Following the influential volumes of Benedict Anderson (Imagined communities) and Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (The invention of tradition), a number of recent publications have moved away from the more conventional focus on political nationalism to highlight the cultural expressions of national identities in East Asian history. From the manipulation of physical objects like flags, uniforms and monuments to symbolically represent the nation, to the discursive invention of identities in nationalist ideologies, cultural nationalism as an object of historical investigation has come into vogue. The emphasis on the interpretation of symbols like the Great Wall and the Yellow River no doubt contributes to our understanding of Chinese cultural history, but can it really account for the deeper changes wrought by the spread of nationalism? As I have pointed out elsewhere, the racialization of nationalist identities, with its myths of origins, ideologies of blood and narratives of descent, for instance, has been of great importance in China and remains significant to this day. Instead of explaining how ‘the Chinese’ have invented cultural symbols that represent the nation, it might be more fruitful to deconstruct the notion of ‘Chineseness’ itself as a nationalist invention that can be dated back to the first half of this century.

When Adriaen van der Donck wrote A Description of the New Netherlands in 1655, he rightly pointed to Henry Hudson's 1609 voyage and discovery as the foundation of Dutch claims to the North American territory. Presumably arguing on the basis of the right of first discovery, he proposed that local Indian lore supported the fact that the Dutch-employed Englishman had been the first to discover and explore the Hudson River. As a settler in New Netherland, Van der Donck had often heard the native inhabitants claim that before Hudson came they had never seen such a thing as a European ship.

If the average person was asked what the name New Netherland brought to mind, quite likely the response would be the fur trade. And to a great degree they would be right in making that association. In the years following Henry Hudson's exploration in 1609 of the river that eventually bore his name and before the founding of the West India Company in 1621, Dutch trading companies and private traders sailed to the New World for the sole purpose of exploiting the fur trade.

In analysing the history of the Portuguese expansion, it is tempting to use purely economic factors. This perspective minimizes two non-economic problems confronting Portuguese society at the beginning of the fifteenth century: on the one hand the general cohesion of Portuguese society, which could only be brought about by the noble and military élites, and on the other the problem of national independence, which at the time was under threat from Castile. In fact, these problems persisted, alongside others that were generated by the very solution that was found for them, namely by overseas expansion. The capture of Ceuta in 1415 was an ingenious attempt to overcome these problems in one go. Due to their military weakness, it had been impossible for the Portuguese elites to take part in the conquest of Granada. The project of Ceuta did permit territorial growth. Besides, it mobilized the nation ideologically, thus reinforcing its identity without threatening the unity of the Respublica Christiana.

I first came upon Henry Davison Love's Vestiges of Old Madras a decade ago in The Hague. The four volumes were published at London in 1913 and have been very lately reprinted by the Oriental Books Reprint Corporation of Delhi. The dull cloth bindings of the Indian edition, however, hardly conjure the thrill I experienced the first time I watched the original volumes heave into view on the book conveyor of the Royal Library. Probably no one had checked them out for over fifty years, and they sparkled pristinely, as though they had been delivered from a time warp. Golden letters embellished on ivory-coloured boards flashed richly out from maroon and black mouldings decorated with slender urns and caryatids. How much we miss today for not having editions like that!