There is an interesting and long-standing controversy over the applicability of the vent-for-surplus model to the growth of the Gold Coast cocoa industry around the turn of the century. This debate has important implications both for African economic history and for current issues of resource allocation in developing countries. Our paper attempts to clarify the elements of the debate by applying to each ele-ment a production-possibilities model, using historical evidence to verify where possible the validity of the analysis.

I have a hidden admiration for those with the chutzpah to write books in the tradition of Up Against It in Wanga-Wanga Land. Thus I greeted with enthusiasm the invitation of this journal's editors to recount ina light-hearted way the experiences of my fieldwork in the Maldive Islands during January, 1982.

The emergence of modern capitalism in Europe between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries has been a major topic of historical research and interpretation for many years. Among the current generation of historians there has been an ex,-plosion of interest in the relationship between the growth of capitalism and the expansion of Europe in the early modern era. The interpretive work of Wallerstein and Braudel and the detailed research of a host of others have added immensely to our knowledge of this relationship. They have led many historians to break away from the conceptual frameworks traditionally employed to explain both pre-industrial capitalism and European expansion.

The investigation of a shipwreck must extend beyond the uniqueness of the single event in order to have interpretative value for social scientists. One or even several shipwrecks will not necessarily represent a universe. Since statistically significant numbers of shipwrecks may never be studied, methods of inquiry must be devised where quantity is not a prime concern. When we noted the discrepancy between cargoes listed on ships manifests and cargoes actually recovered from shipwrecks of the Spanish Colonial period, the challenge was to determine where and under what circumstances contraband behavior occurred and might be predicted.

L'histoire des femmes, jusqu'à aujourd'hui, s'est presque uniqueraent intéressée aux femmes du monde occidental.

En histoire coloniale, le viricentrisme est pratiquement dominant. Le but de cette communication est de rompre ce double isolement. A cet effet nous proposerons d'abord un aperçu des courants s'exerçant depuis dix ans dans l'his-toire des femmes; dans la seconde partie seront traités dif-férents thèmes de l'histoire des femmes en relation avec des données provenant de recherches effectuées sur la position de la femme javanaise dans I'agriculture pendant la période coloniale.