From a historiographical point of view, the incident of 1603 has acquired a special significance in the long and tragic history of Chinese massacres on the Philippines. For, when compared to all the rest of the massacres, this is the best chronicled, not only in Spanish, but also in Chinese sources. Moreover, chronicles in both languages include the same facts and are alike in the ordering of events.

In the historiography of the colonial empires in the nineteenth century, much attention has been paid to the large European powers Britain and France. When the Dutch colonial empire is studied in an international context it is mostly in relation to the British empire. However, little or no attention has been given by scholars to Franco-Dutch colonial relations. This is surprising given the fact that after Britain, France and the Netherlands were the second and third largest colonial empires. Three Franco-Dutch colonial frontiers existed: in South America between French Guyana and Surinam, in the Caribbean on the island of St Martin and in Africa on the Gold Coast. In Asia, where the most important Dutch colony, Indonesia, was located, the French and Dutch did not have neighbouring possessions. Nonetheless, because of its location, Indonesia was highly important for navigation between France and Indo-China. In each of the regions mentioned above, French colonial administrators or private individuals developed plans to extend French territory at the expense of the Dutch: on St Martin from 1843 to 1853, on the Gold Coast from 1867 to 1871, in South America from 1887 to 1891 in Indonesia in 1888. This article will focus on nineteenth century France-Dutch colonial relations and will. address such questions as: what were the motives of the French administrators and how effectively did they exert pressure on the metropolitan government in order to effect their schemes? What was the role of special interest groups? And finally how did the Netherlands react? Being a small European power, how were they able to resist the French?

In the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Dutch economy experienced a fresh take-off. Up-to-date steamships plied the shipping routes to the Netherlands East Indies; in the Netherlands the network of railways and canals was greatly expanded; modern insurance companies, commercial banks and other financial institutions were founded. The resultant growing need for external capital led to a new legal form of financing, the joint-stock or limited liability company, and the 1870s and 1880s saw the establishment of a relatively large number of newly founded companies of this type. Generally speaking, these companies represented business activities with a long-standing tradition in Dutch economic life: trade, banking and transportation. The economic take-off was also reflected in the growing number of joint-stock companies pursuing economic activities in colonial Indonesia, often with their headquarters in the Indonesian Archipelago itself. According to J. à Campo the number of such newly founded corporations was more than hundred for each year after 1896, reaching its highest level in 1910, when no less than 326 were founded.

In the introduction to her work on ‘colonial practice’ in the Ne Indies, the Dutch-American historian Frances Gouda quotes from sation in Harvard between Christopher Hitchens and Simon Schama the latter a renowned historian of the Dutch past. Hitchens posed a to Schama: how was it possible that Dutch culture, though reprc a ‘model of highly evolved religious tolerance and political plurali rently gave birth to a diaspora (he has Indonesia, Surinam and So1 in mind) that is ‘so disfigured by violence and bigotry’? Schama pointed out that Dutch political and religious tolerance was actually predicated on the need to foster profitable trade: it was a practical consideration rather than an idealism. We could add here that so much is almostcommon-sense in the Netherlands. However, Schama pointed out a tendencyof Dutch ‘self-invention’ that first expressed itself in the rise of the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century and then in the rise of Afrikanerdom Africa. As Gouda rightly points out, following Schama's own work, the Dutch Republic rose from a ‘Protean feat of self-creation’ out ofan ‘amorphous assemblage of towns and villages’, in an act resembling parthenogenesis. She then adds that this ‘unique Dutch habit of self-invention may have also taken place elsewhere in the world.

For those historians and anthropologists who study shamanism, Altai represents the ‘motherland’ of this institution. For their inspirations scholars who want to explore ‘classical’ cases of shamanism usually turn to this area, located in south-western Siberia, at the intersection of Russian, Mongolian and Chinese borders. At the same time, many of these scholars, who are concerned with a quest for ‘ideal’ and ‘traditionalist’ shamanism, ignore almost one-hundred years of contacts between native Altaians and the Russian Orthodox mission that considerably affected indigenous culture and ideology. For instance, some Russian anthropologists have stressed that despite Christian activities, natives still clung to their traditional beliefs at the turn of the twentieth century. N.A. Alekseev emphasised the superficial character of native Christianization and stressed the persistence of indigenous religion. In his recent work, Potapov, another prominent Altaian scholar, similarly concluded:

El que se aventurare a echar el dado con la Fortuna, quando se pierda a sý mismo dará la culpa. Esto acustumbravan los antigos como de poca experiencia y que se ariesgavan mucho a ganar o perder, como vemos la poca considerasion que tuvo Alexiandre Magno en cortar el nudo de la cuerda que estava pronosticado que quien le desatasse, sería Señor de la mayor parte del mundo; y él, como no le pudiesse desatar, sacó la espada y cortóle. Susediole tan bien como sy le ubiera desatado. El contrario acontesio a el Rey de Portugal que quiso tan ynpensadamente yr a conquis-tar las Yndias Orientales, bisonho en reynar en el mundo, y más moderno Rey que avia entonces. Pues fue Conde de Lorayna que por su buen servicio le dio el Rey d'Espanha, Affonso, su hija Doña Tarresa y en casamiento a Portugal el año 1100. Y como su sususor Don Juan el Primero comensó a tomar la ynpresa de la Yndia Oriental, donde mandó lo mejor de la tierra, veniendo Cristóval Colombo el año 1490 a su susesor el Rey Don Manoel, mostrándole lo que eran las Yndias Osidentales, la Nueva Amériqua, como él estava enpennado con tanta fuerça en la Yndia Oriental, no pudo acudir a tanto.