Millenarian movements appeared in a number of European countries during the early modern era, but only in Portugal are any of them known to have manifested themselves in a colonial empire. In fact, one form, known as Sebastianism, persisted in Brazil longer than it did in the metropolis and even outlived the colony's independence in 1822. This article, however, does not concern itself with the belief that King Sebastiāo would return miraculously from the battlefield of El Ksar-el-Kebir to rule over his people and indeed all Europeans for a thousand years – a superstition already known well enough to Iberianists and to historians of witchcraft and the occult. Instead, it will deal with something much less familiar.

The comment in the title of this article was made by James I after having been shown a ‘long scrole of fyne paper’, probably a Japanese almanac, and an account of the estates and revenues of the daimyo ‘most of them equally or exceeding the revenues of the greatest princes of Christendom’, and a letter, all of which had been sent by Richard Cocks, head of the English East India Company's factory at Hirado during its entire existence from 1613 to 1623. Cocks's letter and the two enclosures had been sent to his patron, the then Keeper of the Records, Sir Thomas Wilson, who had shown the letter to James with a covering note stating that he had received it ‘from the most remote part of the world’. The letter describes, in considerable and acutely observed detail, the new capital of the Tokugawa shogunate, Edo, the shogun's magnificent retinue as he led a falcon-hunting party (hunting was a pastime he had in common with the British monarch), the great daibutsu of Kamakura, the sights of Kyoto, including Sanjusangendo, and recent political developments relating to the banishment of the Jesuits and friars. Wilson, rather obsequiously, felt that the letters, written in January 1617, ‘were a good recreation for Your Majesty (if you had any idle hours)’ and declared that ‘neither our cosmographers nor other writers have given us true relation of the greatness of the princes of those parts’. But James could ‘not be induced to believe’ what was written, and dismissed the letter as ‘the loudest lies that ever [he] heard of.

Until fairly recently, histories of European imperial expansion in the Indian Ocean region have been written largely in terms of the endeavours of Europeans in creating and controlling empire. Only in the last couple of decades has recognition been given slowly to the role of the indigenous economic and political compradors, both large and small, who were vital to the evolution and sustenance of European colonial empires.

Until quite recently India used to be depicted as an area of developmental darkness, a pool of mute tradition, stubborn stagnation and general failure. To be sure, it had known a glorious past, but that made the contemporary picture even more dismal. It can not be said that India's propaganda efforts have done much to dispel this picture. In the popular imagination it remains a country of marvels – mostly of the past – and monstrosities determining the present. So we seem to stay with the zoo of wonders and monsters that the name of India has evoked since antiquity. However, there are now signs of a weather change. It has become clear that present-day India can boast significant achievements in a number of important fields such as food production, industry, export trade, science and technology. Last but not least, the maintenance of civil liberties - which according to some observers should have properly fallen victim to India's undeniable problems already long ago – is a remarkable and to many a puzzling feature. But these same liberties have in no small measure helped to confirm the received image by highlighting India's problems and failures, which less liberal regimes would hide from the public eye. At any rate, there is perhaps no third world country that is known, warts and all, in such profuse statistical details and yet is so little understood.

Decolonization has finished. It definitely belongs to the past, but somehow it has refused to become history. A great deal has already been written on this subject, and yet it seems that there is little to say about it. After the Second World War, the colonized countries wanted to become independent, struggled with their oppressors and threw off the yoke of colonial rule. Within a few years they all achieved their aim. That is the song that has now already been sung for about thirty years, in various keys, it is true, but with a remarkable consistency of tune and melody. The entire colonial history seems to have been no more than a prologue to an inevitable and triumphant independence. A new Whig interpretation of history has come into being.