In 1899 C.T. van Deventer, a progressive Liberal from the Netherlands East Indies, published an article in the Dutch review De Gids titled ‘Een Eereschuld’ (‘A Debt of Honour’). The Dutch word schuld, however, has two different translations in English: debt and guilt. Van Deventer meant both. Half a century earlier, under the notorious Cultivation System, the Dutch government had extracted hundreds of millions of guilders from Java, amounting to nearly a quarter of all government revenue around the middle of the nineteenth century. According to Van Deventer, this transfer had to a large extent been illegal. Therefore, he argued, the Dutch were largely responsible for the ‘diminishing welfare’ among the Javanese at the turn of the century. They should return the illegally acquired millions and spend them on the material and immaterial welfare of the Javanese.

Au lendemain de la deuxième guerre mondiale, personne n'était en France prêt à envisager une perspective d'indépendance: ni l'opinion publique, ni les partis (pas même le parti communiste), ni le gouvernement. C'est une différence majeure d'avec la Grande-Bretagne: celle-ci avait été de longue date préparée à organiser l'indépendance de ses colonies – à la différence de la France vis-à-vis de l'Algérie. Depuis un demi-siècle elle négociait celle de l'Inde qui aboutit en 1947.

In reconstructing the metropolitan experience of the ‘end of empire’, one of the key questions might be posed as follows: how much did it really hurt? Was it a mere glancing blow to the head, or some more crushing punishment delivered to the chin or solar plexus? How successful – to pursue the boxing metaphor - was the metropole at improvising a ring-craft to come out on top, or at least avert defeat, in the contest of decolonization? This article will assess the extent to which the loss of empire for the British constituted an agonizing and disorienting experience, or whether it was a ‘rite of passage’ accomplished with relative ease and a soothing sense of inevitability.

Although I studied, among other things like linguistics and anthropology, the history of Africa, I cannot be called ‘a real historian’. My view on decolonization, literally throwing away colonization – be it a very slow and sometimes painful process – has been initiated especially by a long experience in different fields. I am one of the rare, still surviving specimen who have lived (Congo 1952-1958) and worked (Railway BCK, Société Générale) in the colonial world, and later participated modestly in the Round Table Conference of 1960 which led to the independence of the Belgian Congo. On the other hand I have undergone, due to my African studies (Ghent 1958-1962), a complete change in knowledge and mentality. Having been involved in the birth of a ‘Vlaamse Vriendenkring’ (Kolwezi, former Katanga) and later in the open and sometimes heated discussions about ‘cultural autonomy’ in Belgium (1962-1965), I finally became in the seventies a fervent defender of international thinking, global education based upon interdisciplinarity and interculturality.

A la suite des dernières grandes opérations dirigées par le général Challe, fin 1959, on peut considérer que l'armée française gagne la guerre d'Algérie sur le terrain. Les barrages aux frontières prouvent leur efficacité. Faute de soutien logistique extérieur, les derniers groupes armés importants de l'Armée de libération nationale sont détruits ou réduits à l'impuissance à l'intérieur des départements algériens. Aussi bien en ville que dans le bled, si l'on excepte quelques actions sporadiques, la souveraineté de la puissance coloniale n'est plus menacée. Mais ce succès reste sans lendemain. Les relents d'une guerre civile franco-française et la réalité des règlements de compte algéro-algériens rendent cette victoire inutile. Celle-ci est d'ailleurs emportée par le flot d'une quadruple défaite, politique, diplomatique, économique et morale, dont les mécanismes, bien connus, sortent du cadre de cette étude.

This article will take the British counter-insurgency campaigns in Palestine during the years 1936–1948 as a main focus of interest. This is because these campaigns presented those involved with complex ethical issues and intractable moral dilemmas. A variety of sources has been consulted; particular attention has been paid to collective memories and reflections recorded in regimental histories, and to individual recollections obtained from interviews with veterans.

As a native of the Netherlands, I have been imbued with an awareness of the history of the Second World War in both Europe and the Pacific ever since I was a child, though I must admit that the Japanese occupation of the Dutch colony in the Dutch East Indies from 1942 to 1945 plays a less important part in my imagination than thefiveyears of German occupation of the Netherlands. My parents and brothers can directly recollect the latter dark period, and I see it vividly in my mind's eye, born (in 1948) and bred as I was in Rotterdam, the city whose centre was razed to the ground by the German air raid in May 1940. The effects of the bombs were still clearly visible during the years in which I was growing up there. Given this double Dutch memory – memory of the hostilities in Europe, and memory of South-East Asia – it hardly seems fortuitous that the Dutch scholar Ian Buruma chose the German and Japanese memory of the Second World War and of the War in the Pacific as the theme for his 1994 publication The Wages of Guilt.