Although national development of the developing countries involves much more than economic development alone, the overwhelming majority of these countries put a high priority on economic development, looking upon it as the best way to move from poverty ot material affluence. For this reason this paper will be mainly concerned with theimportance of historical research to a better understanding of the problems of economic development.

The development of a global perspective in anthropology is a very different kind of phenomenon from that in economics or economic history. In the latter disciplines, the field of enquiry may easily be extended to the entire world, or at least to large enough portions of it that systemic supra-society relations are clearly discernable. The periodic appearance of an intellectual orientation to global relations – from the mercantilistists to the dependency theorists – is clear evidence of the availability of the larger perspective. The more common focus on the nation state or, by abstraction, the “society”, as the locus of analysis and explanation has been a reflex of the emergence of national cycles of economic reproduction in the nineteenth century. Ricardo, Marx, Keynes and much modern development theory restrict the field of enquiry to the single society where all the necessary conditions of reproduction and thus, explanation, are thought to be located (Friedman 1976, 1978). Finally, with the emergence after World War Two of a center/periphery model of imperialism, a global perspective has again gained prominence.

One December afternoon in 1977, Drs. J.P. Pronk, Minister for Development Cooperation in the retiring Den Uyl cabinet, gave a talk in the Senate Chamber of Leiden University which nettled me at the time and has led me to do a good deal of reflecting since. For in it he made his view plain that history was only interesting to him when it was made relevant – in this case combined with other disciplines and applied to problems in the development of poorer nations. While I was annoyed with him, the irritation was scarcely personal because I reminded myself that government always thinks in terms of how to make academics perform useful services, perhaps instead of pondering whether Beowolf might have been written by a woman. One cannot become angry with government, either, in view of the fact it pays our salaries, directly in the case of the public universities and indirectly, through grants and subsidies, in the private ones. What's more, the social sciences are in large part directed to the description, if not the solution, of political, economic and social problems, and the study of history nowadays is as often paired administratively with these disciplines as it is with the humanities. We all know that political scientists, sociologists and anthropologists have been eager in recent years to ally themselves with government and try their hands at resolving domestic and international dilemmas.

L'Inde, on le sait, compte parmi les exemples de choix de ce qu'on appelle de nos jours le sous-développement. Le motif n'est pas récent. On le retrouve depuis le XVIIe siècle déjà dans les rapports et mémoires des Européens, employés des compagnies ou autres voyageurs. Tel ce directeur du comptoir hollandais à Surat qui s'indigne de l'inefficacité, de l'insouciance et de la corruption des autorités. Lors d'un incendie sérieux dans la ville aucun des notables ne fait quoique ce soit. D'ailleurs qu'est-ce qu'ils auraient pu faire en l'absence totale du matériel nécessaire? Pourtant Surat n'est pas un bled quelconque, mais une ville riche et importante. Plus grave encore, personne ne s'inquiete de ce que son ports'ensable progressivement à cause des alluvions apportées par la rivière. Non seulement personne ne s'en inquiète, mais on aggrave encore les choses en déchargeant le lest dans la rivière. En fin de compte notre témoin doute fort qu'aucune ville placée sous le régime des Mogols puisse durer pour longtemps). Est-ce le sous-développement pur et simple? Ou est-ce qu'il y a autre chose qui joue?

Dans le cadre de la problématique du développement et du sous-développement, l'Extrême Orient forme un chapitre à part, à cause des voies assez remarquables que la Chine, le Japon et la Corée ont empruntées pour la modernisation). C'est l'impérialisme occidental qui a provoqué cette modernisation au cours du processus d'incorporation de l'Extrême-Orient dans l'économie capitaliste dont les Etats-Unis et l'Europe occidentale formaient les axes.

La question que nous nous posons ici est la suivante. L'Indonésie (ex-Indes Néerlandaises) appartient-elle aux pays où le développement a stagné aux XIXe et XXe siècles, et si oui, jusqu' à quel point le gouvernement colonial néerlandais peut-il être tenu responsable de cet état de choses?

The Third World today is the historic product of the overseas expansion of European and North American capitalism. Prior to the rise of modern capitalism, the world had been pluralistic. Different centres of civilisation had developed independently. Between them there had been cultural and commercial intercourse. Two historic missions were completed by European capitalism: firstly, the conquest of the world, and in its wake, colonial plunderings; secondly, the integration of the isolated and the peripheric regions into a unified world system.

This paper examines aspects of Asianism (Ajia-shugi) and colonialism (shokuminchishugi) in Japan's prewar relationship with Asia, to illustrate the contradictions and dilemmas of that relationship. Before beginning, it is perhaps wise to remind readers just what Japan's territorial possessions comprised. Japan acquired Taiwan as a colony in 1895, and the Caroline, Marshall, and Marianas Islands of the Pacific as a mandated territory in 1919. In the quarter of a century between those two datas, Japan's territory grew by nearly 80 percent. The picture may be summarized as follows:

Taiwan, South Sakhalin, and Korea were Japanese “territory” in the narrow sense of that word. By contrast, Kwantung, a leasehold, and the Pacific Islands, a mandate, were Japanese territory only in the broad sense of that word. But insofar as they submitted to Japanese sovereignty, they fall within the category of Japanese colonies.