The close, reciprocal relationship between overseas expansion and domestic state formation in early modern Western Europe has long been understood. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Portugal, the Netherlands, and England used the resources arising from their Atlantic colonies and Asia trades to defend themselves against their respective Spanish and French enemies. Creating and sustaining a territorial or trading empire, therefore, enabled polities not only to survive but also to enhance their standing with-i n the hierarchy of European states. The proposition that success overseas facilitated state development at home points however to the opposite logic, that where kingdoms failed as colonial powers they might well suffer from inhibited state formation. Indeed, if the example of England demonstrated how empire augmented a kingdom's power, then the experience of its neigh-bour, Scotland, seemed to reveal one possible outcome for a country unable to access colonial expansion. In 1707 Scotland negotiated away its political sovereignty and entered into an incorporating union with England. The new British framework enabled the Scots to access English markets (both domestic and colonial) previously closed to them. This does not mean that the 1707 union was simply an exchange of Scottish sovereignty for involvement in England's economy. Pressing political concerns, not least the Hanoverian succession played an equal if not more important role in the making of the British union. The question of political causation notwithstanding, the prevailing historiography of 1707 still places Scotland in a dichotomous framework of declining continental markets on the one hand and the lure of more expansive trade with England' domestic and overseas outlets on the other.

The setting is 25 February 1603. At dawn the three ships under the supreme command of Jakob van Heemskerk spot a Portuguese carrack in anchor off the Eastern shores of Singapore Island. She was richly laden with wares from China and Japan. The battle for the carrack lasted for most hours of daylight, and as night was about to fall, the Portuguese captain, crew, soldiers and passengers surrendered. They forfeited ship and cargo for having their lives spared.

In July 1796, Johannes Albertyn, a well-respected burgher of Stellenbosch, requested permission from Ryno van der Riet, landdrost of Stellenbosch, the chief administrative and legal officer of the district, to indenture four Khoikhoi children. He claimed that their mother, Catryn Paerl, had died recently and that before her demise, she had requested him in the presence of witnesses to raise her children and deny their biological father Jan Paerl any future role in their lives. Faced with the prospect of losing custody of his four children and having exhausted all possible avenues in seeking legal redress, including a visit to landdrost Van der Riet, the seemingly incomparable Jan Paerl hit the road and walked several kilometres from Stellenbosch to Cape Town. His destination: the Castle, in particular the office of the fiscal, otherwise known as the public prosecutor. In Cape Town, he urged the fiscal to intervene in the dispute and deny Albertyn the right to indenture his children. As their father, Paerl insisted that he, and not Albertyn, be granted sole custody of his offspring. By Paerl's demanding legal intervention at the highest level, the following encounter between Paerl, Albertyn and the Cape authorities exemplifies not only a classic struggle between master and servant, but highlights simultaneously the significance of ‘equality’ before the law in Cape society, at a time when burghers increasingly feared the possibility of gelykstelling at the end of the eighteenth century.

It is a well-known fact that the reconstitution of the English East India Company in the 1660s caused a significant revolution in its Asia trade. Coincidently with this improvement, the Company also attempted to expand its trade to East Asian countries, using its Bantam Agent, its only base in Southeast Asia, as a springboard for launching this strategy. Around 1668 the Court of Committees in London was looking for an appropriate opportunity to re-open relations with Japan through the channel of Cambodia. The plan of re-entering the Japan trade – in this the directors in London might have been influenced by their officials in Bantam or they themselves had overestimated its prospects – was then put into practice at the end of 1671. Forthe Company itself, trading with Japan would obviously be profitable, as it had observed at first hand the considerable success of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) over the last decades. The English in the East also grew convinced that the regional trade between Japan and other areas would reap extra profits for the Company. Among the selected targets was Tonkin, present-day northern Vietnam. At that time, its silks and other textiles were highly valued and could fetch good prices in Japan. Traders who took Tonkinese silks to Nagasaki were then able to purchase Japanese silver and copper. These precious metals would be brought back to invest in local merchandize at other factories to keep up the flow of the Japan trade and to supply marketable goods for Europe. The ultimate aim of the English in tradingwith Tonkin was, therefore, to create the so-called Tonkinese silk-for-Japanese silver trade, like that successfully undertaken by the Dutch since 1637. Besides, the search for new markets for English manufactured goods was another reason that spurred the Company on to carry out this plan.

Taiwan, one of the four Asian Tigers, has become renowned for its economic miracle in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. However, few know that the arrival of the Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) on the island heralded the beginning of an earlier, long forgotten economic miracle. It was on this beautiful island, which seventeenth century Europeans called Formosa, that the VOC established its first major land colony. In just a few decades a tiny trading factory set up on spit of land in Tayouan (Tainan) expanded into a prosperous and flourishing colony, which covered large parts of the island. To establish this colony the VOC attracted thousands of colonists, few of which were European. Although most VOC employees were Europeans, most of these left the island upon expiration of their work contract. The bulk of the colonists that the VOC attracted were Chinese of all walks of life: farmers, masons, inter- national traders, fishermen, hunters, peddlers, sailors etc. But why was the Company so successful in attracting Chinese colonists, and how did these colonists contribute to Dutch Formosa's economic miracle?