At the beginning of the current academic year (1982–1983) the department of Chinese Studies at Leiden University initiated a research project on the early (17th century) Jesuit mission in China and the Chinese reactions to it.

About one-seventh of the world population lives in South Asia and about one-seventh of this concentrated human mass belongs to the so-called harijans or untouchables. Economically exploited and socially despised, this minority — which actually contains well over 85 million people — has been relegated to the lower fringes of Hindu society. With occupations like sweeping, tanning, midwifery etc. permanently assigned to them, their degradation is further reinforced by the stigma of ritual pollution, which renders them unfit for social contact: untouchable.

The death of G.A.G.P. van der Capellen, ex-Governor-General of the Netherlands East Indies is shrouded in tragedy. In March 1848 he was afflicted by mental illness, which soon developed into a serious form of insanity. Van der Capellen, however, did not suffer for long, as he died on April 10th of the same year. A fact which, out of consideration, was not revealed at the time. Later still the explanation was offered that Van der Capellen had committed suicide “because his own financial affairs were in a muddle too”. Leaving aside the question of what were actually the circumstances of his insanity and death, it should at any rate be regarded as typical that Van der Capellen was persecuted with the financial mismanagement in the Netherlands East Indies up to the very hour of his death. Apart from the outbreak of the Java War nothing so much marked his ten-year term of office as the large deficit at its conclusion.

In December 1914 some officers of the Netherlands-Indies army came together in the Concordia Club in Malang to discuss the desirability of founding an officer's society. The Malangsche Comité sent a circular to all their fellow officers propounding the establishment of an officers' society. They considered that “the present Great War will, without doubt, result in great and radical changes” and argued that the army felt itself neglected and that, the more united the officers' corps, the better support it could give the government in the turbulent times ahead. This call was heeded, the Vereeniging was established and the Malangsche Comité declared itself dissolved.

If historians nowadays still talk of “colonial history” they do so because they are at a loss for an adequate term which would express the new quality this discipline has assumed in the course of decolonization. Rudolf von Albertini has edited a volume which presents a number of articles relevant to this problem. In his introduction he emphasizes the departure from the traditional view of overseas empire-building in which only the creative genius of European colonial powers was considered of historical interest — amidst a comparatively static scenery of exotic opacity. He draws attention to the ever growing shift towards a history of the peoples of the Third World which — whether of national or more regional orientation — shows an increasing concern for questions of social and economic history and draws on the latest findings of social and cultural anthropology, thus limiting Europe's role overseas in a decisive way. European worlddominance, once an epoch—making phenomenon, is reduced to a short—term period of alien rule over the majority of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America. Albertini takes account of this change, not only in the selection of the contributions to his volume, but its title reflects this change as well: it is a “new colonial history” that he presents, and Albertini gives us to understand that by this he is not concerned with the periodization of colonial history, but rather with the new approaches in this field since the end of the Second World War.