Prior to the Second World War, the French government had been highhanded in its administration of the Levantine Mandates and severe in the treatment of Levantine immigrants in its West African colonies. This imperious behaviour would change abruptly in 1944. As part of their effort to rebuild French power, General Charles de Gaulle and the Comité Français de la Liberation Nationak (CFLN) sought to maintain France's longstanding position of diplomatic and cultural influence in the Levant, even after promising Lebanese and Syrian independence. With this in mind, French authorities grew more sensitive to the immigrant connection between Damascus and Dakar. In particular, the CFLN began to understand that complaints by Levantine immigrants in Afrique Occidentale Française (AOF) regarding their treatment by colonial officials had immediate repercussions on the French ‘mission’ in Syria and Lebanon. As a result, in the last year of the war – and at the direct instigation of the CFLN's representative in the Levant – sweeping policy changes were instituted to mitigate the treatment of Levantine immigrants in West Africa in order to restore France's prestige and position in the Middle East.

The common narrative of the Portuguese state in India from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century is, following contemporaries like Manuel Godinho, that of the four ages of man. The development of the Estado da Índia runs from its birth during the discoveries, via its youth, the ‘golden age’ (ranging from roughly 1500 to 1520) through its maturity or, to stick with the age metaphors, its ‘silver age’ from c. 1520 to 1570 to senility, or ‘age of decline’. The decline is a long one though: now generally considered to start in 1570 and covering the following two centuries. And one may well wonder whether ‘decadênria’ is truly the appropriate way to approach such a long period.

The island of Bombay is the ancient property of the English East India Company; it hath hitherto been, of all her settlements, the most conducive to the greatness of the nation in Asia; yet, through the splendour of achievement, great acquisition of the territory, and immense harvests of wealth in Bengal and the Coast of Coromandel, it hath been in some measure overlooked, and, as if in a corner of the world, unnoticed.

Historians have approached the Indian Ocean from a variety of vantages in their attempts to explain the modern history of this huge maritime arena. Some scholars have concentrated on predation as a linking theme, charting how piracy connected a broad range of actors for centuries in these dangerous waters. Others have focused on environmental issues, asking how patterns of winds, currents, and weather allowed trade to flourish on such a vast, oceanic scale. These latter historians have appropriated a page out of Braudel, and have grafted his approaches to the Mediterranean to fit local, Indian Ocean realities, such as the role of cyclones and mangrove swamps in both helping and hindering long-distance commerce. Still other scholars have used different tacks, following trails of commodities such as spices or precious metals, or even focusing on far-flung archaeological remains, in an attempt to piece together trans-regional histories from the detritus civilisations left behind. All of these epistemological vectors have shed light on the region as a whole, though through different tools and lenses, and via a variety of techniques of inquiry.

Historians have made in depth studies on the consequences of the Dutch incursions and invasion into the north and northwest of Brazil, for both the Spanish Empire and the United Provinces of the Dutch Republic. The purpose of this paper is to show that the war between Spain and the Dutch Republic also affected the south of Brazil and that it forced Spain to adopt measures that altered the policy of the Spanish Crown regarding Sao Paulo.

French Colonial Minister Paul Coste-Floret presided over the interment of the remains of Adolphe-Sylvestre-Félix Eboué in the Pantheon of the Republic on 20 May 1949. This singular honour accorded only sixty others in the two centuries since the Great Revolution of 1789 placed Eboué among the greatest heroes and cultural luminaries of modern France. He now rests with Rousseau and Voltaire, the great men of letters Victor Hugo and Emile Zola and the political heroes of Republican France Jean Jaurès and Jean Moulin. Félix Eboué, however, is the only black Frenchman among these great thinkers, writers and leaders of the Republic. His inclusion among the heroes of France in 1949 was indeed in recognition of acts of great personal courage. It was also an expression of French hopes and fears for the future at a time when vast populations of colour under French rule in Africa, in Asia and in the Americas were asserting themselves politically and culturally on an unprecedented scale. In death, Eboué became the symbol of those in France who were most determined to preserve French hegemony over the seventy million souls spread over the globe who formed the French Empire. His life as a French national, a man of African ancestry and as the man whose actions in 1940 helped transform Charles de Gaulle from an obscure Brigadier General into one of the most important leaders of the Second World War made Eboué this symbol.