A couple of generations ago the historical process known as “the expansion of Europe” was regarded as a blessing for the whole human race. This, at least, was the majority view. Nationalists in the colonies held contrary opinions, hut what they said carried little weight in Europe. For four hundred years, the historians of the age of classical imperialism believed, Europe had been the giver, the colonial world the receiver. The mother-lands had “wrestled with the task of sharing their own civilization with the backward races of the globe”. A good start had been made, but there was much still to be done, and the duty of the colonized peoples was plain: they must continue to serve their apprenticeship until such time as they were ready to join the family of nations. Europe alone held the keys to law and order, advanced technology, efficiency in government, and the potential for progress. In its hand lay the future of the world. In the imperial age, few European historians, even those opposed to imperialism, doubted that the colonies would be ruled for a long time, perhaps indefinitely, by Europe.

When it came to innovating ad hoc imperial structures in what the late John H. Parry called ‘The Age of Reconnaissance’, no European power could hold a candle to Portugal. It had one arrangement for the Atlantic islands, a modification of this pattern for Brazil; then it had another scheme for the African west coast and a different one for the Estado da India Oriental (which included the African east coast). Finally, as is known well enough, its relations with Macao and the Portuguese stations in Japan were again unique. Thus it was not particularly surprising to me when I discovered recently that besides all these, there was still another variant which nobody appears to have realized, one which fell somewhere between semi-rule and no rule at all. This was in the Bay of Bengal, and I only became aware of its special nature three years ago when I read of runaway soldados from Goa escaping to that region in the Reformação da Milicia e Governo da India of Francisco Rodrigues da Sil-veira. Later I visited Mylapore and became interested in the Indian east coast. Slowly, I began piecing the remarkable story together of how the entire bay area must be classified as a separate Portuguese colonial genus.

At the time of conquest, one of the major problems facing the French colonial administration was the massive number of slaves in West Africa. In some districts, they were as much as three fourths of the population. Early on, the slave trade was restricted. Slavery itself was a more complex problem. The administration wanted to ignore or, at best, regulate it, but from the first, the issue threatened embarrassment at home and social conflict in the colonies. The French depended on slave-owning elites to govern West Africa. The desire to protect their control over their slaves often tied these elites to the French. Slavery could not exist without the support of the state, but few colonial administrations dependent on metropolitan parliaments for their budgets could admit that openly. Local administrators were very hostile to any proposal to act against slavery, probably because they feared for their own safety. Both continuing enslavement and the frequent flight of slaves posed problems.

Historical studies of Christian missionaries in Africa have not prospered in recent years. The Journal of African History, which printed six articles on missionaries during the first ten years of its existence, has only printed two articles on the subject in the course of the last ten years. Only one book on missionaries has been published by a major university press in Britain or America since 1972. Very occasionally articles about missionaries appear in the International Journal of African Historical Studies and African Affairs but never in the Canadian Journal of African Studies or the Journal of Modern African Studies.

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.