If there is any country where it does make sense for a historian to buy a strong pair of boots, it is Sri Lanka. All over the country one may stumble upon reminders of the past. During two days of travel along the southern coastal strip, I, saw more outstanding pieces of Dutch East Indian Company architecture than in two weeks on Java. With some footwork there is a lot to discover, apart from the beaches. The same goes for the researcher in the National Archives of Colombo; it is full of unexpected surprises. As usual we offer in this section a piece by one of the local archivists, an article by a researcher who has spent several months there, and a short introductory piece by one of the editors whose main intention it is to come up with some practical suggestions and observations on lodging, eating and moving around.

Sri Lanka is an island in the Indian Ocean situated to the south-east of the southern point of India. It was colonised by an Aryan race that came from North India in the 6th century B.C. It has a recorded history of twenty-two centuries. Until the beginning of the 15th century it had political contacts mainly with the sub-continent of India. In 1518, the Portuguese captured a part of the maritime coastal area of Sri Lanka and started their own system of administration. The Dutch ousted the Portuguese from Galle in 1640 and established the administration of the Dutch East India Company along the same coastal region by 1656. They were active until they ceded to the British in 1796. The British administered the same coastal area from 1796 to 1815. The Kandyan kingdom was subsequently annexed in 1815 and the British gained complete control over the entire island. Sri Lanka regained independence from the British in 1948 and in May, 1972 it became a Republic within the British Commonwealth. Since February, 1978 it has been an Independent Republic with its first executive President.

There is an interesting and long-standing controversy over the applicability of the vent-for-surplus model to the growth of the Gold Coast cocoa industry around the turn of the century. This debate has important implications both for African economic history and for current issues of resource allocation in developing countries. Our paper attempts to clarify the elements of the debate by applying to each ele-ment a production-possibilities model, using historical evidence to verify where possible the validity of the analysis.

I have a hidden admiration for those with the chutzpah to write books in the tradition of Up Against It in Wanga-Wanga Land. Thus I greeted with enthusiasm the invitation of this journal's editors to recount ina light-hearted way the experiences of my fieldwork in the Maldive Islands during January, 1982.

The National Archives of Sri Lanka hold a vast number of hitherto little used documents which provide an excellent basis for the study of Sri Lanka under Dutch and British administration. This article is a result of my visit to the Archives to carry out research on crime in Sri Lanka in the second half of the nineteenth century. It seeks to describe some of the opportunities - and difficulties - in using this rich resource.

During the winter of 1980-1981 I visited China as a guest-lecturer and researcher on the invitation of both the Chinese Ministry of Education and Amoy University. The lecture schedule took me from Peking University to the southeastern coastal province of Fukien where short visits were paid to Fuchou, Ch'üanchou, and Changchou before settling down for a fortnight's stay at Amoy University. This introduction will be solely devoted to the Nanyang Institute, the only place where I spent enough time to acquire more than a superficial impression of what is going on. I do not think many people will have an opportunity to visit Amoy - which is a shame, since foreign visitors are very cordially received. Consequently it is of no use to offer a guide to visitors. Rather, I would like to raise a few points about the activities of the institute itself and Chinese research facilities for foreigners in general.