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.

About seven years ago the journal Itinerario issued a special volume on the Ancien Régime in India and Indonesia that carried the papers presented at the third Cambridge-Leiden-Delhi-Yogyakarta conference. The aim of the conference was a comparative one in which state-formation, trading net-works and socio-political aspects of Islam were the major topics. Thumbing through the pages of this issue (while preparing this essay) I had the impression that the results of the conference went beyond its initial comparative goals. Directly or indirectly, several papers stressed that during the early-modern phase India and Indonesia were still part of a cultural continuum that was only gradually broken up by the ongoing process of European expansion during the nineteenth century. It appeared that even after the earlier course of so-called ‘Indianisation’ – a designation that unjustly conveys an Indian ‘otherness’ – India and the Archipelago shared many characteristics, especially in terms of their political and religious orientation. More importantly, these shared traits were shaped by highly mobile groups of traders, pilgrims and courtiers who criss-crossed the Bay of Bengal, traversing both the lands above and below the winds.

All over Southeast Asia, the perception that the European colonizers had of the Chinese was characterized by a fundamental ambiguity. On the one hand, the Chinese were recognized to be very useful, and even indispensable to the economic development/exploitation of the colonial territories, as they were hard-working labourers, possessed needed entrepreneurial, commercial and technical skills and had already established trade contacts with the indigenous populations. But, on the other hand, the Chinese were perceived as a potential political threat because of their strong communal organization and solidarity, their secret societies and their frequent clan fights.

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.

The historical image of Suriname – and maybe of colonies in general – is dominated by stereotypes, as well as by assumptions which are far too facile. That at least is the impression left after comparing a variety of primary sources on Suriname with the historiography of this colony. One small example will suffice. Almost every time slavery is introduced in literature on the history of Suriname, emphasis is placed on the fact that it was one of the hardest or cruellest slave systems in the entire Americas. The implication is that Suriname slavery is invariably considered to have been a system which remained static for more than two centuries. Something it certainly was not. Moreover, it shows that not one of the authors has ever troubled to take a look at the available demographic sources. Had they done so, they would have noticed there are no indications that Suriname deviated in this respect from the average Caribbean pattern.

In examining the process of modernization in Qajar Iran, modern scholarship has tended to focus either on the effects of Western exposure on Iranian intellectuals and educators, or on bureaucratic and military reforms initiated by the three major reformers of the nineteenth century, ‘Abbas Mirza, Mirza Taqi Khan (Amir Kabir), and Mirza Husayn Khan (Sipahsalar). This paper will address a different and equally important aspect of the modernization process, technological innovation, by discussing the introduction of mechanized coin production in Qajar Iran in the context of the country's prevailing social, political and economic structure.

David Arnold in his recently published work on colonial medicine in India refers to the necessity of assessing, ‘the various compulsions that lay behind attempts to propagate Western medicine in India, the agencies involved in this work of medical evangelization, and the various constraints – political, cultural, financial and technical – which operated in the reverse direction. The colonial context vithin which Western medicine was required to function and the contradictions – many of them remarkably deepseated and pervasive – that beset its diverse operations also require investigation’. Taking one of the agencies involved in this work of ‘medical evangelization’ – that of medical education – I would like to compare the utilitarian and the hegemonic considerations which led the two colonial governments of British-India and the Dutch-Indies to promote a particular kind of medical education in their colonies and to assess their impact on the colonized societies concerned.

From 1880 to 1930, Argentina received hundreds of millions of pounds of British investments, making it in an economic sense a British dominion. The world economic crisis of the 1930s forced both Britain and Argentina t o reconsider many of these economic ties. The changing Anglo-Argentine relationship is reflected in the complex relations between a British tramway company, the Anglo Argentine Tramways Co. Ltd., that operated in Buenos Aires and the Argentine national government between the onset of the Great Depression and the early 1960s. The Anglo, as the company was popularly known, was the main tramway concern diat offered public transportation and contributed to the urban development of a cosmopolitan Latin American metropolis until 1914. Second, the history of the company illustrates political and economic problems that plagued the links between foreign public utilities and the host government from the 1930s onwards. Third, since the Anglo belonged to SOFINA, a transnational holding company with worldwide investments in public transportation and electric power stations, our case study shows the limitations of Sofina's political power in Britain and Argentina.

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.

Visitors to the sea-side resort of Swakopmund on the Namibian coast will have often stood on the northern banks of the Swakop river and marvelled at the sea of sand dunes that commences on the opposite side of the river. Very few of them will ever have realised that they were standing upon, and wandering amongst, the mass graves of Herero and Nama prisoners of war, who between 1904 and 1908 were employed as forced labourers. As I write the mass-graves of Swakopmund are used by recreationers as a testing ground for their four-wheel-drive off-road vehicles, perhaps in the future the true nature of these graves will come to be realised and appreciated.

In the Chinese technological tradition, no sector, apart from that of agriculture, is as rich in original ideas as naval architecture. Over the past three millennia, hundreds of different types of craft have been developed for use on China's shallow lakes, on its fast flowing rivers and along its often stormy coastal waters. Each type was developed for specific use as a means of transportation, and would seem to represent the ultimate answer to the challenges posed by local conditions. Ultimate answer, that is, within the limitations of the traditional building materials with which these boats were constructed and fitted out. Nor was ingenuity confined to construction techniques.

Students of French overseas history could hardly imagine a better place to do their research than Aix-en-Provence, the delightful home of the Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer. Readers of Itinerario will not expect an éloge on this town in the heartland of Provence, about which all travel guide clichés turn out to be true, but readers with experience of the Aix archives will admit that their surroundings easily divert the attention of even the most dedicated historian. The Centre des Archives d'Outre-Mer or CAOM was created in 1966 as an autonomous part of the Archives Nationales. From the outset it was intended to house the archives of the administration of France's former colonies that had gained independence. In 1987, however, the archives of the metropolitan administration were moved from Paris to Aixen-Provence as well. Nowadays, the CAOM houses collections on the former French colonies in Africa, Asia and the Americas.

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.

Traditional boats of Indonesia, usually called perahu or proa, cover an extremely wide range of sailing craft and date back centuries. The oldest known picture of an Indonesian ship can be seen, carved in stone, on a panel of the Borobudur, the famous eighth-century Buddhist temple in Central Java. This picture basically shows the same built-up hull rigged with tripod masts that can still be seen sailing today. Traditional boats of Indonesia, as they are built today, vary much in shape and size from a simple dug out canoe to large, motorized, cargo boats of over 500 tons of deadweight.