Portuguese trade and society in China and the South China Sea, c. 1630–1753, is a topic that attracts little interest among European Expansion and East-Southeast Asian historians. This is unfortunate, since a great deal may be learned about early Sino and Southeast Asian-European relations by analysing Portuguese society in Macao and its diplomatic and economic relations with the Ming-Ch'ing dynasties and with the states within and bordering the South China Sea trading complex. Previous research was preoccupied with the nature of European colonial rivalry and comparisons between differing colonial systems; lamentably, it demonstrated litte interest in examining in detail the institutions of Portuguese society in Macao and their interactions with European and Asian society in a regional context. My research in this field began while an undergraduate honours student at Stanford University in 1971, was stimulated while a Master's degree student in Southeast Asian Area studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies in 1976, and should be completed in early 1980 when submitted as a doctoral dissertation at Trinity College, Cambridge University.

Archaeology has long been the handmaiden of classical historians, but as some recent articles by Rudy Kousbroek in the Dutch newspaper, N.R.C.-Handelsblad have shown, colonial water towers built only 50 years ago n i Sumatra now look as if they might have fed the Baths of Caracalla. Hence, the time has obviously come for the classicists to share their maiden with us. Some of our readers are already engaged in archaeology, both on land and on the sea, and we expect to bring you frequent articles on the subject. The first three follow.

It is customary in the Netherlands to celebrate just about any happy occasion with a speech and a glass of sherry or genever. So when our first volume of essays, Expansion and Reaction, came off press in December, 1977, we invited our friends in the vicinity to hear the then Minister of Development Cooperation J.P.Pronk. We have chosen to print his remarks because they illustrate from what viewpoint government officials view our activities. Pronk is now Professor at the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague and M.P. for the Dutch Labour Party.

In the spring of 1979 professor Chusiri Chamaraman passed through Leiden and remarks on archaeological research opportunities in Thailand sounded so interesting that we asked her for an article. The following is her reply:

Some three months ago Leonard Blussé asked me to write something about my research for ‘Itinerario’ but so many things have intervened that I have not even had much opportunity either to do research or to write about it. All I can do here is to piece together various items of possible interest concerning that research and hope that it might be of some use to Itinerario readers.

Amsterdam' Rijksmuseum is world famous for its unsurpassable collection of 17th century Dutch paintings, but usually only the Dutch know that it has another dimension: that of a national historical repository. For example, every schoolboy knows (and every Englishman tries to forget) one permanent display: the ornate stern of the English flagship The Royal Charles, captured by Admiral de Ruyter in the Medway. The museum, however, is now striving to give history another, less trophyoriented dimension, as Assistant Curator Bas Kist, one of our readers, explains below.Kist, who recently spent several months digging up remains of the 17th century Smoorburgh settlement of Dutch whalers on Spitsbergen, is now in the final stages of proposing an exhibit of finds from the wrecks of Dutch East Indiamen. He stresses, by the way, that his observations are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of his employers.

The colonial states of Europe have left behind a record of their past not only in the documents relating to their overseas adventures but also in the objects they discarded or left behind. Although archaeology is usually thought of as a discipline concerned primarily with prehistory and ancient high civilizations, it is also useful in investigating the relatively recent expansion of European settlement, a process about which much is still unknown (1). In America archaeology has often been successfully employed in studying colonial societies in all stages of their development (2). Archaeology's ability to add to our knowledge about the past is based upon the extent to which its methodology can extract information comparable to that commonly gleaned from documentary sources. It would please me greatly if historians who had hitherto worked only with documents would begin to consider whether or not there exist archaeological possibilities in their study fields; though I realize that this could not be so in every instance.