Both overseas trade and shipbuilding in India are of great antiquity. But even for the early modern period, maritime commerce is relatively better documented than the shipbuilding industry. When the Portuguese and later the North Europeans entered the intra-Asian trade, many of the ships they employed in order to supplement their shipping in Asia were obtained from the Indian dockyards. Detailed evidence with regard to shipbuilding, however, is very rare. It has been pointed out that the Portuguese in the sixteenth century were more particular than their North-European counter-parts in the following centuries in providing information on seafaring and shipbuilding. Shipbuilding on the west coast has been discussed more than that on the eastern coast of India, particularly the coast of Bengal. Though Bengal had a long tradition of shipbuilding, direct evidence of shipbuilding in the region is rare. Many changes were brought about in the history of India and the Indian Ocean trade of the eighteenth century, especially after the 1750s. When the English became the largest carriers of Bengal's trade with other parts of Asia, this had an impact on the shipbuilding in Bengal. It was in their interest that the British in Bengal had their ships built in that province.

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.

The history of Indian shipbuilding is a relatively well-studied topic. There are two strands of literature on Indian shipping. First there is the Indian: R.N. Mukherjee (1923) is, in spite of some minor criticism which could be levelled at it, still the basic work on the topic. Among the more recent contributions should be mentioned those of L. Gopal and J. Qaisar. The second strand is Portuguese. Much of the Portuguese work on ‘Portuguese’ shipbuilding in the sixteenth century deals with shipbuilding in Goa. Now, was this ‘Portuguese’ shipbuilding or ‘Indian’ shipbuilding? ‘European’ and ‘Indian’ technology were so closely interlinked on the west coast of India that it is impossible to make a clear distinction. The seminal contributions on this topic are the already very well-established works of Commodore Quirinho da Fonsequa and of Frazāo de Vasconselhos. Their articles, which have appeared in several Portuguese journals, very much deserve an English translation. More recently the important work by A. Marques Esparteiro on the ships used in the carreira da Índia has appeared.

It is already a cliché that the fall of the Soviet Union is providing an archival bonanza to historians. Naturally most attention is on sensational revelations from previously-inaccessible collections about Russia's own past. Yet those interested in other nations can also profit from the new openness of Moscow's and St. Petersburg's archives. This is particularly true for specialists in nineteenth-century Chinese history: Tsarist diplomats, officers and geographers actively studied their Asian neighbour, and their documents provide a fascinating perspective on the latter years of the Qing Dynasty. At the same time, the years before 1917 mark the golden age of Russian Sinology. While their accomplishments are largely ignored in the West, St. Petersburg's Orientalists produced much original and important work.

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.