The quincentenary of Columbus' arrival in the New World is now safely past. The spate of timely studies, instant media wisdom, abysmal films, ecological outrage, mediocre drama and politically correct comment is subsiding. Yet ironically enough, despite such outpourings we know little more about the man himself than was known a century ago. His legacy is another matter. The successful crossing of the Atlantic, followed by European conquest and settlement of part of the Americas were eventually to affect most of mankind, though not always in such a manner as publicists in early-modern Castile predicted or as has been alleged by Columbus' modern detractors. But before we turn to this vast and emotive subject it should be emphasized that the Admiral's achievements in a brief, enigmatic and turbulent public career were of an astounding and probably unparallelled order. A man of foreign and obscure birth, he managed to secure employment in race and caste-ridden Spain, and from such unpropitious beginnings went on to prove himself a superlative seaman. He inspired and accomplished four voyages which revealed to Europeans a huge continent of which they were unaware. He discovered more unknown territory than any other navigator. He achieved some understanding of the true size of the Atlantic – and just how much of the globe was covered by water came as a horrible shock to his contemporaries – and, uniquely, he set in motion a staggering sequence of exploration and conquest.

In an essay of extraordinary range and depth, which it is difficult to summarise without distortion, Jacob van Leur is above all making an appeal for the autonomy of Asian history in relation to that of Europe. He was reviewing volume IV by Godée Molsbergen of Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch Indië, which dealt with the eighteenth century. To Molsbergen the activities of the V.O.C. in Asia in the eighteenth century had characteristics distinct from those of the seventeenth-century Company or from what was to follow in Indonesia in the nineteenth century. These characteristics essentially reflected those of the Netherlands during the eighteenth century. Assuming that eighteenth-century European history has unifying characteristics (an assumption that he was inclined to question), Van Leur asked: ‘Is it possible to write the history of Indonesia in the eighteenth century as the history of the Company?’ His answer was a resounding ‘no’. In giving his answer he widened the issue from Indonesia to Asia as a whole. ‘A general view of the whole can only lead to the conclusion that any talk of a European Asia in the eighteenth century is out of the question, that a few European centres of power had been consolidated on a very limited scale, that in general – and here the emphasis should lie – the oriental lands continued to form active factors in the course of events as valid entities, militarily, economically and politically.’ He concluded that diere was an ‘unbroken unity’ of Asian history from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Until well into the nineteenth century Europe and Asia were ‘two equal civilisations developing separately of each other’.

The problem of forced labor has been at the center of much recent historical literature. If anything, the debate has shown that not all coercion has the same social, political, and economic effects upon the coerced laborer and his (or her) employer. Central to this debate is the question why coerced labor is needed, and why certain forms of coerced labor are chosen under certain circumstances. Why do the specific forms of coerced labor change over time and differ across space, and why, even in a given area at a given time, do differing forms of coerced labor exist?

The main force behind abolitionism in England and in the United States was quakerism. The first quakerish attack on slavery was unleashed by William Edmundson in 1676, after he visited Barbados. He attributed the many sins practiced in that island to the existence of slavery. This was a radical departure from the traditional Christian way of looking at slavery. This tradition, consolidated by St. Augustine, held the opposite view, that is, that slavery was a consequence of sin, not the other way around. Sin was, according to St. Augustine, the worst slavery – it turned men into slaves of their own passions. Soon the inversion was complete. Slavery itself became sin.

In the last issue of Itinerario (vol. XVI, 1992/2), Jan Breman of the University of Amsterdam, has published an English translation of his introduction to the third edition of his book Koelies, Planters en Koloniale Politiek. In this article, titled ‘Controversial Views on Writing Colonial History’, Breman tries to deal with some of the ‘more sceptical and sometimes even hostile’ reactions to his book on plantation labour in East Coast Sumatra during the last decades of the nineteenth century. However, his contribution has a more important purport, as he suggests a specific way in which the history of the colonial past should be written, dismissing at the same time the approach to the colonial past undertaken by what he calls the ‘Leiden Revisionist School’.

The Moravian archives are located in the small German town of Herrnhut, not far from the Polish and Czech borders. The archives are a treasure of information on the extensive and fascinating history of missionary work, which took the Protestant missionaries to all continents. The many letters and annual reports which the missionaries sent to Herrnhut also contain valuable and lively ethnographic descriptions.