It was Charles Boxer who has characterized the struggle between the Portuguese and the Dutch about their respective positions in world trade as the First Global War. In summing up the results at around 1650 Boxer contended that the Portuguese had won in the New World, that the Dutch had won in Asia, while the two countries had reached a stalemate in Africa.

This conclusion is correct only within the political domain. In fighting the Portuguese and the Spanish, the Dutch, together with the British and the French, did not reach economic the limits of their expansion because of Iberian resistance, but because of the general demographic and economic constraints on overseas expansion at the time. These limitations allowed for the creation of two expansion systems, each with its own sphere of influence in the Atlantic. The Iberian system covered the South Atlantic and the Northwest European system the Middle and North Atlantic. Both systems had a similar structure and incorporated European ports providing European and Asian trade goods, trading posts in Africa and plantation areas and settlement colonies in the New World.

During the first decade of the Dutch East India Company's existence, it made a number of vain attempts to drive the Portuguese out of their main base in East Africa, Mozambique island. Within a few years, though, the Dutch discovered that they could reach their destinations in the East more quickly by setting a course far to the south of Madagascar. Since they no longer needed to frequent the Mozambique channel, they saw no particular reason to dislodge the Portuguese from its shores. Except for one final Dutch attempt to capture Mozambique island, in 1668, the two imperial powers kept their distance from each other, at least in Africa. The Dutch did not even know the simplest details of the political or economic situation in East Africa, while Portuguese visitors to the Dutch sphere of influence in the Cape Colony were entirely those of transients and traders, particularly in slaves. They were not competitors, and therefore were not attempting to solve the same questions. Nevertheless, the problems with which they were faced on the African mainland were analogous, so that it is possible to make comparisons between their activities.

I should preface this paper with a cautionary note. It is not intended to parade as a full-fledged scholarly paper bringing new or little known facts. Nor does it aim at novel theories or interpretations. It does not even have its roots in the fascinating details and problems of Luso-Indian history per se. It only wants to propose a somewhat different, although not overly novel, perspective. This perspective is – not surprisingly – an indological one. My starting point is my concern with India's traditions of empire and imperial expansion. Given this concern, it seems quite logical to turn to the Portuguese as well as to the Dutch experience of and tangles with the tradition and practice of empire they obtained in the world of the Indian Ocean, where the subcontinent has always occupied a predominant position. The exercise is the more interesting since the Portuguese, and after them the Dutch, were each in their own way empire builders in their own right. They had to react to the imperial configurations that were coming about at the time of the Portuguese appearance in the Indian waters and that were being consolidated when the Portuguese were followed by their Dutch rivals. The experience and the reactions of both the Dutch and the Portuguese have something to tell us about India, as well as the other way around.

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 survival of the Spanish empire after the loss of the mainland American colonies is a neglected subject, and no part of it is more neglected than its economic features. General histories of Spain in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries rarely touch on overseas matters, although the colonies do occasionally appear centre stage, as in 1868, when the Cuban Creoles rose in rebellion; in 1898, when Spain lost most of her colonies as a result of war with America; in 1921, when the Berber tribes of Northern Morocco defeated the Spanish army; and in 1936, when General Franco and his coconspirators raised the standard of rebellion against the Republic in North Western Africa. But these references are episodic and essentially political, indeed military in nature. There is little structural analysis of what the colonies meant to Spain, least of all in the economic field.

Les commémorations se multiplient à plaisir. Mais encore que nos sociétés de la ‘communication’ génèrent à toute occasion des promenades guidées dans le passé, il serait naïf d'y voir pour autant un goût de la connaissance désintéressée ou une aspiration à la vérité. Au contraire, celle-ci est plus souvent malmenée que respectée dans ces manifestations qui visent l'histoire utile’, c'est-à-dire qui pratiquent assidûment le recyclage de l'histoire au profit d'une solidarité de groupe qu'il s'agit de raffermir. Renforcer la cohésion des families idéologiques ou des sensibilites politiques, là est le véritable enjeu des commemorations. Celles-ci constituent done avant tout des terrains d'affrontements. Ceci peut offrir l'occasion d'un approfondissement du savoir, mais là ne se trouve pas le but de l'exercice. Ici e'est la communication qui règne, véritable auberge espagnole où d'authentiques ouvriers de la connaissance se rencontrent aux côtés de discoureurs ou de publicistes au statut plus incertain.