The College of Ghazir, established with the intention of training the local Maronite clergy, was transferred to Beirut in 1875. This centre for higher studies was named Saint-Joseph University. In his audience of 25 February 1881, Pope Leo XIII conferred the title of Pontifical University on the USJ.

This article deals with the history of the USJ, the first great French-speaking Jesuit institution in the area which, at the time, bore the name of “Syria”. (The term Syria is used henceforth to represent the geographical entity of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which includes Syria and Lebanon of the present.) The underlying reasons for the creation of Saint-Joseph University of Beirut have to do with its being located in a province of the Ottoman Empire coveted by the future mandatory power, France. By the 1870s, the Ottoman Empire was being preserved chiefly by the competition between the European powers, all of whom wanted chunks of it. The Ottoman territory, like the territory of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, encompassed a great many ethnic groups whose own nationalism was also stirring. Under Ottoman rule, the region of the Levant developed economic and religious ties with Europe. Open to the West, it became a hotbed of political strife between various foreign nations including France, Russia and Britain. These powerful countries assumed the protection of certain ethnic and religious groups, with France supporting the Christian Maronites and Britain supporting the Druzes.

The history of forestry in British India has evoked a wide range of responses from environmental historians. Debates often centre in particular on the ethic of the bureaucratic organisation responsible for managing the government-controlled forests of India: the Indian Forest Service. Born on the subcontinent and rooted in the European scientific tradition, the Indian Forest Service model, or “empire forestry” as it came to be called from the 1920s onward, has been described as a first step in the world-wide environmental movement or, alternately, as the culprit responsible for widespread deforestation of the subcontinent. This article will address a key aspect of the debate over the Indian Forest Service (hereafter referred to as the IFS) that has profound implications for our understanding of the relationship -between imperialism and forestry conservation. By examining the tension between conservation-minded foresters who battled against timber companies and economically focused imperial bureaucrats, we answer the following question: did the IFS develop a legacy of deforestation throughout the subcontinent between 1855 and 1947? We conclude that the IFS did not develop a dominant ethic of resource exploitation, nor did the IFS rapidly accelerate the rates of deforestation during the colonial period. Rather, the IFS provided a powerful and persuasive counterweight to gentleman capitalists and economically oriented administrators who strenuously battled for more extensive exploitation of forest resources.

Hundreds of German traders and residents were living in the Philippines when the 1896 Revolution against the Spanish broke out. Representing different religious, regional and economic backgrounds, they routinely met and mingled in such social organisations as reading clubs or, later, the Casino Union. Save for the Spanish, Germans formed the most numerous European community. As latecomers vis-àvis other Europeans, they painstakingly maintained working relations with the Spanish colonial administrators and local Filipino elites to bolster their businesses. The outbreak of the revolution, however, threatened the deepening economic inroads this community had striven so hard to make; and as the fighting grew they feared that their lives were also threatened. As a consequence, they turned to their government in Berlin for protection. A warship was duly deployed to the islands in case evacuation was deemed necessary. Significantly, this request provided the German navy a prime opportunity to assess developments in the Spanish colony, which, in turn, might facilitate direct state intervention in the rebellion.