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The article proposes a redefinition of "Macau literature" that transcends the canonical categories of fiction, poetry, and theater. It is argued that any attempt at delimitation must consider, in particular, the centrality of journalism and essayistic writing in the Portuguese language, whose institutionalization dates back to the early nineteenth century, with periodicals that, in addition to disseminating diverse political positions, consolidated discursive practices recurrent in local cultural production. Secondly, the text emphasizes the importance of genres marked by Macau's translocal condition: reportage and travel literature, as well as autobiographical accounts associated with the memory of the territory and the identitarian sensibility of the Macanese. Methodologically, the approach articulates theoretical framing and contextual reading of representative cases, mobilizing examples from Portuguese, Chinese, and transcultural authors, as well as debates on the language and origin of writers. Among the findings, it is noteworthy that Macanese literary identity is structured around a productive tension between singularity and plurality: on the one hand, the plurality of languages (Portuguese and Chinese) and of editorial circuits; on the other, the singularity of the "Macau backdrop" as a historical and cultural experience, including contemporary visions such as the dual heritage thematized on the eve of the 1999 transfer.

The article examines the Tokugawa shogunate's campaign against Christian rebels in the siege of Hara Castle (Shimabara) in 1638, arguing that this case reverses the narrative that Japan "had given up the gun" following its initial adoption of firearms. Combining historical-political contextualization of the early Tokugawa period, a narrative reconstruction of the siege, and an analysis of the role of gunpowder weapons, the study relates the central government's military decisions to the local dynamics of the conflict on the Shimabara Peninsula. The central contribution is to show that, despite a long interval without major open warfare since the consolidation of Tokugawa power, the state machinery rapidly mobilized a siege force of exceptional scale (approximately 150,000 men) and sustained it for roughly three months. On the technological and tactical level, the article emphasizes that both sides made extensive use of firearms, both shoulder-fired small arms and artillery, but that muskets (arquebuses) played a particularly significant role, especially among the rebels. It concludes that the deliberate projection of power—materialized in mass violence and the effective use of gunpowder weaponry—helped stabilize Tokugawa authority for nearly 250 years, transforming the siege of Hara into a landmark of military continuity and state capacity.

The article proposes a critical framing of the study of weapons, fortresses and military strategies in Southeast Asia within the context of the Euro-Asian encounter of the fifteenth–sixteenth centuries, arguing that the military dimension of early globalization remains insufficiently investigated compared to approaches centered on European chronicles. Starting from the premise that maritime connections reshaped economies, knowledge and mentalities, the text highlights the European “technical and military revolution” as a driver of competitive advantages, articulating the circulation of ships, artillery, gunpowder and combat practices with the cultural and defensive effects on Asian territories. Methodologically, the introduction organizes a comparative and documentary research program that prioritizes concrete questions still lacking answers: forms of shipbuilding and armament in the Asian space, processes of manufacturing weapons and gunpowder, skills in operating artillery, effectiveness of firearms under tropical conditions, and impacts on defensive systems and hand-to-hand combat. It concludes by advocating for a thematic dossier that integrates studies from different specialists to map both the rapid adoption of European techniques and the processes of adaptation and “asiatization” of warrior practices by local interlocutors, highlighting the need to overcome positivist narratives and build historically verifiable knowledge.

The article reexamines the so-called "paradox" of European warfare—between the promise of technological superiority and logistical, tactical, and institutional contingencies—by investigating the place of firearms on the Asian continent between roughly 1500 and 1800. In dialogue with the "Military Revolution Debate," the authors argue that the effectiveness of European weapons in Asia cannot be explained by a linear transfer of technology, but rather by local dynamics that include military organization, supply infrastructure, fortress design, and forms of adaptation on the part of different powers. Methodologically, the text articulates a comparative and transregional approach, analyzing how artillery, handguns, and fortifications interrelated across diverse political and military contexts, contrasting the global European experience (from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean routes) with trajectories of change within Europe itself. As a result, it is argued that firearms functioned as selective catalysts: in certain conjunctures they contributed to tactical imbalances and to the offensive, while in others they were neutralized by defensive adaptations, material limitations, and strategies that restored the advantage of defenders. Thus, the "military revolution" must be understood as a historically situated process, rather than as a universal explanation of European power.

This article reassesses the historiographical narrative according to which Zheng Chenggong 鄭成功's success in capturing the Dutch colony of Taiwan (Fort Zeelandia) depended on "intelligence" provided by an intoxicated German deserter, Sergeant Hans Radij, in December 1661. Based on a broader examination of the documentary corpus concerning the siege, the author argues that Radij's relevance has been overestimated. Zheng and his commanders would have identified from the outset the central vulnerability of the fort—the small hilltop redoubt situated behind Zeelandia—as well as other structural weaknesses, formulating coherent strategies early on that addressed these limitations. Methodologically, the article interprets the campaign as a whole, paying attention to Zheng's operational priorities: the Dutch fort, while relevant, was not the immediate focus of the siege, since the Dutch were relatively contained and did not impede other operations. The decision to intensify the attack only gained centrality when Zheng learned that the Dutch might receive support from the Qing forces, an adversary he was already fighting in China. The conclusion is that the conquest would likely have occurred regardless of the role attributed to the deserter, although Radij may have contributed, to a lesser extent, to the construction of siege works.

The article argues that the rapid Portuguese military assertion in the East during the first decades of the sixteenth century is explained not only by the alleged technical superiority of European pyroballistic weaponry ("cannons and sails"), but above all by the integration of this material capacity into a distinct tactical and logistical system. Based on a critical reading of legal-administrative and regimental sources (notably naval orders and dispositions), combined with operational evidence cited in historiography and contemporary accounts of campaigns, the text reconstructs how the Portuguese Crown developed, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, a more effective artillery park, supported by institutional reorganization and the hiring/importation of specialists (bombardiers and founders), as well as by experimentation and the production of bronze pieces. The main analytical contribution is to demonstrate that, in the eastern seas, the decisive advantage resulted from the adoption of line-ahead combat using artillery, replacing the traditional boarding assault. This doctrine, already present in regulations of 1501, made the outcome of battles dependent on the balance between maneuverability and firepower, allowing the Portuguese to face adversaries who were many times better manned. Illustrating the impact with examples such as the bombardments of Calicut, it is concluded that Portuguese effectiveness rested on the alignment of equipment, training, and tactics, producing an offensive and systematic naval warfare in the Indian Ocean.

This article presents the Author Index for issues 21–24 of the *Review of Culture* (2008), bringing together contributions published between January and October 2007 in both Portuguese and English. Through editorial selection, the collection highlights the thematic and methodological diversity of studies on Macao and its cultural, historical, and transnational surroundings. The listed texts address the circulation of knowledge and practices (for example, medical knowledge, natural history, and botanical classifications), colonial dynamics and representations, as well as commercial and diplomatic networks connecting Macao to Asian and Atlantic spaces. Among the key issues are intercultural mediation between Europe and Asia, the construction of identities in urban and literary contexts, and the analysis of agents, the circulation of goods, and documents across different periods, including the eighteenth century and the transition to modernity. As a bibliographic instrument, the index functions simultaneously as a research map and as a guide for future readings, enabling the location of authors, titles, and thematic domains surrounding Macao's role as a platform for cultural, economic, and intellectual contacts.

This article analyzes the origins of the Macanese community in Shanghai during the period 1850–1900, situating the Macau–Hong Kong–Shanghai flow within a broader diasporic framework, that is, as a migration “between diasporas” that simultaneously engages with both Portuguese and Chinese currents in the second half of the nineteenth century. Based on a macro-historical analysis, the study contextualizes the first phase of Macanese emigration, which began in the 1840s and intensified after 1850, arguing that the reorientation of destinations stemmed from immediate factors—namely, the emergence of Hong Kong and the relocation of British and Chinese trading houses. By a drag effect, these shifts redirected part of the Macanese networks toward Shanghai. The article then explains the pull of the Shanghai metropolis, highlighting three interdependent drivers: the creation and expansion of foreign concessions, the economic dynamism associated with European commercial presence, and the growing ethnic and national diversity of the urban population. It concludes that the Macanese, by integrating a Luso-Asian society and positioning themselves at the intersection of international migrations, helped consolidate a community nucleus in Shanghai whose expansion accompanied the city’s modernization and urban growth.

The article analyzes the shipwreck, in 1685, of a Japanese vessel loaded with tobacco off the coast of Macau and interprets the episode as an "opportune moment" for the reconfiguration of commercial and political-religious relations between Macau and Japan, following the ruptures of the seventeenth century. The author argues that, in a context marked by Dutch competition and the growing fragility of support arriving from Goa, the Macanese elite mobilized the event to reactivate maritime routes and negotiate, through indirect channels, the reestablishment of trade with the Japanese archipelago. Methodologically, the study is grounded in a critical reading of a manuscript attributed to Juan Arnedo, complemented by documentation from the Leal Senado, deploying these sources to reconstruct the dynamics of local decision-making and their effects on Macau's institutional strategy. Among the findings, the capacity for the political exploitation of the shipwreck stands out, both to sustain the continuity of contacts with Japan and to manage the impact of Japanese sensibilities regarding the Christian presence. The article concludes that the case evinces Macanese agency and the centrality of maritime contingencies in the transformation of routes and port policies, during a period of decline and recomposition of the Lusophone system in Southeast Asia.

The article analyzes, in a comparative manner, the representations of "China" in Portuguese and Spanish historical cartography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, arguing that maps not only reflected geographical knowledge but functioned as instruments of maritime power and of the management of cultural and economic relations. Departing from the premise that cartographic production actively participated in networks of navigation, conquest, and administration (through circulation among explorers, courts, and chancelleries), the author employs comparative tools from the historiography of cartography to examine how different cartographic traditions shaped images of Chinese space and of the routes connecting it to Iberian ports and Asian markets. The conclusions highlight that the cartographed "China" is frequently presented in articulation with concrete interests: maritime communication, commercial circuits, and monopoly strategies. Also evidenced are dynamics of symbolic and material reciprocity—such as the centrality of Macau in the Canton–Macao–Nagasaki routes and the instrumentalization of the value of commodities (for example, silk and silver)—which influence the manner in which the territory is drawn and understood. Thus, Iberian cartography appears as a mediation between knowledge, commerce, and imperial politics, revealing the presuppositions and objectives that structured Chinese geography in the European imagination.

The article analyzes how the Portuguese royal monopoly and trade of an American commodity—Brazilian tobacco—integrated, between approximately 1674 and 1776, the Atlantic and Indo-Atlantic circuits of the global economy, articulating Portuguese America with Africa and Asia. The central thesis holds that, after an initial phase of failed attempts at commercial control, the Crown's fiscal reorganization in the post-1640 context transformed tobacco into a key instrument for sustaining imperial finances, while simultaneously connecting the production and circulation of commodities with the African slave trade and with the commercial relations of the State of India. Methodologically, the text employs a historiographical approach and the history of commodity economics, framing the "commoditization" of tobacco within long-term intercontinental exchanges, with attention to the interaction between maritime routes, markets, and cultural mediations. It is argued that the diffusion of tobacco in Asia—made possible by Portuguese networks and facilitated by local practices such as the habit of chewing betel—created a vast space of consumption that enabled the Crown to expand revenues and control channels of supply. The article concludes that the case of tobacco demonstrates how royal monopolies functioned as infrastructures of integration between colonial ecosystems, fueling the emerging global economy and reinforcing Africa's role as a platform for the mobilization of labor for the Americas.

This article proposes a history of health issues in Macao during the nineteenth century, articulating diseases, epidemics, medical practices, and experiences of illness against the backdrop of a structurally deficient hygienic system. The authors argue that the high mortality observed in the city intensified when epidemic outbreaks emerged, favored by precarious sanitary conditions, unequal vulnerability among communities, and insufficient urban infrastructures, such as sanitation and water supply. The methodology is based on a critical reading of nineteenth-century documentary sources and on historical-medical contextualization, allowing for the correlation of seasonal morbidity patterns with environmental and social determinants. It is concluded that the main epidemics—especially plague, cholera, and smallpox—presented recurrent incidence and strong seasonal expression, while other transmissible diseases, although less epidemic, maintained continuous circulation. The text also highlights preventive measures implemented by the authorities (inspection of dwellings, sanitary surveillance of vessels and pipelines, restrictions on certain foods, and intensification of vaccination) and, simultaneously, underscores the material limits of sanitary control in a context of urban expansion without corresponding investment in sewerage networks. Finally, the analysis suggests that disease dynamics were mediated by relations of hygiene, diet, and differential access to resources, producing marked asymmetries between Chinese and Europeans.

This article examines the identity construction and political role of the jurubaças (East Asian Chinese-Portuguese interpreters/linguistic mediators) families within the context of Sino-Portuguese relations following the Dutch attack of 1622. The study argues that, under conditions of linguistic barriers, military and diplomatic pressure, the jurubaças assumed a "third space" role of a cross-cultural and bilingual/multilingual nature, facilitating understanding, negotiation, and the redistribution of power between Portugal and China; their identity was not simply situated within a binary colonial/colonized opposition, but rather constituted a hybrid position continually revised through institutional interactions. Methodologically, the author employs third-space theory (drawing on Homi Bhabha and postcolonial discussions of hybridity) as an analytical framework, and turns to a historical investigation of the literature on the jurubaças: examining the etymology and variant orthographies of "jurubaça" (derived from the Malay jurubassa) and its appearance in Macao and surrounding documents from the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, thereby connecting the diplomatic mediation and interpreting practices of the post-1622 period. The conclusion suggests that, as the Portuguese side strengthened its defenses and maneuvered with local Chinese officials in the aftermath of the war, the jurubaças' linguistic competence and cultural familiarity rendered them crucial intermediaries in the negotiation process, thus making mediation "between language walls" a significant entry point for understanding Sino-Portuguese interactions.

The article analyzes how Austin Coates's historical novel *City of Broken Promises* (1967) represents **eighteenth-century Macau** as a “novel of broken promises,” discussing its necessarily hybrid nature between History and fiction. Starting from a theoretical problematization of the subgenre—centered on the tension between verifiable extratextual referents and the freedom of “fictionalization” of human life in historical context—the author confronts narratological models of the historical novel that privilege the consciousness of the past, the temporal construction of narrativity, and the “symbolic truth” of fiction. Methodologically, the reading of **CBP** emphasizes how the plot mobilizes specific spatiotemporal coordinates and how the characterization of figures with recoverable names and biographical traits does not aim to reproduce historical persons accurately, but rather to reconfigure them literarily. The article concludes that the novel’s effectiveness lies not in serving as a substitute for historiography, but in producing an interpretive model of the past, in which history is made available as a narrative horizon for understanding “man in history.” Thus, **CBP** demonstrates how the truth of the historical novel is less factual than structural and symbolic: what is “said” about the past depends on the poetics that makes it narratable.

This article proposes a rereading of the role of Robert Morrison (1782–1834) in the intellectual history between the West and China, shifting the focus from biographical consecration to a contextualized approach to his work in Macao and the literary production associated with his apostolate. It is argued that, although Morrison was decisive in constructing an Anglophone corpus on Chinese language and culture, his work must be understood as part of a collective and transmediated effort, dependent on local mediators—Chinese teachers, scholars, and collaborators—as well as on technical-literary continuities between Catholic and Protestant missions. Methodologically, the author articulates historiographical analysis with a “linguistic world” perspective (語景), examining strategies for learning and teaching Chinese, networks of assistance, and bibliographic appropriations. Among the main lines of evidence are: (1) the comparison between Catholic manuscripts and models and the Chinese biblical translation attributed to Morrison/Milne (1823); (2) the verification of Morrison’s use of earlier dictionaries—especially of Catholic missionary origin—in the preparation of dictionaries and grammars of the period. It is concluded that the historiography on Morrison gains density when his legacy is reassessed in light of local sources and intercultural processes of knowledge circulation, often obscured by the apologetic and ethnocentric writing of the European missions themselves.

Scholarly analyses of the Misericórdias first appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, but it was Charles Boxer who first examined them on a par with the other institutions of local power that he judged to be fundamental in the Portuguese Empire, the Câmaras (municipal councils). Boxer considered both institutions to be the keys for understanding the local dynamics of power and government. As mentioned in the introduction to the present volume, he drew primarily on printed sources to present a comparative overview of local institutions in four cities of the Portuguese empire: Macau, Goa, Bahia, and Luanda. ough his analysis centered on the role played by the Câmaras in imperial administration, Boxer considered the Misericórdias as their twin.1 More recently, in the 1990s, scholars have analyzed the Misericórdias at the level of the Portuguese empire. ese examinations stressed the differences among the confraternities found across the empire, while recognizing their common religious and administrative principles.2 As should be expected, local conditions provide much of the explanation for this diversity. Important factors included the ethnic makeup of the population, the ways in which the Portuguese related to the indigenous or imported populations, and the organization of the local economy. Significantly, however, a given area’s relationship with the metropolis affected the different procedures and social habits of its local Misericórdia. And as the essay by J.S.A. Elisonas in this volume reveals, this Portuguese model of charity was not limited by the bounds of empire and left its mark on forms of confraternal piety in cities such as Nagasaki and Kyoto.

Macau’s status has never been a pacific topic even inside Portuguese historiography. Departing from Montalto de Jesus (1863-1932)’ controversial proposal to summit Macau’s administration to the League of Nations in the revised edition of his Historic Macao, 1926, the author aims to discuss the construction of the discourse on the autonomy of Macau, identify the roots of this concept, and explore its different meanings in works of some of the most relevant Portuguese and Macanese historians and authors on the topic during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.