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This article proposes a critical reading of *Diário de uma viagem a Timor* (1882–1883), by Maria Isabel Tamagnini, in order to address the Oriental fascination and the Timorese exile as traces of a Portuguese presence in Southeast Asia in the nineteenth century. The work, written by a young companion of the new governor of Timor, Bento da França, and of a small group, stands as a unique documentary testimony of the expedition, even though the original notebook Lisboa–Singapura is missing. The analysis focuses on the three preserved notebooks (II–V), comparing them with the narrated itinerary (Singapore, Batavia, Java, Surabaya, Macassar) and with the conditions of textual production: the *Diário* is not organized in a strictly daily manner, presenting scattered periods of notes followed by blocks of reflective, memorialistic, and sociocultural observational writing. From this reading, the central themes are identified and discussed: Oriental fascination, descriptions of societies and urban practices in the visited regions, and the relationship between travel literature and the colonial administrative mission. Among the main contributions, the *Diário*'s function stands out as a rare source for the historiography of East Timor, offering a critical perspective that questions official narratives and broadens the understanding of the Portuguese presence in the East, especially with regard to Timor and its exile.

This article explores the historical origins of the deep-seated cultural and religious ties between the Philippines and East Timor, as observed during the United Nations peacekeeping missions in the early 21st century. Beginning with the contemporary presence of Filipino military personnel and clergy in Timor-Leste, the author investigates why a unique fraternal bond exists between these two populations in contrast to other Southeast Asian neighbors. Through an analysis of material culture—specifically the historical prevalence of Spanish silver reales in traditional Timorese jewelry and royal regalia (kaibauk)—the research traces these connections back to the era of the Iberian Union (1580–1640). Under the reign of Philip II of Spain (Philip I of Portugal), the administrative and economic boundaries between the Spanish Philippines and Portuguese Timor became porous. The article argues that the circulation of American silver via the Manila Galleon trade and the shared networks of Catholic missionary orders established a foundation for trans-regional interaction. By examining these early modern Iberian relations in East Asia, the study demonstrates how the Union of the Crowns facilitated a long-lasting socio-cultural framework that continues to influence Timorese identity and its perceptions of Filipino "brotherhood" today.

This article analyses the trajectories and historiographical debates surrounding the formation of the world-economy and the process of globalisation, focusing on the historical interactions between Asia and Europe. The author begins the reflection with a critique of the contemporary and vulgarised use of the concept of "globalisation," often presented by the media and political discourse in an ahistorical manner lacking conceptual rigour. It is argued that this simplistic view ignores the genealogy of the phenomenon and often serves to mask persistent asymmetries and old forms of domination between the Western centre and global peripheries. Through an epistemological review that engages with the theoretical frameworks of the "world-economy" — referencing the influence of figures such as Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein — the study examines how globalisation has consolidated itself as a representation of Western rationality and power. The text explores the tension between the narrative of a technological "global village" and the reality of the structures of social and worldwide division of labour that keep vast populations on the margins of development. It concludes that historiography must recover the temporal density and spatial dynamics of Euro-Asian relations in order to overcome Eurocentric views that reduce global development to a mere *imitatio occidens*, underlining the need to understand globalisation as a long-term historical process marked by structural inequalities.

This article proposes the "Misericórdias" as an intrinsically multidisciplinary research topic, articulating religious, institutional, and social history with studies on the circulation of charity and mechanisms of colonial power in the Portuguese sphere of Asia. Drawing on a historical-qualitative analysis of the origins and expansion of the confraternities, the author argues that the rapid establishment of the Santas Casas, driven by royal patronage and metropolitan normative frameworks, functioned simultaneously as an instrument of urban pacification, regulation of devout lay life, and a strategy for consolidating social hierarchies. Methodologically, the discussion mobilizes documentary comparison centered on the Compromissos: the Compromisso of Lisbon (1516) and its successive adaptation in overseas contexts, with particular emphasis on the Compromisso proper to the Misericórdia of Goa (1595) and on the regulations of the Misericórdia of Macau (drafted in 1627). As a result, it becomes evident that the normative texts were not mere exported models, but instruments for the local reconfiguration of assistance practices, conditioned by demographic compositions, cultural differences, and relations among Christian populations, converts, and subaltern groups. The article concludes that, in light of Marcel Mauss's theory of the gift, charity operated under discriminatory logics, selectively favoring recipients and strengthening elite powers, revealing charity as a social technology of colonial domination.

The article analyzes the Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Macau as a key institution in the articulation between charity, power, and the dynamics of the “nuptial market” in a colonial and mercantile context. Building on the historical function of the Misericórdias in the reconfiguration of assistance since the late 15th century, the author argues that, in Macau and other Portuguese Asian enclaves, the local specialization of charitable practice was not limited to responding to relief needs; rather, it contributed to managing social hierarchies and reproducing distinctions, especially by framing Christianized groups and urban marginalities through assistance, disciplinary, and organizational mechanisms. Methodologically, the text articulates a historical-institutional reading and documentary analysis based on the records and commitments of the Misericórdia itself, situating them within the broader trajectory of the imperial network of Misericórdias and the regime of negotiated sovereignty that characterized the Portuguese presence in Asia. As a result, it is demonstrated that the Misericórdia, by organizing resources, reputations, and opportunities, operated as a social infrastructure that conditioned matrimonial alliances, strengthened patronages, and integrated relevant sectors into the colonial moral economy. Thus, the institution emerges less as a merely philanthropic body and more as a mediator between inclusion/exclusion, authority, and social reproduction in societies marked by the expansion of trade and the weakening of traditional forms of solidarity.

The article examines the role of the Misericórdias in the context of Portuguese enclaves in Southeast Asia between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, arguing that these confraternities were central to the production of Christian sociability and the stabilization of colonial hierarchies in territories where Portuguese sovereignty was frequently negotiated. Starting from the conquest of Malacca (1511) and the subsequent framework of routes and transits between Goa, Hormuz, and the Spice Islands, the author shifts the focus from historiography centered on “discoveries” and military campaigns to the social and institutional history of colonial daily life. Methodologically, it articulates historical reconstruction with a comparative reading of local experiences (Malacca, Ternate, Tidore, Ambon, Solor, Larantuka, and other waypoints as far as Timor), linking the persistence of the Misericórdias to the absence of municipal institutions and the predominance of military and commercial power. The main conclusions emphasize that, despite limited resources and the reduced number of Portuguese, the Misericórdias helped formulate a “Portuguese identity” primarily subordinated to Christendom, operating through social discipline, discrimination, and assistance, and functioning simultaneously as a technology of conversion, a mechanism for framing elites, and an instrument of institutional continuity for the empire.

Ivo Carneiro de Sousa's text proposes framing Fernão de Magalhães's voyage (1519–1522) as a historical paradigm of "globalization," understood not as a sudden phenomenon, but as a long process of transformation in maritime circulations, economic exchanges, and cultural cross-fertilization between Europe and Asia. Drawing on a historiographical debate, the author articulates the expedition with the structuring rivalry between Portugal and Spain, demonstrating how the opening of the Atlantic to the Pacific reconfigured the terms of colonial and diplomatic competition, with particular impact on access to Southeast Asian commercial circuits and strategic zones in southern China. Methodologically, the article privileges a contextual and processual reading, relating Magalhães's route to juridical-political instruments (including the legacy of the Treaty of Tordesillas and subsequent disputes) and to the documentary and cartographic production that consolidated expansion rights. It concludes that the circumnavigation, beyond being a nautical event, functioned as a catalyst for an emerging European colonial order, in which Macau–Manila would emerge, over the long term, as one of the most striking axes of this Iberian global interconnection.

The article problematizes the recurrent historiographical readings of the first circumnavigation associated with Fernão de Magalhães, arguing that much of the academic production remains excessively centered on the factual sequence of the voyage and sometimes resorts to anachronistic frameworks that align it with other explorations and milestones of modernity. The author proposes shifting the focus to the historical-cultural elaboration that underpins the expedition, taking as its interpretive axis the work of António Pigafetta and its inscription within a broader “discoveries” program. Methodologically, a recontextualization is carried out along four vectors: the Iberian Renaissance context; the political-diplomatic competition between Portugal and unified Spain; the “global” nature of the undertaking, visible in the plurality of origins and the circulation of imperial ideologies; and the role of cultural representations that reconstruct mission, sovereignty, and colonial order. The analysis further emphasizes the memorial and literary dimension of the accounts, distinguishing the textual construction from the actual social experience of the crew, marked by unfulfilled expectations, religious guilt, and judicial proceedings for compensation. It concludes that Pigafetta not only records but organizes the memory and the mercantile and religious mentalities that helped legitimize Iberian expansion in the new world order.

This article analyzes the cartographic representation of the Moluccas, the Philippines, and the southern maritime "corridors" of the South China Sea in Portuguese maps produced between 1537 and 1571, interrogating whether such images resulted from "crossed representations" that expressed divergent interests. Starting from the premise that cartography functions simultaneously as a technical record and a political-economic instrument, the author proposes a comparative reading of sixteenth-century cartography: mappings associated with different information circuits (ports, mercantile networks, and Asian mediations) and spatial reorganizations resulting from geopolitical choices. The methodology combines iconographic and toponymic analysis, identification of design patterns (including the degree of detail and consistency between coastlines and routes), and historiographical contextualization based on the prior evolution of Portuguese cartographic knowledge. The conclusion is that, during this period, cartography not only "updates" nautical data but also reconfigures strategic areas according to the availability and type of information mobilized, revealing tensions between views oriented toward the control of spice trafficking and interpretations oriented toward alternative routes and regional complementarities. Thus, the Moluccas, the Philippines, and the southern corridors of the South China Sea emerge less as fixed geographical realities than as cartographic constructs where interests, informational capacities, and expansion objectives converge (and sometimes diverge).

The article reconstructs and interprets the historical links between Macau and the eastern part of Timor (from the 16th to the 20th century), arguing that, although historiography tends to privilege contemporary political contacts, these connections were sustained by maritime circulations, commercial networks, and information transfers that were insularly out of phase. The analysis articulates a contextual framework — including the reception of Timorese in Macau during the political-military crisis that postponed the refounding of independence (until 2001) — with a documentary investigation of a historical and cartographic nature. Along this path, the author highlights the manuscript attributed to Francisco Rodrigues, a pilot and cartographer who participated in the Portuguese reconnaissance voyages between Malacca and the Moluccas, arguing that the work combines nautical itineraries and a cartographic atlas that includes the first European representation of the island of Timor. By confronting the spatial drawing and the navigation route with the system of goods circulation, it concludes that Timor was not only known but also integrated into regional trade routes, with sandalwood identified as the axis of demand and economic valuation. The study therefore proposes a connective history in which cartography, luxury product, and maritime networks function as fundamental mediations between the two territories.

Ivo Carneiro de Sousa’s article reconstructs and interprets the trajectories, memories, and intellectual projects of Father Francisco Maria Fernandes (1935–2005) as a privileged avenue for understanding the historical connections between Macau and Timor-Leste. The central thesis holds that the priest’s pastoral and political-community action—especially his coordination of refugees, mobilization of international solidarity, and institutional defense of the Timorese clergy and Catholic Church—also constitutes a form of historical knowledge production, later interrupted in “unfinished studies.” Methodologically, the author draws on direct testimonies and typewritten texts gathered from conversations held with Fernandes himself during visits to Macau, articulating them with contextual references to decisive events in Timor between 1974 and the independence process (culminating in 2001). The main conclusions highlight: (1) the shift from fragmentary youthful memory to a critical perspective on the Revolution of 25 April and its local repercussions; (2) the memorial focus on the escalation leading to the civil war between UDT and FRETILIN, including striking episodes such as the death of Maggiolo Gouveia; and (3) the centrality of exile and settlement in Ainaro, which required linguistic and cultural adaptations. The article thus underscores the patrimonial and historiographic value of these notes for future research on Timor and its diaspora.

The article analyzes the photographic collection of Manuel Paulo de Sousa Gentil, governor of Portuguese Timor between 1919 and 1920, interrogating it as a possible “portfolio of the colonial order”. Based on the preserved core of 46 photographs (with typed captions), the author reconstructs, using an inventory of existing pieces and historical contextualization of the post-Manufahi wars period, how the circulation of Navy officers based in Macau and the republican program of “fomento” materialized in visual records. The methodology combines iconographic reading and documentary analysis of captions and provenances, articulating landscape photographs, traditional work, human types, games and amusements with images of exhibitions and agricultural experiments, as well as visits by the governor himself. It concludes that, although the original album probably gathered hundreds of images and later dispersed, the remaining sample allows identifying a narrative ordering that traverses ethnographies and developments, organizing the territory according to colonial categories. The collection thus tends to function as a pedagogical and commemorative device: it not only documents but frames people and practices within the horizon of a sovereignty that intends to present itself as “natural” and civilizing, culminating in scenes such as the “Catholic family”.

The article reinterprets the activities of St. Francis Xavier in Southeast Asia, challenging a teleological reading that organizes his "spiritual conquest" as a linear sequence of missions leading to China. Instead, the author proposes starting from the narrative "end"—Xavier's death on Sanchoão (1552)—to highlight how evangelization, solitude, and practices of mercy intersect with the social and economic dynamics of Portuguese enclaves. Through a historical-critical analysis of sources and historiography, the text examines the relative scarcity of Catholic conversions beyond Luso-Asian settlement circuits, emphasizing that, in his movements between ports and routes of the "Estado da Índia," Xavier's action tends to reach more easily young and female audiences, as well as Catholic minorities. The investigation also underscores tensions between moral preaching and commercial structures: many Portuguese merchants, associated with Asian networks and both formal and private enterprises, feared ethical interference in their established trade orders. It concludes that Xavier's discreet death is not merely a biographical detail but an indication of his marginal position relative to local economic elites and a model of apostleship sustained by isolation and charitable compassion, rather than by immediate and mass conversion results.

This article examines the corpus of letters attributed to Saint Francis Xavier during his final maritime itinerary (1552), with particular focus on "The China Letters" (1552) as a privileged source for understanding the "spiritual conquest" in the Far East. The author argues that the epistolary narratives, articulated between miraculous experiences, missionary frustrations, and strategic decisions, function simultaneously as devotional testimony and as an instrument of spiritual and political orientation for Jesuit action, in dialogue with the stage culminating in the formulation of directives by Valignano. Methodologically, the analysis combines a historiographical reading of the letters with contextualization using coeval accounts (including documentation employed in the canonization process), confronting episodes such as the transformation of "sea water" and the recovery of a child during the voyage. The letters are further situated within the specific context of the stopover at Sanchoão, a point of commercial contact between the Portuguese and Chinese junks, where missionary presence occurs under settlement restrictions and amid tensions among merchants. The conclusion holds that Xavier mobilizes the language of the prodigy to legitimize the mission and sustain the continuity of the project, while simultaneously rendering visible the structural uncertainty of access to the Chinese interior and the necessity of phased planning.

The article analyzes, for the eighteenth century, how Macau’s municipal institutions, in coordination with religious authorities and mercantile elites, confronted “female orphanhood” and the consequent shortage of dowries, thereby shaping a marriage market conditioned by criteria of status and family origin. Arguing that the dowry policy was not merely an instrument of charity, the author contends that it functioned primarily as a mechanism of social reproduction, aimed at consolidating “Portuguese” Christian families and ensuring the continuity of the local political-economic body. Methodologically, the study draws on deliberations and decisions of the municipal councils (especially the Leal Senado), as well as records of alms distribution and interactions with the Misericórdia and other religious bodies. The analysis of concrete cases highlights the tension between institutional objectives and practical contingencies: attempts to allocate dowries to specific candidates either failed or were reordered in the face of the preferences and lineage rights of the “homem-bom” elite, revealing the centrality of elite networks and the volatility of matrimonial arrangements. It concludes that the policies of financing and “recolhimento” produced a selective management of female vulnerability, while simultaneously reinforcing social hierarchy and elite control over the formation of unions deemed legitimate.

The article analyzes a practice of cultural representation and negotiation that articulates religion, diplomacy, and material arts: a "dialogue" concerning Chinese porcelains attributed to Frei Bartolomeu dos Mártires and Pope Pius IV. Departing from the observation that porcelain circulates not merely as a commodity but as a symbolic language capable of producing legitimacy, prestige, and persuasion, the study interprets the episode as a rhetorical device between metropole and periphery, in which knowledge about the origin and appreciation of China is mobilized to the benefit of Catholic hierarchies and networks. Methodologically, the author proceeds through a contextual and comparative reading of sources and coeval descriptions, articulating textual discourse with evidence of the Iberian circulation of porcelain and imitations (especially in Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula) and with the visual culture of the Baroque apparatus. The conclusions highlight that images of porcelain, including stagings in courtly ceremonies, functioned as instruments of cultural translation and assertion of authority, although the commercial viability of imitations was frequently limited. Thus, the "dialogue" reveals tensions between fascination with China, strategies of local appropriation, and the historical limits of production and the market in the early seventeenth century.

The article argues that the demographic history of Macau between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries cannot be explained by narratives centred on simplified foundational “origins” or on ideologically constructed identities, but must be understood as a historical process in which social, political and economic structures organise—and at times disorganise—the forms of population reproduction. Methodologically, the study combines a critical review of the available historiography with documentary analysis oriented towards counting systems and registration practices, distinguishing the gaps relating to the Chinese (majority) population from the tendencies that privileged the minority often labelled as “Macanese”. The research concludes that, in the early modern period, Macau presents a stable, multi-secular demographic ceiling of approximately 12,000–15,000 inhabitants, the maintenance of which is altered not by “internal modifications” of natural rates but above all by exogenous factors. The demographic turning point lies in the acceleration of the influx of Chinese labour emigration, predominantly young and male, which surpasses the traditional limit in stages (approx. 8,000 in 1822 and around 20,000 in 1837), preparing the Chinese numerical domination observable in later censuses. Thus, the analysis reinterprets administrative categories and census instruments as indicators of broader structural changes from the pre-industrial enclave to the emergence of a new demographic regime.

The article reassesses the role of the earliest Portuguese representations of China produced in the early sixteenth century, focusing on the manuscript known as Francisco Rodrigues’s *Book and Atlas* (c. 1512). Based on the codicological analysis of the set, the comparative examination of the internal elements of the codex (including the coexistence, in the same volume, of a copy of Tomé Pires’s *Suma Oriental*) and the cartographic comparison among maps, sketches, and legends, the author contests historiographical interpretations that attribute to the atlas an immediate function of geopolitical updating and direct support to the centralized cartographic policy of King D. Manuel, according to a supposed logic of “revision and sending” in a later period. The main conclusions argue that the *Book and Atlas* should be understood less as a normative instrument of “state cartography” and more as a composite of navigational and observational materials compiled at different times and under different conditions. It is argued that the 69 panoramas of the Lesser Sunda Islands archipelago (Alor to Java), possibly derived from earlier notebooks from the post-1512 return, were not consistently integrated into the corresponding charts, nor do they appear to have influenced subsequent Portuguese cartography of Southeast Asia and the routes to the South China Sea. Thus, the article repositions Rodrigues’s work as evidence of the pragmatic process of maritime knowledge production, dependent on local mediations and limitations of integration among drawing, text, and cartography.

The article reconstructs and interprets the presence of Alexandre de Rhodes (1591/93–1660) in Macau, proposing a new reading of his status as the "first Frenchman" to live and work in the city for more than twelve years. Drawing on a historiographical approach centered on biographical reconstruction and critical analysis of missionary itineraries, the author articulates the documentation produced by the Jesuit himself (memoirs and writings) with the institutional context of the Portuguese Padroado, the Atlantic-Asian dynamics of the Goa routes, and the political conditions of the missions in Vietnam. The research demonstrates that his arrival in Macau in 1623 should not be understood as a peripheral episode, but rather as a point of logistical and linguistic articulation for Jesuit expansion. By highlighting the importance of learning Vietnamese, the author reveals the difference between missionary practices mediated by interpreters and the strategy of cultural integration that Rhodes sought to develop. It concludes that his work in Macau functioned simultaneously as a platform for recruitment, training, and circulation of knowledge, influencing how evangelization in Tonkin and Cochinchina was consolidated—within a context of instability, expulsions, and rivalries among local powers.

This study aims to reconstruct an essential part of the cultural and professional biography of Henrique de Senna Fernandes (HSF), particularly his lengthy tenure as a history teacher in official and commercial secondary education, in order to examine his public address commemorating the birth of Infante D. Henrique (1394–1460), delivered in 1957 at the Teatro D. Pedro V and promptly published in a magazine.