In 1949, after a four-year long armed struggle, Indonesia finally achieved effective control over its entire territory, with the exception of West Irian (now Papua). Nevertheless, the young nation faced serious political and economic problems. The Japanese occupation and the long fight against the Dutch had seriously impoverished the Indonesian people. The new government also faced armed insurrections and secessionist movements in various regions such as Aceh, West Java, South Sulawesi, and the Moluccas, which threatened the country's territorial integrity. In late January 1950, scarcely one month after the transfer of sovereignty, Raymond Westerling (a rogue member of the Dutch army) along with a few hundred troops under his command, carried out an audacious but quixotic plan to occupy Bandung and Jakarta. Although this plan immediately failed, it increased the sense of vulnerability of the Indonesian government.

In Spain's last colony, Western Sahara, both efforts by the colonial power to stimulate development and the negative impacts of colonisation intensified between the end of the Ifni-Sahara War (1957–58) and the Spanish withdrawal in 1975. Spanish economical and geopolitical interests triggered an important industrial and urban development of the territory. Cities such as Laayoune, Villa Cisneros, Smara, and the Bou Craa phosphate deposits were to showcase Spanish modernising colonial policies.

However, the effects of war, the control of colonial frontiers, and severe droughts during the 1960s strongly affected Sahrawi society. In this context, the Spanish colonial state developed new forms of control over the Sahrawi population, which included the progressive (forced) settling of nomadic people around military posts and Spanish cities, bringing about the adoption of new economic paradigms. Not only did the Francoist government distribute subsidies, both money and goods; it furthermore implemented policies aimed at controlling the Sahrawi way of life, particularly in the areas of hygiene, education, and gender relations. The essay analyses these “carrot-and-stick” strategies at the intersection of colonial control and forced sedentarisation with regard to the implementation of a market-oriented economy in Western Sahara.

These concluding reflections assess how the contributors to this special issue intervene in key assumptions that shape the current field of archival studies. As the “archival turn” gains ground, forms of Euro- and state-centrism reappear in scholarship otherwise innovative in its attention to the textual remnants of the past. Here, instead, we explore the methodological stakes involved in defining both the “archive” and the historical power brokers who created and preserved a documentary record in pursuit of their varied social, cultural, economic, and political projects. The essay points to the resurgence of culturalist and civilisational indices for comparative archivistics, and follows the arguments collected in this issue to assert by contrast the often uneven and uneasy regional, administrative, and procedural definitions at work within preserved records. Identifying “mobility” as both a methodological tactic and a historical process, this conclusion presents a fluid rather than fixed textual landscape and presents an alternative frame for investigating preservationist practices.

This paper explores the multi-faceted nature of the spiritual geopolitics that shaped Cromwellian foreign policy in relation to the Western Design of 1654-5. It stresses the central importance of Protestant religion as a motivating force and argues that the failure of the Design was interpreted in religious terms just as much as its original aims had been. A number of motives combined to drive Cromwell into launching the Western Design. These included: the ‘Elizabethan’ tradition of English anti-Spanish policy; the pursuit of England’s imperial/colonial interests in the Caribbean; an attempt to strengthen England financially by weakening the Spanish economy; the search for security within Europe by allying with France against Spain; and, underpinning all these, the launching of a Protestant crusade against a power that Cromwell regarded as England’s ‘providential enemy’. The failure of the Design in the summer of 1655 was perceived in similarly religious terms. Just as recent scholarship on Britain’s internal conflicts of the 1640s has emphasised the central role of religion and its inseparability from other issues, so the same phenomenon is evident not only in the motives for the Western Design but also in how its defeat was perceived and interpreted.

As the first European printed image of the Aztec capital, the first European map of the Gulf of Mexico, and the first map to use the names Florida and Yucatan, the 1524 map of Tenochtitlan from Cortes’ second and third letter earned a place in the history of cartography (Figure I). This map, published in Nuremberg to accompany the Latin edition, is commonly mentioned in histories of cartography, but scholarship about this map is relatively general, with the exception of a few historians’ efforts. The prevailing scholarship revolves around its possible authorship, while issues of the map's function and cultural meaning within visual culture are largely missing. In fact, J. Brian Harley notes that the latter type of analysis is rather scarce in most cartographic histories:

What is missing in the history of cartographic literature are studies of the theoretical frameworks which might be appropriate for the reconstruction of such meaning in maps.

Although French chartered companies operating on the west coast of Africa and in India followed a similar model of organization, their liquidation processes differed depending of the area of their monopoly. As well as exploring the reasons for the distinction between these two regions of exclusive trade, this article demonstrates that the differing liquidation processes negatively impacted company shareholders in the two regions. Taking the perspective of shareholders farther, it explores the case of a specific investor and the informal economic profits he benefitted from. This approach contributes to deepening our understanding of the French early modern companies’ bankruptcies by examining informal aspects that would not be readily visible from an exclusively institutional point of view.

The Dutch loss of Brazil in 1654 favoured the resettlement of Dutch merchants along the Wild Coast and in the Lesser Antilles and the establishment of new colonies. Cayenne Island was one of them. One WIC patent was handed to Jan Claes Langedijck, who settled at the former French fort of Cépérou, and another patent was given to David Nassy, who settled in the Anse de Rémire, situated at the opposite part of the former island. Both colonies were taken by the French in May 1664 as part of the imperial French expansion under King Louis XIV and Jean-Baptist Colbert. It is argued here that the main French goal was to gain control of the sugar plantations of the Sephardic community located there, and, to a lesser extent, the much-desired territorial control of this region as proposed by the newly established French West India Company. The Dutch were aware of the attack, but could not intervene as it was already too late to send support to the poorly defended Cayenne colony. Both parties negotiated the take-over and the majority of the Dutch settlers stayed under French rule, as was suggested by the Dutch government and hoped for by the French.

Before embarking on our exploration a word of caution is in order. The following is not meant to be a full-fledged scholarly paper pulling out all the available evidence. All it intends to do is to throw out a couple of suggestions which hopefully may give rise to discussion. It is, therefore, an unabashed exercise in speculation. Also it will endeavour to compress within the compass of a brief paper complicated and diverging developments taking place during a period of more than a thousand years over a diverse and widely stretched area. At best it may serve as an essay in the sense of a speculative ‘attempt’; in short, a discussion piece. It arose from previous discussions with students and colleagues, especially with Andre Wink, who may recognise a blurred reflection of their own ideas.

To write a comparative study on so broad a scale as colonial exploitation systems in two such very different countries as Java and India would be an enormous task. A more practical approach would be to select a single aspect of the Dutch system on Java for study, and compare this same feature in the context of the British colony. And, conversely, to isolate a particular facet of British practice in India and compare it to Dutch usage on Java, asking.how the systems worked or did not work as they did over a given span of time.

During the last two decades our historical ideas about the Mughal Empire have considerably altered. This change of attitude is due to two scholarly tendencies both of which have directed attention away from the Mughal court centres of Delhi and Agra. In an effort to illuminate the processes of Mughal decline, one approach has aimed to stress the emergence of eighteenth-century successor states which grew vigorously independent, but still remained under the sacrosanct umbrella of Mughal authority. Many studies of these new political configurations have seriously questioned the cliché de l'époque of a highly centralized Mughal polity, which now to have been faced with numerous limitations and ‘inner frontiers’. The disenchanting practice of permanent sedition and betrayal could never live up to the expectations of the Mughal ideal of harmony and legitimate obedience. In contrast to this view from below, another approach has tried to enlarge the scale by analysing the various ways in which India was incorporated into the world economy of the Indian Ocean. From this point of view Mughal India became the central part of a dynamic world system with various interactions and interdependencies between often highly urbanized and commercialized states.

The drive towards the abolition of the slave trade at the beginning of the 19th century was not effective until the 1850s. It was perhaps the only migratory intercontinental movement in history which came to a complete stop because of political pressures in spite of the fact that neither the supply nor the demand for African slaves had disappeared.

Because of the continuing demand for bonded labour in some of the plantation areas in the New World (notably the Guiana's, Trinidad, Cuba and Brazil) and because of a new demand for bonded labour in the developing sugar and mining industries in Mauritius, Réunion, Queensland (Australia), Natal (South Africa), the Fiji-islands and Hawaii an international search for ‘newslaves’ started.

In early 1787, as American vessels flooded the Gold Coast with rum and as the French worked to extend their coastal position, the Cape Coast Castle governor Thomas Price, reported that the Fante, England's coastal allies, ‘are too politic a people, and too well acquainted with their own interests, ever to wish to confine their trade to one nation’. Price's summation of the issues affecting Anglo-Fante relations on the late eighteenth-century Gold Coast (modern Ghana) provides the foundation for this article. This article contributes to West African coastal historiography in that it examines the relationship between the Gold Coast and the Atlantic World through the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The article expands upon this foundation by narrowing the focus to one Gold Coast trade/administrative enclave. It examines the enclave during a period of change, the 1770s to the early 1800s that culminated in radical reconstruction of coastal relations. The article utilises the Fetu city of Cape Coast, also the administrative centre for England's Company of Merchants Trading to Africa (hereafter CMTA), to examine the relationship between Atlantic (external) and coastal (internal) factors within an African trade enclave. To accomplish this, it eliminates the dichotomy that exists between exploring general coastal trends within a diverse coastal region. This raises a question concerning the consequence of these general trends upon diverse states, cultures and peoples. Do the general trends affect each group similarly or differently and, if so, why? The focus upon one Gold Coast enclave expands our understanding of the consequences caused by the interaction of Atlantic and coastal factors.

In the interwar period, a system for the movement of men, arms, and printed matter developed into a political network that in imperial sources came to be called the “lascar system.” Lascars were Indian seamen who worked for British and international merchant shipping companies and had contacts with trade unionists, communists, anarchists, and other politically active parties across the world—in particular in port towns such as Hamburg, Antwerp and Marseilles. They became key players in the politics of the interwar world, and especially in a still-colonised India, which was subject to various censorship regulations and a panoply of repressive legislation. A number of lascars became crucial in the emerging communist movement and in trade union politics. In a world of increasingly stringent border controls, restrictions on the movement of people, and paranoia about political radicalism and its ability to “infect” new areas, the lascars' mobility became an asset to political movements and a source of anxiety for states.

Given this, it is surprising that the literature on lascars seldom, if ever, addresses the question of their political activities. This essay takes some steps in that direction, focusing on the 1920s, when the “lascar system” took shape. “Lascar” is of course a name given to a profession, not an identity or a political ideology; and yet the importance of this profession in the politics of the early twentieth century, and of the interwar period in particular, is far too important to ignore or treat as mere coincidence.

This article discusses the ways in which newsprint allowed local contributors and readers in colonial settings to think across gender, race, and other core colonial subject-positions. It also asks about the extent to which the central role of men in controlling local print networks has implications for how we conceptualise “publics” and “public spheres” in the colonial era.

This paper introduces an innovative method applied to global (economic) history using the tools of digital humanities through the design and development of the GECEM Project Database (www.gecem.eu; www.gecemdatabase.eu). This novel database goes beyond the static Excel files frequently used by conventional scholarship in early modern history studies to mine new historical data through a bottom-up process and analyse the global circulation of goods, consumer behaviour, and trade networks in early modern China and Europe. Macau and Marseille, as strategic entrepôts for the redistribution of goods, serve as the main case study. This research is framed within a polycentric approach to analyse the connectivity of south Chinese and European markets with trade zones of Spain, France, South America, and the Pacific.

As historians, living in the contemporary world, we ask and are asked about the causes of underdevelopment. And, as most of the former colonies belong today to the underdeveloped countries of the Third World, we are confronted with the question as to what importance the colonial era plays in the history of these countries. There is a consensus that the history of colonialism can only be meaningful approached in the broader spectrum of underdevelopment and the specific problems of the Third World. There is no satisfaction in retreatingto the ostensibly objective approach of the historian and wanting tolimit ourselves in showing how colonialism came into being, what administrative structures arose, what economic policies were followed and finally how the colonized revolted and the process of decolonization got under way. Society will simply not allow us to do so. Equally, if not more important, is the question regarding the impact of colonialism on the colonized societies and how far it may be held responsible for the existing structures of underdevelopment.

In Tapanuli, a province in western Sumatra, economic expansion in the late colonial period was frustrated by the problems of transportation in its mountainous and inaccessible terrain. In 1921, Resident F.C. Vorstman of Tapanuli stated in his succession report: ‘The construction of main roads is one of the most powerful means to improve economically backward regions’. This statement is not very surprising in itself, but it does reveal that some government officials had a clear idea of the impediments of economic development in the Outer Islands of colonial Indonesia, and how these obstacles could be overcome. As I will argue in this contribution, the development of infrastructure was one of the major factors in a process of increasing economic integration in Indonesia in the late colonial period. Moreover, infrastructural improvements were more significant in stimulating national economic development than the government policies under the Ethical Policy.

Until recently, when it ceased to be an important pastime, scholars engaged in debate over the motives behind, and the nature of, European imperial enterprise in the colonial territories of Africa. Opinion was divided between those who stressed the altruistic goals and the positive impact of the European ‘civilising’ mission in Africa and others who highlighted the ulterior motives behind, and the uncomplimentary features of, colonial rule. One issue in contention as far as British imperialism was concerned, was the policy of ‘free trade’ in the colonies. It was held by some that Britain operated the ‘imperialism of Free Trade’, that is, it hid under the espousal of that policy in order to acquire colonies and to gain advantage over its rivals in the contest for colonial trade. On the other hand, much was made of Britain's ‘open door’ policy in its colonies as contrasted with the French, for example, who were for the most part protectionists. Yet, as a number of studies have shown, the British were no less protectionist given certain circumstances, and this case study provides further examples of this tendency in inter-war Nigeria. To place the discussion in a proper context, we shall clarify the nature of the fiscal system in British colonies, for this was the linchpin of the administration and the key to understanding economic policy.

Among the most entrenched criticisms of the record of European colonial rule in Africa is that it discouraged, or actively obstructed, the emergence of diversified colonial and post-colonial economies. Specifically, it is normally argued, the colonial state failed to create the climate in which industrialisation might have been possible. The two basic explanations advanced for this policy of neglect were a desire to ensure that the colonies continued to provide the metropolitan economies with a steady supply of desirable commodities, and a concern to protect the market share of metropolitan exporters. Critics of the colonial legacy, across the ideological spectrum, have often assumed that ‘development’ was a condition which could only be achieved through the process of industrialisation, and that specialisation in commodity production for export could not have been in the colonies' long-term interests. Moreover, in the late colonial period, industrialisation had come to be seen by many as a measure of a state's effective autonomy and economic ‘maturity’, as witnessed by the sustained attempts by many former African colonies to promote their own industrial sectors, often with substantial state involvement or assistance. While it cannot dispute the obvious fact that in most of late colonial Africa, industrialisation was negligible, this paper will offer a refinement of conventional assumptions about the colonial state's attitudes towards this controversial topic. Drawing on examples from British Africa, particularly that pioneer of decolonisation, West Africa, and focusing on the unusually fertile period in colonial policy formation from the late 1930s until the early 1950s, it will suggest that the British colonial state attempted, for the first time, to evolve a coherent and progressive policy on encouraging colonial industrial development.