The events of September 1652 on the island of Formosa were one of the bloodiest chapters in the history of Dutch management of the island, and could arguably be viewed as one of the most severe suppressions of a rebellious group in the seventeenth century. The unexpected, ill-prepared uprising of thousands of frustrated, angry and impoverished Chinese farmers and field hands against Dutch colonial management were successfully, yet in the most severe and savage way, suppressed through a military collaboration between the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the local Aborigines of the island. In total some 3,000 Chinese residents of the island were killed, the ‘hacked-off’ head of the leader ‘displayed on a stake […] to frighten the Chinese as a sign of victory over those dastardly traitors’, while three of his lieutenants were tortured to death by Company officials in an effort to extract confessions and information from them. Indeed severe action towards a section of the Formosan colonial society that was primarily responsible for the economic success of the Dutch settlement enterprise.

Adam Smith, the well-known eighteenth-century economist, investigated a number of important themes regarding the Dutch East India Company (Verenigde Oostindbche Compagnie, VOC) as well as its counterpart, the English East India Company. These continue to provide principal topics in the historical study of the VOC. Through a systematic analysis, he came to the conclusion that free trade is more beneficial to the wealth of nations than monopolised trade. In his view, an economy based on the division of production along with competition among market participants was the best precondition for accelerating economic development.

From 1763 to 1790 the Dutch East India Company attempted to promote pepper production in rural regions of Banten, the western tip of Java. This was the first Western intervention into Banten's local agrarian economy, and at the same time it was also a political attempt to introduce ‘modern’ administrative concepts into a ‘traditional’ society. In this paper I shall discuss the discrepancy and conflict between the ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ administrative concepts, and concomitant changes in the political configuration in the local society. Special focus will be directed to the following questions: how the ‘traditional’ administrative system functioned; how the Dutch tried to modify it; how the Dutch promotion policy of pepper production was carried out and what result it attained; and what sort of changes, as a result, occurred in the political configurations in the local society.

In 1565, an English sailor named John Sparke visited the colonial Floridas for the first, and probably, only time. Sparke, along with thousands of other Europeans, was in the midst of exploring, settling, and exploiting the Western Hemisphere's eastern coastline, an endeavour that escalated in intensity following the spectacular voyages of Christopher Columbus almost eighty years before. Encountering a variety of locales, objects, and peoples for the first time, the mariner made observations that reveal a great deal about the meeting of Old and New World cultures. Referring to the indigenous inhabitants of the region, Sparke wrote, ‘those people of the cape of Florida are of more savage and fierce nature, and more valiant than any of the rest [he had met in the Americas]’. Significantly, the sailor based his opinions, at least in part, on tales of native barbarity communicated to him by Spanish settlers who had begun colonising the peninsula at the dawn of the sixteenth century. According to these stories, Indians were uncivilised and ‘eaters of the flesh of men […] canibals’. Yet, Sparke remained unsure about how to evaluate the indigenous inhabitants. His confusion stemmed from conflicting assessments supplied by French colonisers who had also recently established a foothold in the Floridas.

Human social organisation intrinsically includes borders, divisions that mark inside and outside, civilised and barbaric, acceptable and unacceptable. Human groups establish physical and ideational boundaries that help order, explain, and direct their lives. Those groups and activities that blur or cross over these lines receive special attention, as their violations of or challenges to what are presented as logical, natural, and moral standards force their reconciliation with generalised norms. Such people and actions are categorised as immoral, uncouth, detrimental, seditious, or non-human. They are also often considered endowed with special powers.

The uniqueness of Siam in being the only independent Southeast Asian country in the age of nineteenth-century colonialism is a mantra that persists largely to this day. It held that it was the calibre of the Siamese monarchs in particular King Chulalongkorn (1868–1910), the fifth reign of the present regnant dynasty, which saved the country from succumbing to the powerful and predatory west. By continuing his father King Mongkut's (1851–1868) foresight in adopting an open door policy by signing the Bowring Treaty (1855) and reforming the country's administration in conformity to their model of government, the king gained the recognition by the Europeans of Siam as a civilised country. As a tribute to the king's greatness, in particular for his benevolent rule and pivotal reforms, the ‘colloquial, affectionate, yet awesome’ title ‘Lord of Life’ (chao chiwit) was used by his subjects especially around this period, according to the royal family historian writing in 1960 who was a grandson of King Chulalongkorn. In 2003, another direct descendant of the king wrote that it was no less the ‘Lord of Life, Lord of the Realm, the fountain and embodiment of moral and spiritual power itself who recognised that survival in the face of colonialism necessitated engagement in diplomacy and internal reforms. By dint of such enlightened measures, the Siamese polity was transformed and strengthened. in political history, the emphasis has been on the efficiency and good governance made possible by the modernising administrative system.