This study is intended to give a short survey on the development of shipping and trade between two main German ports and the Indian Ocean from the early years of the Bismarck period to the beginning of the First World War. The study deals with the area from East Africa to East India and from Indochina to Indonesia. China, the Philippines, and Australia will not be considered. It is based on an analysis of published material.

This is the first part of a study made in my seminar on the relations between the German ports Hamburg and Bremen and the trading centres in the area of the Indian Ocean. The study covers the whole period from the end of the eighteenth century until the beginning of the First World War. For reasons of time and space this paper is limited to the first part of the study which deals with the period up to 1870.

This article deals with the interrelations between the economyand the government of the expanding Spanish empire in the era of overseas expansion during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Specifically, it attempts to show how the government reacted to the phenomenon of the growing empire. In a full treatment it would be necessary to show how the various Spanish territories of the Peninsula were unified by the process of the “reconquista” and by the marriage policy of the Catholic Icings; how during the sixteenth century Navarre and Portugal were joined; how the overseas expansion of Spanish power, beginning in the late Middle Ages, continued during the sixteenth century; and how Spain, as a consequence of Hapsburg marriage policy, built an important bridge of possessions from the Netherlands to Italy. Obviously, these questions cannot be dealt with in detail in one article, but they form the background for the following discussion.

Dans son ouvrage sur la Richesse des nations (1776), Adam Smith traitait, entre autres choses, des rapports entre habitants des campagnes et villes. En essayant de serrer de près la réalité, il opposait la population rurale, agricole — seigneurs, fermiers, domestiques — aux villes en tant que centres de commerce et d'artisanat. Le monde campagnard se caractérisait, d'après lui, par « la vanité puérile » de la noblesse et par des méthodes de travail non rationnelles, tandis que l'activité commerçante et artisanale des villes était stimulée par l'intérêt propre et par le zèle professionnel.