Inter-islands Dynamic Economy: Colonial Policy on the Indonesian Ports Development for International and Domestic Shipping During Colonial Times

As a capital-intensive transport technology linked to industrialized economies, ports become more essential economic infrastructure for developing periphery. Using the historical method, this article examines the relations between ports construction and the development of the voyages of the Indonesian archipelago, which was before called the Dutch East Indies. Based on the results, the port's construction caused by several factors. First, the colonial government wanted to reduce Singapore's role as an entre-port for the Dutch East Indies shipping activities, so that several ports been developed in the outer islands of Java. Second, ports development in outer islands became one of the Dutch economic expansions. Third, to relinquish reliance on foreign shipping companies, the colonial government then developed KPM and gave a monopoly right of shipping across the islands. Fourth, the utilization of modern ship engines in shipping led the growing up international voyages and had prompted the government to develop ports. Another interesting finding from this article is the relation between shipping and trade, the port constructions in various parts of the Dutch East Indies has encouraged trading networks developed in the area

Happy in the service of the Company: the purchasing power of VOC salaries at the Cape in the 18th century

This paper contributes to the debate on the level and trajectory of welfare at the Cape of Good Hope during the 18th century. Recent scholarship (for example, Allen 2005) has calculated and compared the levels and evolution of real wages in various European and Asian economies since the early modern period. To this lit-erature we add evidence for unskilled and skilled workers of the Dutch East India Company at the Cape of Good Hope during the 18th century, following De Zwart (2009; 2011), who recently presented evidence for unskilled workers in the Cape for the latter half of the 17th century and the 18th century. We calculate job-specific real wages in a three-step argument; from the narrowest international comparison of wage rates in terms of silver content to one based on a basket of widely consumed goods. The paper’s contributions lie in the breadth of the com-parisons, the inclusion of skilled workers in the comparison and the adaptation of the consumption basket to local conditions and relative prices at the Cape. The results support the hypothesis that at the start of the 18th century, the Cape Col-ony was relatively poor on an international comparison, but as the century un-folded, gained considerably on even the richest contemporary societies.Real wages, Dutch East India Company (VOC), Cape Colony, Compari-sons of living standards, Economic history of South Africa, Economic history of the Cape Colony

Sex, AIDS, Migration, and Prostitution: Human Trafficking in the Caribbean

Study of sexual tourism in Saint Martin/Sint Maarten, where prostitution is a widespread reality. Author argues that on this island where rapid economic development is based on the tourist industry and on offshore financial services, sexual relationships are determined by geopolitical and financial (neoliberal) interests that go beyond sexuality per se. She focuses on the precarious situation of the foreign prostitutes who have no working papers

Routes into Networks: The Structure of English Trade in the East Indies, 1601-1833

Drawing on a remarkable data set compiled from ships' logs, journals, factory correspondence, ledgers, and reports that provide unusually precise information on each of the 4,572 voyages taken by English traders of the East India Company (hereafter EIC), the authors describe the EIC trade network over time, from 1601 to 1833. From structural images of voyages organized by shipping seasons, they map the (over time and space) emergence of dense, fully integrated, global trade networks: of globalization before globalization. The paper shows that the integration of the world trade system under the aegis of the EIC was the unintended by-product of systematic individual malfeasance (private trading) on the part of ship captains seeking profit from internal Eastern trade

Fungal phoenix rising from the ashes?

During May 2010, sporocarps of what appeared to be an Armillaria sp. were found in large clumps in historic Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens on the foot of Table Mountain, Cape Town, South Africa. These sporocarps could be physically linked to the roots of unidentified dead trees and Protea spp. The aim of this study was to identify the Armillaria sp. found fruiting in Kirstenbosch. To achieve this goal isolates were made from the mycelium under the bark of dead roots linked to sporocarps. The ITS and IGS-1 regions were sequenced and compared to sequences of Armillaria spp. available on GenBank. Cladograms were generated using ITS sequences to determine the phylogenetic relationship of the isolates with other Armillaria spp. Sequence comparisons and phylogenetic analyses showed that the isolates represented A. mellea. They were also identical to isolates of this species previously discovered in the Company Gardens in South Africa and introduced from Europe apparently by the early Dutch Settlers. Armillaria mellea is alien and apparently invasive in Cape Town, fruits profusely and has the potential to spread to sensitive native forests on the foothills of the City

Two Azores shipwrecks and insect biological invasions during the Age of Discovery

UIDB/04666/2021 UIDP/04666/2021Insect faunas from a Spanish and a Dutch shipwreck, Angra D and Angra C, recovered from a bay on Terceira island, Angra do Heroísmo, in the Azores, and dated to c. 1650 CE, provide information about the onboard ecology of seventeenth century shipping vessels and the role of these ships and of contemporary maritime routes in biological invasions. In addition to evidence for foul conditions, there is evidence for similar insect faunas on both these ships. The assemblages include the earliest records of the now cosmopolitan synanthropic scuttle fly Dohrniphora cornuta (Bigot) which was probably introduced through trade from southeast Asia to Europe. The presence of the American cockroach, Periplaneta americana (L.) from Angra D, in the context of other sixteenth and seventeenth century records from shipwrecks, gives information about its spread to North America and Europe through transatlantic and transpacific trade, hitching a ride with traded commodities. The insect data point to the importance of introduced taxa on traded commodities and ballast, transported from port to port, and the role of ports of call like Angra in the Azores, as hot spots for biological invasions.publishersversionpublishe