It was Charles Boxer who has characterized the struggle between the Portuguese and the Dutch about their respective positions in world trade as the First Global War. In summing up the results at around 1650 Boxer contended that the Portuguese had won in the New World, that the Dutch had won in Asia, while the two countries had reached a stalemate in Africa.

This conclusion is correct only within the political domain. In fighting the Portuguese and the Spanish, the Dutch, together with the British and the French, did not reach economic the limits of their expansion because of Iberian resistance, but because of the general demographic and economic constraints on overseas expansion at the time. These limitations allowed for the creation of two expansion systems, each with its own sphere of influence in the Atlantic. The Iberian system covered the South Atlantic and the Northwest European system the Middle and North Atlantic. Both systems had a similar structure and incorporated European ports providing European and Asian trade goods, trading posts in Africa and plantation areas and settlement colonies in the New World.

The British conquest of Bengal at Plassey, in June 1757, was one of the most significant developments in the eighteenth century. Plassey indeed laid the foundation of the British empire in India. Bengal was the springboard from which the British spread in different directions and ultimately conquered other parts of India. Hence it is imperative to examine closely the background of and the circumstances leading to the conquest. As I have already analysed some aspects of the question elsewhere, in this paper I shall confine myself to the more crucial ones, especially those raised in recent writings and which, strangely enough, tend to perpetuate the traditional explanation of the British conquest of Bengal.

During the first decade of the Dutch East India Company's existence, it made a number of vain attempts to drive the Portuguese out of their main base in East Africa, Mozambique island. Within a few years, though, the Dutch discovered that they could reach their destinations in the East more quickly by setting a course far to the south of Madagascar. Since they no longer needed to frequent the Mozambique channel, they saw no particular reason to dislodge the Portuguese from its shores. Except for one final Dutch attempt to capture Mozambique island, in 1668, the two imperial powers kept their distance from each other, at least in Africa. The Dutch did not even know the simplest details of the political or economic situation in East Africa, while Portuguese visitors to the Dutch sphere of influence in the Cape Colony were entirely those of transients and traders, particularly in slaves. They were not competitors, and therefore were not attempting to solve the same questions. Nevertheless, the problems with which they were faced on the African mainland were analogous, so that it is possible to make comparisons between their activities.

Dans la perspective de l'histoire du continent africain, le colonialisme européen n'est guère qu'un épisode qui, comme le souligne l'historien nigérien Ajayi, durait dans la plupart des cas moins d'un siècle. Et pourtant, ajoute cette personnalité, la dominance politique européenne et ses prolongements, tels que le christianisme, l'enseignement occidental, les idées politiques et sociales, ont laissé une empreinte durable sur les institutions africaines. De même, la géopolitique a fixé des unités selon lesquelles l'Afrique a été subdivisée, et qui ont en majorité peu changé après la décolonisation. Mais Ajayi rappelle qu'il ne faut sous-estimer les initiatives des Africains, la réaction contre la violation des institutions africaines. La population a souvent su tirer exploiter les conditions nouvelles à son propre profit, soit en collaborant jusqu'à un certain point avec le système, soit en pratiquant une résistance active ou passive couronnée de succès.

I should preface this paper with a cautionary note. It is not intended to parade as a full-fledged scholarly paper bringing new or little known facts. Nor does it aim at novel theories or interpretations. It does not even have its roots in the fascinating details and problems of Luso-Indian history per se. It only wants to propose a somewhat different, although not overly novel, perspective. This perspective is – not surprisingly – an indological one. My starting point is my concern with India's traditions of empire and imperial expansion. Given this concern, it seems quite logical to turn to the Portuguese as well as to the Dutch experience of and tangles with the tradition and practice of empire they obtained in the world of the Indian Ocean, where the subcontinent has always occupied a predominant position. The exercise is the more interesting since the Portuguese, and after them the Dutch, were each in their own way empire builders in their own right. They had to react to the imperial configurations that were coming about at the time of the Portuguese appearance in the Indian waters and that were being consolidated when the Portuguese were followed by their Dutch rivals. The experience and the reactions of both the Dutch and the Portuguese have something to tell us about India, as well as the other way around.

During the last two decades our historical ideas about the Mughal Empire have considerably altered. This change of attitude is due to two scholarly tendencies both of which have directed attention away from the Mughal court centres of Delhi and Agra. In an effort to illuminate the processes of Mughal decline, one approach has aimed to stress the emergence of eighteenth-century successor states which grew vigorously independent, but still remained under the sacrosanct umbrella of Mughal authority. Many studies of these new political configurations have seriously questioned the cliché de l'époque of a highly centralized Mughal polity, which now to have been faced with numerous limitations and ‘inner frontiers’. The disenchanting practice of permanent sedition and betrayal could never live up to the expectations of the Mughal ideal of harmony and legitimate obedience. In contrast to this view from below, another approach has tried to enlarge the scale by analysing the various ways in which India was incorporated into the world economy of the Indian Ocean. From this point of view Mughal India became the central part of a dynamic world system with various interactions and interdependencies between often highly urbanized and commercialized states.

At the close of the nineteenth century, that is on the eve of colonial rule in Igboland, Igbo metal industry was flourishing. Production had attained a high level in the range and the quality of output. The output included agricultural equipment, traps and guns as well as title insignia and ornaments, mosdy made of copper and brass. The demand for die smiths' products were widespread and seemingly insatiable. To serve the need of dieir widely dispersed customers and patrons, Igbo smiths from Abiriba, Agulu Amokwe, Agulu Umana, Awka, and Nkwere undertook regular tours of parts of soudi-eastern Nigeria and even beyond – up to die Niger-Benue confluence area; past die Edo country to Ondo Yorubaland; and to the Bamenda district of die Cameroons. The superiority of Igbo metalworking led, in some of these places, to the demise of the local industry.

The survival of the Spanish empire after the loss of the mainland American colonies is a neglected subject, and no part of it is more neglected than its economic features. General histories of Spain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries rarely touch on overseas matters, although the colonies do occasionally appear centre stage, as in 1868, when the Cuban Creoles rose in rebellion; in 1898, when Spain lost most of her colonies as a result of war with America; in 1921, when the Berber tribes of Northern Morocco defeated the Spanish army; and in 1936, when General Franco and his coconspirators raised the standard of rebellion against the Republic in North Western Africa. But these references are episodic and essentially political, indeed military in nature. There is little structural analysis of what the colonies meant to Spain, least of all in the economic field.