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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.
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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.
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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.
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- Journal Article (3)