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Richard Pflederer’s article reconstructs, through a memorial lens, the long-standing partnership between the British historian Charles R. Boxer and the American writer Emily Hahn, proposing that the couple’s intellectual productivity resulted as much from their singular personal trajectories as from persistent thematic convergences. The narrative traces the key moments of their meeting, romance, and life together—from the pre-World War II context in the Far East to the war period in Hong Kong, culminating in a long cohabitation in the United Kingdom—to explain how two distinct literary projects ultimately reinforced one another. Methodologically, the text is grounded in a biographical reading combined with an interpretative survey of the works and fields of interest of the two authors: Boxer, focused on Portuguese and Dutch explorations and expansion in Africa, Brazil, and Asia; Hahn, dedicated to historical biographies, non-fiction texts, novels, and works of "human interest," as well as writings on figures such as Stamford Raffles and the Soong family. As its main conclusions, Pflederer suggests that the relationship between historians and authors, mediated by love and a life in motion, contributed to renewing the understanding of European interaction with indigenous peoples and to sustaining a bibliographic output that spanned virtually the entire twentieth century.

The article argues that the formation and consolidation of the Macanese community in Asia cannot be explained solely by generic accounts of the "social value" of family networks or by diaspora narratives centered on the Lusitanian "motherland." Instead, Roy Eric Xavier proposes that the origin of the Macanese results from concrete historical processes of production of Luso-Asian families, articulated with colonial practices, ecclesiastical structures, and economic dynamics of the Portuguese system in the Orient. Methodologically, the author mobilizes a historical and sociological reading of biographical and material sources collected on customs and family arrangements, connecting colonial policies (such as the initiative of "indigenous" marriages in Goa), the restrictions on the presence of European women, the recourse to forced labor, and the circulation of women in commercial circuits and matrimonial "markets." The main conclusions sustain that "mestizo" family networks (with legitimate and illegitimate children) structured the accumulation and transmission of resources, favored intergenerational continuity, and contributed to the emergence of community leaderships. The text further situates these networks within the broader context of the transition of commercial flows between Japan and China and of different forms of colonialism, showing how intra-Asian migration produced enduring diasporic patterns.

The article analyzes the presence of the Jesuits in Japan between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, discussing how missionary practice was articulated simultaneously with the theological-rhetorical objectives of the Counter-Reformation and with the geopolitical and economic interests of the Iberian monarchies. Drawing on a historiographical approach centered on the epistolary documentation produced by the Society — whose narrative and classificatory structure was standardized by Ignatius of Loyola and Juan de Polanco — the text argues that the Jesuit letters functioned as a device of an "information society" that organized local realities ethnographically. This ethnography includes cosmography, economy, social organization, calendars, and ritual descriptions, enabling both internal discipline and network coordination as well as the formulation of evangelization strategies. The article then relates this knowledge to the economic dimension of the missions, situating them within the search for alternative routes to those controlled by Mediterranean intermediaries and within the need to protect commercial monopolies and privileges in the face of Protestant European competition. As a result, it concludes that the "art of tea," as a Japanese cultural practice, must be understood at the intersection of the Catholic interpretation of the Other, the circulation of information, and the reconfiguration of imperial interests, evidencing the close convergence between material culture and historical projects of power.

The article investigates the extent to which the French presence in Canton (Guangzhou) between 1767 and 1820 acted as a vector of architectural trends in the European mercantile space. Starting from the premise that the buildings known as hongs 行—warehouses and trading houses also described as “foreign factories”—constituted an essential urban and commercial device for the international community, the author analyzes how French agents influenced practices of occupation, adaptation, and spatial choice of these complexes. Methodologically, it combines the reading of contemporary descriptions, documentation on dimensions and plans of the hongs, and the historical-institutional contextualization of the trade system in Canton, relating architecture to the dynamics of accommodation, storage, and offices that attracted merchants and officials. The evidence discussed suggests that the materiality of the hongs—organized according to specific axes and orientations—facilitated the circulation of preferences and construction patterns associated with French taste, while remaining anchored in a pre-existing Chinese typology. It concludes that French influence was not limited to the abstract cultural sphere but manifested itself in the configuration of the architectural environment of international trade in Canton, contributing to the consolidation of a shared visual and functional repertoire in the period.

The article argues that the “rise of Asia” should be interpreted not only as a material phenomenon—expressed by the increasing regional economic and political weight—but also as an epistemological challenge to the social sciences and humanities. From this premise, the text maintains that theoretical categories inherited predominantly from the West (state and market, governance and rules, nation and identity, network and hierarchy) reveal limitations in capturing the complexity and hybridity of Asian experiences, marked by long traditions of social organization and by specific norms of power and order. Methodologically, the article operates as an institutional and evidence-based reflection on the function of the International Convention of Asian Scholars (ICAS): by analyzing the relevance of ICAS 8—held in Macau in June 2013—the author identifies how the diversity of participants and the transcontinental circulation of research create a privileged space to “recalibrate” conceptual vocabularies and produce more adequate analytical tools. It concludes that the rapid transformations experienced in multiple Asian countries offer a comparative historical laboratory capable of highlighting recurring paradoxes (electoral competition with daily control, nationalist ideologies with local fragmentations, market liberalization with state monopolies) and, thus, driving the theoretical renewal necessary to understand “Asia” in a substantive manner.

The article analyzes the work of Ieong Man Pan (楊文彬) through the tension between memory and nostalgia, proposing that “the future” presented by the artist materializes as an ever-transforming archive of Macau’s urban present. Drawing from a diagnosis of the rapid metamorphoses of cities—marked by fragmentary urbanization, the indiscriminate replacement of historical fabrics, and the proliferation of infrastructures—the text argues that nostalgia does not operate as a return to the past but as a critical device capable of revealing how the contemporary “authenticity” of Macau is precisely produced by its artificiality. Methodologically, the approach combines an interpretive reading of the artist’s work with theoretical frameworks on urban development, national imaginaries, and regimes of representation (including the notion that thinking the future equates to capturing the present). Interpretations of works such as *Unfoldable Map* articulate photographs, cartographies, and figurative images as mechanisms that reconstruct trajectories, losses, and continuities. The conclusion is that, by transforming the remnants, gaps, and mismatches of urban space into visual knowledge, Ieong Man Pan turns “the coming future” into a reconfiguration of what has already been lost, making memory a tool for interrogating urban directions and values.

This article critiques the linear application of Benedict Anderson’s argument on “print capitalism” to the case of East Asia, arguing that in the early twentieth century, the transfer of knowledge mediated by typographic technology cannot be explained as a mere technical advance imported from the European “center” to the “periphery.” Instead, the text proposes understanding mechanized printing as a cultural and political process of negotiation, in which foreign technologies were reconfigured by local traditions of editorial culture and by preexisting reader market dynamics. Mobilizing historiographical discussions on the Chinese adaptation of Western printing (in dialogue with Christopher Reed’s analysis) and the Sino-Japanese regional circulation during the “golden decade” (1898–1912), the article argues that print modernity in Asia was woven by transnational networks of knowledge circulation, articulated by interconnected agents, cities, and institutions. It concludes that typographic technology functioned as the infrastructure of a “cultural nexus of power”: while enabling new forms of intellectual circulation and standardization, it also served to sustain projects of Asian modernity that simultaneously sought to imitate Western models and assert regional singularities.

This article proposes an interpretative synthesis of Charles R. Boxer’s approach to society in the Luso-Oriental Empire (16th–18th centuries), articulating his concept of a “Civil Empire” with the social framework of the “State of India.” Starting from the premise that Boxer’s category extends beyond the strictly social plane to encompass forms of occupation, economic exploitation, political networks, and missionary methodologies, the study organizes the societal portrait based on the main groups Boxer identifies: soldiers (including unmarried “soldiers”), “casados”/settlers, clergy, and also marginal segments such as vagabonds, adventurers, and beggars. The analysis emphasizes how the image of the Portuguese empire is defined less by a coherent military “machine” and more by a historical structure marked by social processes and practices of governance, especially considering the implicit contrast with the Spanish/overseas “Military Empire.” Methodologically, the text operates as a critical and contextual reading of Boxer, discussing its assumptions and limitations (including the debate on “racial discrimination” and the underanalysis of the Far East) and, from there, advances an interpretative conclusion: the Luso model in the East would have operated more according to civil logics than military ones, albeit traversed by conflicts, fragilities, and reorganizations of power.

The article investigates how José Eduardo Agualusa and Luís Cardoso, often classified as “Lusophone writers,” contribute to problematizing the very concept of Lusophony. The author draws on the debate sparked in Macau, within the context of the “Rota das Letras,” linking the literary discussion to the postcolonial tensions inherent in narratives of identity belonging. Methodologically, it combines a brief contextualization of the authors and their works with the reconstitution and analysis of transcribed excerpts from a conversation held during the festival, privileging the arguments of the dialogue as interpretive material. The text argues that Lusophony, by often being presupposed as a cultural community and a horizon of communion among peoples, tends to conceal the diversity of desires, strategies, and aesthetic projects that traverse the spaces of writing in the Portuguese language. The analysis highlights relevant differences between the Timorese and Angolan cases: while literature in Portuguese in Timor emerges marked by functions of resistance and linguistic continuity, Agualusa and Cardoso, from different trajectories, problematize the idea of a single matrix, suggesting a plural, heterogeneous, and politically situated Lusophony.

The article analyzes, from a historical-cultural perspective, the pleasures and leisure activities in Macau during the early decades of the twentieth century, discussing how European modernization and the colonial conjuncture influenced practices of sociability, education, and consumption of entertainment in a peripheral context. Arguing that, despite the apparent administrative “apathy” and relative isolation from the “surrounding world,” Macau mobilized specific policies and social dynamics, the author frames ludic experiences within a broader transformation of customs, uncertainty about the future, and the search for alternative forms of enjoyment. Methodologically, it employs a historiographic reading based on published sources and printed documentation, articulating legislation and measures related to teaching and lifelong education with indicators of local prosperity and living standards. As main conclusions, the text highlights the existence of a colonial economy marked by monopolies and revenues (such as opium and gambling), which fueled a “prosperity” capable of sustaining leisure; it also identifies a spatially segmented city between Christian and Chinese areas, where different urban environments conditioned distinct forms of entertainment. Thus, the article interprets leisure as historical practices linked to economic structures and cultural reorganizations of the period.

This article analyzes, from a textual and linguistic perspective, the Japanese grammar **Arte Breve da Lingoa Iapoa** (1620), published in Macau by João Rodrigues, with the aim of identifying its main characteristics and the underlying linguistic vision. Based on a comparative **textual research** between the **Arte Breve** and the author’s earlier work (**Arte da Lingoa de Iapam**), the study reconstructs how Rodrigues redefines the teaching of Japanese for European beginners in the missionary and intercultural mediation context. Methodologically, the article examines editorial and pedagogical choices (structure, reorganization of content, and degree of condensation), as well as theoretical decisions, especially the relationship between the description of Japanese and the Latin grammatical tradition. The results show that the **Arte Breve** represents a significant turning point: (i) it partially breaks away from structural dependence on the Latin model by proposing a system more suited to the study of Japanese; (ii) it **strategically integrates writing** and the learning of letters/syllabaries at the beginning of the manual; and (iii) it reconfigures grammatical categories, such as the notion of **article** (understood as a particle) and aspects of **conjugation** (including past-tense auxiliaries). It is concluded that the work, although Latinizing in terminology, reveals a functional and pedagogical orientation aimed at learners, reflecting a conception of Japanese that prioritizes the operational description of linguistic phenomena.

This article analyzes the "echoes of the Orient" in "Lapis Lazuli," a poem by W. B. Yeats included in Last Poems (1936–1939), proposing that the evocation of a Chinese sculptural piece in lapis lazuli functions less as decorative exoticization and more as an aesthetic mechanism to reconfigure the relationship between tragedy, historical repetition, and cultural continuity. The author reads the poem in a comparative and intertextual manner, situating it within the context of other Yeatsian meditations on artistic objects, and articulating references to the Middle and Far East—including the funerary symbolism of the stone, as well as the presence of the "Chinamen" as figures of longevity and reconstruction. Methodologically, the analysis employs close reading and a critical framework of Oriental imagery, tracing how Yeats shifts the notion of the "tragic" toward an ethics of heroic joy: the instability of creations ("All things fall and are built again") is countered by a cultural productivity that transforms decline into renewal. The conclusion is that the poem turns the Orient into a mirror of the Western artistic task, where permanence depends on the ability to "raise the cry" in the midst of despair, and where art paradoxically provides solutions to suffering.

Clara Sarmento's article analyzes Jorge Barbosa's "Poem of the Sea" as an expression of the Cape Verdean worldview elaborated by the Claridade movement. Arguing that the text articulates a "divided desire" — the urge for escape in the face of the land's harshness — the author situates the work in the context of the 1930s, when the claridosos sought to break with their subalternity vis-à-vis metropolitan models and confer aesthetic autonomy upon insular creation. Methodologically, the reading proceeds through historical-literary contextualization and through thematic and linguistic exegesis of the poem, in dialogue with other texts by Barbosa and with the cultural matrix of Claridade. Among the principal conclusions, the author maintains that the Islands, in the "Poem of the Sea," appear de-romanticized ("rocks, sands, and hills"), while the sea is simultaneously prison and pathway to the horizon: it "expands dreams and stifles desires," "prompts prayers," and instates the nostalgia of the "distant land" mediated by images and cinema. The social drama — drought, famine, emigration, and isolation — is refracted in intimacy ("within us all"), converting landscape into existential language. Thus, the poem achieves an alchemy between "the here and the there," fusing the outer sea with the inner sea and transforming the conflict between leaving and staying into a poetic identity nucleus.

This article analyzes the attempts of the Italian Jesuit Carlo Spinola to reach the Indian Ocean (the "State of India") within the context of oceanic routes and missionary narratives of the late sixteenth century. Through a comparative reading of Spinola's letters addressed to the Superior General Claudio Acquaviva and the account attributed to Father Gaspar Afonso (incorporated into contemporary shipwreck repertoires), Daniele Frison seeks to explain why seemingly marginal episodes in Spinola's biography were narrated with such great detail and apologetic value. The study argues that the writings of Spinola and Afonso must be understood in light of a missionary methodology specific to the Society of Jesus, in which epistolary reporting and printed circulation functioned as "media" to legitimize enterprises, convert misadventures into proof of faith, and inscribe success (or the reorientation of the journey) within an economy of religious reputation. Methodologically, the author compares chronologies, themes, and modes of narration, while simultaneously acknowledging the differences between the two descriptions and the vicissitudes that separated the travelers along the way. It concludes that the voyage, marked by disasters and detours, was transformed into a historiographical and theological argument: even when the immediate objective is not achieved, the "contrary" outcome is read as glorious, reinforcing the value of the mission and the permanence of the evangelizing purpose.

This article examines how the Jesuit mission in Japan was established and consolidated thanks to a trans-imperial "network" articulated by Gaspar do Amaral, framing this activity within the broader set of economic, spiritual, and institutional connections of the Society of Jesus. Drawing on documentation already identified in archives such as the National Library of the Ajuda Palace (Lisbon) and the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu (Rome), the author proposes a historiographical reading centered on financing and logistics: the Japanese mission appears as dependent on revenues generated in the Estado da Índia, especially in Bassein and the rents associated with the *caçabés* of various localities along the Indian coast, as well as on monetary contributions diverted from the revenues of the Mumbai archipelago. Methodologically, the study articulates accounting series and internal inventories of the Province of India (e.g., summaries of colleges, residences, and expenses) to reconstruct resource flows, budgetary tensions, and forms of fund mobilization. The main conclusions emphasize that the viability of the mission in Japan cannot be explained solely by local dynamics, but rather by the interdependence among missions, colleges, and economic circuits: the contribution of the Japanese mission and the Japanese diaspora emerges as a decisive factor both for the "unfolding" and for the institutional "settlement" in Tun Kim. The text thus demonstrates that the Jesuit expansion into Japan was sustained by global financial engineering, in which Macao and the Indian network functioned as essential platforms.

Starting from the premise that the "act of presenting food" is equivalent to presenting culture, this article proposes to read Macao through a specific visual mediation: A-Cheng's ink-and-wash caricatures. Rather than privileging gustatory perception, the images activate a reception based on sight and reconducted memory. The author argues that, although A-Cheng is primarily known as a cartoonist, his paintings retain an archival sensibility and a "point of memory," fixing on paper everyday scenes and affective collections associated with a Macao in transformation. Methodologically, the text articulates iconographic analysis and theoretical discussion on cultural memory (between "lieux de mémoire" and "post-memory"), relating pictorial technique (ink and wash with double lines, colors, and caricatural disproportions) to processes of Sino-Portuguese hybridization. It concludes that food—treated as a motif and not merely as a theme—functions as an intersection between past and present, individual and collective, allowing one to "taste" Macao through visual language. Thus, "Macanese cuisine," understood as a fragment of broader historical dynamics, reveals itself as an interpretive key for understanding the persistence of tradition and the burlesque dramatization of everyday life.

Fernanda Dias's article presents a set of "reading notes" on Mo Yan's novel *Peito Grande, ancas Largas* (*Feng ru fei tun*, 1996), articulating it with the author's literary biography and with recurrent aesthetic lines in his oeuvre. The author argues that the book's singularity lies not only in its social and sexual charge, often associated with controversy and censorship, but above all in a form of narrative recomposition marked by tensions between memory, absurdity, and historical-social critique. The methodology combines interpretive reading and contextualization: starting from Mo Yan's trajectory, from discussions on dignity and "relations" in literary creation, and from the formal strategies present in his fiction, the analysis reexamines how the novel mobilizes procedures of distortion, exaggeration, and metamorphosis to inscribe a complex experience of the twentieth-century China. Among the results, the article highlights the "unorthodox perspective on historical facts" as the driving force of the literary effect, as well as the text's capacity to transcend cultural boundaries without relying on direct influences from external models. It concludes that *Peito Grande, ancas Largas* exemplifies the ambition and aesthetic weight characteristic of Mo Yan, converting the regional into a key for reading a fragmented Chinese modernity.

The article asks "Macao, a multicultural city?" and seeks to answer this question through the literary analysis of the final (posthumous) novel by Henrique de Senna Fernandes, **Os Dores**, fictionally set in the 1940s and 1950s. The central thesis maintains that the city can be read as a space of encounter between **East and West** since Portuguese governance in the sixteenth century, and that this history materializes in the novel through "marks of multiculturality" expressed by characters, spaces, customs, and social relations. Methodologically, the work articulates a theoretical framework on multiculturalism with the interpretive reading of the literary text, conceiving the novel as a privileged source for the representation of diversity and alterity in concrete historical contexts. Subsequently, an analytical and practical approach is undertaken, aimed at identifying and discussing, within the narrative and descriptive configurations of **Os Dores**, the signs of cultural coexistence, its tensions, and forms of social negotiation. It is concluded that Macao, as staged by Senna Fernandes, is not a mere exotic setting, but a cultural device in which colonial continuities, the circulation of influences, and modes of coexistence are simultaneously recognized — allowing multiculturality to be characterized as a historical hallmark of the city.

The article examines the “secret language” inscribed in the love letter of the character Lu Si-yuan in Maria Ondina Braga’s *Nocturno em Macau*. The author argues that the letter constitutes a privileged object of expressive silence: although materially “visible,” it remains inaccessible to most, functioning as an illegible or indecipherable enigma. Drawing on a theoretical reflection on secrecy and silence (drawing, among others, on Derrida), the text proposes that deciphering the subtext does not eliminate the mystery but reorganizes the reading experience, transforming the spoken into a space of ineffability. Methodologically, the analysis combines textual reading (focusing on the letter scene and its reception by the narrator/character) with narratological and autobiographical frameworks. The article further links the letter to the “autobiographical pact” in a broad sense (Lejeune), arguing that, in Braga’s work, autobiography is constructed in an incomplete and open manner: memory, diary, chronicle, and novel converge, demanding an interpretative initiative from the reader. It concludes that the letter brings about a transmutation of materiality into suspended signs, preserving the modesty necessary for the affective denouement and offering the reader a “space” where silence — more than the message — organizes meaning.

This article proposes a comparative analysis of the evolution of Malacca and Macao as Portuguese ports, focusing on the preservation of maritime cultural heritage. Arguing that maritime history constitutes the material and symbolic foundation of the urban, commercial, and social development of both cities, the authors maintain that the inscription of the "Historic Centre of Macao" as World Heritage is insufficient because it fails to adequately integrate the structuring role of the maritime matrix—Portuguese and Chinese—in the formation and continuity of its significance as a port. Methodologically, the study employs a comparative approach grounded in documentary research and a critical-interpretive reading of the material record, articulating evidence associated with port structures and heritage policies, as well as an examination of contemporary museological devices that shape public perception of maritime memory. The findings indicate that, in Macao, tangible evidence exists not only in spaces dedicated to the maritime sector (for example, the Maritime Museum), but also in the urban layout and planning designed to maximize port functions; however, the heritage narrative tends to shift historical prominence to later industries. In the case of Malacca, the discovery of archaeological remains from the Ming period and references to structures linked to the fleets of Zheng He reinforce the need to understand the complex network of exchanges and maritime infrastructures. The article thus concludes by asserting the urgency of heritage policies that fully recognize the maritime "witness" as part of the common heritage of humanity.