The concepts of war and peace are not as simple as they appear at first glance. Closer scrutiny reveals that reality cannot be reduced to the simple dichotomy expressed by this pair of words. There have after all been wars which were never declared and periods of peace which did not follow peace treaties. Yet this made them no less real. Moreover some acts of war were described euphemistically as ‘punitive expeditions’, ‘punishment raids’, or ‘police operations’ while others were described pejoratively as ‘terrorism’, ‘banditry’, and ‘piracy’. There have been wars which officially lasted seven, nine, thirty, eighty andeven onehundred years although theactual fighting took place within a much shorter period. Conversely there have also been eras of peace which were in fact no more than a truce extending over a number of years. In fact the concepts are so elastic that not only in George Orwell's frightening Newspeak but also in ordinary English one can say that “Waris Peace” if only one adds two adjectives: cold waris armed peace.

Après la lecture du passionnant ouvrage d'Albert Pitot “T'Eyland Mauritius” (Port-Louis, Ile Maurice, 1905), j'avais relevé la mention d'un naufrage peu banal survenu sur la côte est de l'Ile Maurice en Janvier 1702: celui du fameux pirate anglais John Bowen. D'après Pitot, le naufrage était survenu sur l'îlot des Roches, un écueil situé à environ deux kilomètres du rivage derrière la barriére de corail.

From 20 December, 1979 to 1 March, 1980 in the Royal Picture Gallery the Nauritshuis there was an exhibition devoted to Johan Maurits van Nassau-Siegen (1604 – 1679). This learned officer was from 1636 to 1644 Governor of that part of Brazil conquered by the Dutch West India Company. Among his entourage were two painters, Frans Post and Albert Eckhout, as well as the Doctor Willera Piso and the German naturalist Georg Markgraf. During their stay in the colony the artists depicted the flora, fauna and people of the colony, while the scientists researched and classified the natural world. Johan Maurits made a collection of naturalia and artificiaiia in his palace Vrijburg in Recife, had an Observatory built there and laid out a zoological garden. This artistic and scientific reconnaissance of Brazil was the main theme of the exhibition.

In India under the English East India Company, it was said: “Necessity is the mother of invention and the father of the Eurasian”. This saying is based on the widespread belief that, during the first centuries of their presence in Asia, European men were to a large extent dependent on “non-white” women for their sexual contacts. The character of these early colonial settlements is therefore often described as non-European. Their population is characterised as a melting-pot of ethnic groups, dependent on the uneuropean institution of slavery. The cultural values this entailed were far from those of the mother countries, certainly not those of the (Calvinist) Netherlands.

In the past five or six years crisis has settled upon Southeast Asian studies in the United States, and among those close to the field professionally it is common to blame the Vietnam conflict and related post-war mentality, the so-called ‘Vietnam syndrome’, for this unhappy circumstance. Thegeneral atmosphere in the United States at the present time makes it difficult to conclude otherwise. We live, on theonehand, ina time of forgetting, when small-town mayors remark, ‘Vietnam? I can't think of anything that concerns me less,’ and profes-sors speak bookishly butnota great deal more eloquently of ‘premeditated amnesia.’ On the other hand, we also come into daily contact with what in large part arethelong-term results of ourVietnam involvement: a highly inflationary economy, confusion in foreign affairs, lingering social and political malaise, and a controversial refugee policy. Little wonder that the vast majority of Americans, for whom the words ‘Southeast Asia’ have come to mean simply Vietnam and possibly Cambodia, prefer to ignore the entire region as much as possible and fortherest seek solace ina feweasy myths and characterizations.