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The article analyzes the first diplomatic contact between the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the sultanate of Pontianak in 1778, taking as a case study the role of Nicolaas Kloek, the "bookkeeper" entrusted with the visit. The central proposal is to demonstrate, through the Pontianak episode, how the VOC's political advance in Asia depended on everyday relations, mediated by local intermediaries and shaped by reciprocal expectations, even when the ties between Batavia and peripheral territories were "fragile." The methodology combines a critical reading of VOC archival sources with a reconstruction of the encounter and the political context of the recently founded sultanate, emphasizing the microhistorical dimension of Kloek's work: his incompetence as a representative and his meticulousness as a chronicler make possible a close examination of the daily functioning of local politics. It is concluded that the sultanate's demand for Dutch recognition is not explained by simple commercial interests, but by strategies of legitimation and consolidation of power in an unstable regional scenario; simultaneously, the reliance on limited bureaucratic agents meant that the "lines" between Batavia and Pontianak, although decisive at certain moments, remained unstable and frequently interrupted.

Leonard Blussé's article reassesses the little-studied figure of Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest (1739–1801), a Dutch merchant and observer within the context of the dynamic Luso-Sino-European trade of the eighteenth century, arguing that his trajectory—marked by ambition, reversals, and an intense accumulation of artifacts and accounts—allows for an understanding of broader processes in the history of commerce in Canton and the transnational circulation of goods, knowledge, and prestige. Blussé employs a method of documentary "collage," combining archival sources from the Netherlands (including personal manuscripts and materials from Van Braam's brother), texts produced by the subject himself, and information recovered from local collections in the United States by descendants and historians linked to his family. The analysis also incorporates the subsequent reception of the "mission account" to the court of the Qianlong Emperor (1794–1795), frequently reissued in European versions through translations and adaptations. As findings, the author contends that Van Braam should be read both as an economic actor and as a private chronicler: his narratives and collections, despite the moralizing interpretations of contemporaries, reveal the internal logics of the VOC's commercial policy and the material conditions of cultural mediation between Europe and China.

The article analyzes the "Descrição da China" attributed to the Franciscan friar Jacinto de Deus, offering a historical-cultural reading of how the missionary constructs a "portrait" of China in the context of Catholic expansion in the Far East. The author argues that the text should not be interpreted merely as factual testimony, but as a device of mediation: it articulates direct observation, rhetorical strategies of legitimation, and European theological-cultural presuppositions, while simultaneously responding to Luso-Castilian political tensions and the specific conditions of the Franciscan presence in Macau. Methodologically, the study combines documentary criticism and discourse analysis, situating the "Descrição" within a network of circulation of accounts, missionary objectives, and institutional disputes among orders and empires. Through the chronological framing of the Franciscan missions and administrative reforms (custodies and chapters), the author demonstrates how writing about China also operates as an instrument of the mission's internal organization. Among the main results, the identification of recurrent themes stands out (government, customs, religion, and social practices), treated according to Western categories but reconfigured by a local experience marked by Jesuit and colonial mediations. The conclusion is that Jacinto de Deus's text is simultaneously a source for Luso-European intellectual history and a revealing document of the intercultural negotiations that traversed Macau in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Manel Ollé analyzes the image of China constructed by the Spanish Dominican Domingo Fernández de Navarrete (c. 1610–1680) in his *Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China* (1676). The article argues that the *Tratados* should not be read as mere compilations or proto-ethnographic manuals devoid of intention, but rather as an argumentative device embedded within the "Rites Controversy," which pitted Jesuit missionary policies against those of Dominicans, Franciscans, and certain dissidents. The author employs a contextual and hermeneutic reading of the text—articulating its missionary, political, and intellectual framework with the literate culture of Baroque Spain—to demonstrate how the informative ambition (based on the author’s observations in China and extensive translation and selection of materials) is converted into material for serious debate. Among the central findings, the productive tension stands out between an idealized China, associated with "good governance" and moral philosophers, and the desolate picture of the Spanish present, marked by the imperial failure of Philip IV’s reign. Thus, Ollé concludes that the work simultaneously functions as a theological defense and as a mirror of Iberian political practices and anxieties, while also exerting a lasting influence on the European reception of thought about China.

This article analyzes how the Philippines were integrated into the “memory of the Castilian feat in Asia” in the early seventeenth century, focusing on two reference authors: Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola and Antonio de Morga. Drawing from Donald F. Lach’s observation on the historical marginality of the Philippines in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European literature, the study proposes that the consolidation of the archipelago as an “insular platform for expansion” generated new possibilities for the production of information, but did not ensure full narrative centrality in printed historiography. Methodologically, the research conducts a comparative reading of the chronicle discourses and the devices of geographical and toponymic representation present in the works analyzed, confronting them with the political-military context and the networks of knowledge circulation between the Asian terrain and editorial centers. It concludes that, until the first decade of the seventeenth century, the construction of Castilian historicity tended to be mediated by institutional and religious objectives, which contributed to asymmetries in the framing of the islands and to deficiencies in the apprehension of space. The cases of Argensola and Morga thus evidence how the visibility of the Philippines emerged accompanied by interpretive limitations, reflected in toponymic errors and in an uneven integration of the archipelago into the imaginary of Spanish expansion in Asia.

The article analyzes how Macao is represented in Samuel Purchas's compilation, *Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes* (1625), arguing that this "Macao" results less from direct observation than from an editorial process of translation, selection, and framing of Portuguese and European materials. Proceeding from the centrality of travel collections to the circulation of Atlantic-Asian knowledge in the early seventeenth century, the study interprets Purchas's role within the informational ecosystem that fed English commercial and strategic interests, notably through the East India Company. Methodologically, the author confronts relevant passages of the text with the body of sources read and reused by Purchas (including manuscripts attributed to the legacy of Richard Hakluyt and earlier narratives by authors connected to the Portuguese empire), as well as with the composite logic of the "relations of the world" that characterize *Hakluytus Posthumus*. The main findings show that Macao is constructed through recurrent topoi (routes, commercial utility, religious circulation, and validation of accounts), in which the authority of print and Purchas's theological-historiographical framework reconfigure the city's place as a node between "discovery," cultural confrontation, and potential for expansion.

Vítor Gomes Teixeira's article proposes to recover the figure of Fr. Paulo da Trindade (c. 1570-1651), a Franciscan friar born in Macau and a distinguished chronicler of the Portuguese "Far East," arguing that historiography has largely privileged "metropolitan" history, marginalizing the agents and knowledge produced in the imperial peripheries. The author situates the relevance of the chronicler within the institutional and cultural development of the mendicant orders in Portuguese Asia, with particular emphasis on Franciscanism between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and within the context of the missionary disputes and articulations involving territories under the Portuguese Padroado and the dynamics of the Patronato of Manila. The methodology is based on a historical-critical reading of contextualization and biographical reconstruction, articulating data on the Franciscan reorganization (custodies and provinces in Asia), the expansion of the regular clergy, and the growing importance of structures of formation and internal governance. Among the findings, the identification of Fr. Paulo stands out as a particularly representative figure of the maturation of Franciscanism within the imperial circuit, whose prestige and action were embedded in a religious ecosystem that extended beyond Goa and reached multiple eastern territories, contributing to the production of memory and knowledge about Macau and the Portuguese presence in the East.

António Rodrigues Baptista's article proposes a historiographical reassessment of the Jesuit Luís Fróis in the space of Macao, highlighting that his trajectory there must be understood as two fundamental moments: a phase of work and missionary adaptation and, later, an appraisal of his oeuvre. The author observes that previous historiography, exemplified by António Franco's study, devoted little attention to the years Fróis spent in the city, particularly between August 1562 and June 1563 and, subsequently, between October 1592 and June 1595. To support his argument, Baptista draws on unpublished primary sources — two letters written in Macao, one by Father João Baptista do Monte and another by Luís Fróis — and further incorporates the latter's three personal letters already partially published in the edition of the *Historia de Japam* organized by José Wicki (1976), supplementing them with excerpts from Fróis's correspondence produced in Malacca and Goa. The analysis of the letters allows Fróis's passage through Macao to be situated within the broader framework of Jesuit strategies in the Far East, evidencing both the logistical and human conditions that conditioned his missions and the relevance of these "four years" for the reflection and consolidation of his missionary project.

This article analyzes the construction and circulation of Macanese identity within a diasporic context, arguing that it was shaped less as a fixed "essence" than as a cultural performance situated between colonial empires. Drawing on the case of Macau’s Eurasian community—often self-identified as Portuguese, yet marked by Cantonese linguistic and everyday influences as well as transregional commercial networks—the text frames the discussion within recent debates on the "characteristics" of Macanese identity. The investigation particularly reads Henrique de Senna Fernandes’s fiction as a literary device that stages this intermediary position: a loyalty to the colonial status quo accompanied by a selective absorption of Chinese repertoires and those from other Lusophone geographies (India and Southeast Asia). Methodologically, the article links interpretive analysis of literary discourse with a critical review of anthropological and historical-cultural contributions on Macanese identity, emphasizing the relationship between belonging, social class, and historical adaptation throughout the twentieth century. It concludes that "fiction" functions both as the elaboration of an identity myth and as an archive of the diaspora’s internal tensions, revealing how the group’s survival depended on ongoing negotiations between a "Portuguese" heritage, reconfigurations in the face of Chinese growing influence, and strategies of social acceptance.

This article proposes a new reading of the dates associated with the "discovery" of Japan, traditionally fixed at 1543, arguing that this consensus has been constructed primarily from Japanese and Iberian sources, with less attention paid to contemporaneous Chinese evidence. To fill this gap, the authors provide a new annotated translation of *Teppōki* (鐵炮記, "Chronicle of the Arquebus"), complementing it with the identification and discussion of a Chinese source published in 1592 that addresses the introduction of the arquebus and the production of gunpowder in Bungo. The methodology combines textual criticism and interlinguistic comparison among Chinese, Portuguese, and Japanese documentation, aiming to reconstruct the political and commercial contexts of Sino-Luso-Japanese contacts, especially during periods of maritime restrictions imposed by the Ming dynasty. The authors highlight that Chinese sources, although rarely describing the first landings directly, offer crucial information on mercantile networks and circulation dynamics, allowing for the contextualization of the Luso-Asian trajectory from Liampó (Shuangyu) and the role of intermediaries such as Wang Zhi (Wang Zhi / GohĿ). It is concluded that the dates should be reassessed in light of these networks and alternative chronologies, offering a more nuanced perspective on the chronology and mechanisms of the Portuguese arrival in Japan.

The article analyzes the fortress of Quelang (Jilong, Taiwan) as a case study of the “Renaissance” military architecture exported to Southeast Asia and the Far East by Iberian and, later, Dutch powers. Arguing that the Quelang fort constitutes an expressive model within a broader family of walled citadels with four bastions, the text reconstructs its colonial history and its transformation over time, emphasizing the persistence of the original foundations despite renovations and renamings. Methodologically, the author combines historical-architectural analysis with a comparative interpretation of fortified typologies (including examples such as Manila, Cavite, Batavia, and other structures in the region) and a critical reading of cartographic and documentary sources from the Spanish period (1626–1642), highlighting early textual references and information on technical authorship. Among the main results, the article demonstrates that Quelang is distinguished by its scale within the regional ensemble, influencing contemporary perceptions during conflicts and signaling its strategic relevance. It also discusses the current state of the remains and proposes a “synthetic image” of the complex, inferring the most stable elements (bastions, central well, and gunpowder storage structures) and situating the most frequent alterations within the quarters area. It concludes that the fortress articulates past, present, and future as heritage interpretable through its typology and historical layers.

This article examines the "military issues" that permeated trade between Macao and Nagasaki in 1587, focusing on the intensification of political-military control promoted by Toyotomi Hideyoshi within the context of Japanese unification. The author’s central contribution lies in shifting the interpretation of the Portuguese-Jesuit traffic beyond a purely mercantile or missionary logic, highlighting how the presence of weapons, fortifications, and practices of accommodating armed forces in port circuits conditioned negotiations, authorizations, and conflicts. The analysis articulates historical sources related to Hideyoshi’s government and the interests of the Society of Jesus with elements of the Macao–Nagasaki commercial system, emphasizing moments when the management of armaments and the movement of soldiers became subjects of agreements and constraints. As a result, the article demonstrates that, as Nagasaki consolidated itself as a strategic space under Japanese control, trade was directly linked to the regulation of troops and the Jesuit attempt to secure guarantees for religious activities and military lodging. It concludes that the tensions between military instrumentalization and religious mediation were decisive in shaping the relationship between Macao and Nagasaki in the late sixteenth century.

The article analyzes the Sino-Portuguese embroidered textiles from the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), proposing that this production, destined for the export market, constituted a cultural synthesis resulting from the reconfiguration of Luso-Chinese relations from the mid-sixteenth century onward, with particular emphasis on commercial communication and the establishment of Macau as an entrepôt. The author argues that, despite the centrality of Chinese silk in Asian economies and the Portuguese role in mediating trade routes (including Canton), these embroideries remain little studied as a corpus and, above all, lack an integrated historiographic reading. Methodologically, the text favors a systemic approach based on inventory and comparative analysis of over 150 specimens identified over approximately a decade in Portuguese private and public collections, articulating technical procedures, material solutions, iconography, plastic approaches, and functional dimensions. The main conclusions indicate the existence of a highly constant and coherent profile that goes beyond mere contextualization and purpose. Finally, the author distinguishes two functional universes: a religious production, associated with Catholic worship and the mission of the Padroado; and a secular production aimed at the European civil community, especially the Lusophone one, intended for decoration and civil clothing, reflecting the diversity of actors involved in the overseas enterprise.

This article synthetically reconstructs the history of the Portuguese fortress of Malacca (A Famosa) between 1511 and 1641, arguing that the Luso presence in the main entrepôt of Southeast Asia depended to a large extent on the capacity of the defensive system erected within the framework of the "Estado da Índia." The analysis draws primarily on European visual and documentary sources from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, particularly Portuguese drawings that allow tracing the material and functional evolution of the fortification, complemented by contemporary references to its conception, location, and military role. The author contextualizes the decision to occupy Malacca following prior visits and negotiations (including reports on the city and its economic-military potential), describing Albuquerque's campaign and the strategic criteria that guided construction: topography, availability of materials and manpower, relations with local authorities, threat assessment, and the logic of maritime sustainment. It concludes that the fortress was simultaneously an instrument for controlling urban space and for the logistical protection of Atlantic-Asian traffic, serving to secure garrisons, support naval operations, and consolidate, for decades, Portuguese hegemony until the transition to Dutch dominion in 1641.

The article investigates to what extent Chinese-style firearm technology (derived from gunpowder) was effectively assimilated in Dai Viet (Vietnam) between the late fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries, moving beyond reliance exclusively on historical chronicles. The central question is whether written records are corroborated by material evidence: what types of muskets and artillery pieces were produced in Vietnam, in what quantity, and with what continuities (typology, metrics, inscriptions, and technical characteristics) in relation to Chinese prototypes. Methodologically, the author articulates documentary sources with a survey of archaeological artifacts and surviving objects in museums, private collections, and, where applicable, the antiquities market. Based on two trips to Hanoi (2003 and 2008) and one visit to Nanning (Guangxi, 2008), representative specimens are selected for typological analysis, measurements (when available), dating, and material traits (including inscriptions). It is concluded, albeit provisionally owing to gaps in information, that relatively large quantities of Chinese-style weapons were manufactured in Dai Viet during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, providing material support for the thesis of the diffusion and impact of Chinese armaments in local military history.

The article analyzes the organization and circulation of traditional Chinese pharmaceutical knowledge in Macao, with a specific focus on traditional pharmacies and herbal shops, distinguishing their business logics, therapeutic functions, and modes of mediation between masters and clients. The author argues that the contemporary "independence" between pharmacy, herbal shop, and professional specialization resulted from a slow and historically situated process, in which the owner frequently accumulated the roles of healer, apothecary, and supplier of prescriptions ("mestres-chinas"). Methodologically, the text articulates historical reading and ethnographic analysis based on the description of observable commercial and therapeutic practices (shop typologies, ingredient circuits, and preparation methods), contextualizing the evolution of the market since the absence, until the mid-nineteenth century, of pharmacies registered as such. The article concludes that the structural difference between herbal shops and pharmacies resided above all in the type of raw material and the degree of complexity of prescriptions: in herbal shops, fresh regional plants predominated and, only residually, minerals and ground substances; in pharmacies, by contrast, more elaborate prescriptions were associated with imported and pre-prepared ingredients, accessible to a distinct clientele and mediated by "old school" physicians. The article further highlights the social role of herbal shops as providers of popular access to the Macanese pharmacopeia and as spaces of listening and therapeutic guidance.

The article examines the notes written by the Portuguese Jesuit Gabriel de Magalhães (An Wensi) in 1674, intended to be included in the Chinese annual letter of that year, taking them as a privileged source for understanding, from a European perspective, the "Revolt of the Three Feudatories." The author situates the document within the context of the missionary presence at the court in Beijing, highlighting Magalhães's position at the Tribunal/Astronomical Observatory and the political-religious tensions that marked the 1670s, including rivalries with Muslim astronomers and fluctuations in imperial receptivity to Christianity. Methodologically, a historiographical and contextual reading of the manuscript is undertaken, linking its content to Jesuit practices of documentary production (annual letters) and to the historical framework of China under the reigns/regencies of Shunzhi and Kangxi. The main conclusions suggest that the notes transform the revolt into a problem interpreted through European categories—combining observation of events, providential language, and assessment of the impact on the mission—while simultaneously highlighting the limits of this "external view" in the face of the complexity of the Chinese political and institutional sphere. Thus, the source illuminates both the transcontinental circulation of information and the Jesuit modes of representing imperial instability.

In April 1602, the Portuguese galleon *Santiago*, on its return voyage from India to Portugal with a regular stop at the island of Saint Helena, was captured by two Dutch ships off the coast of the island, during a period marked by the intensification of maritime competition in the South Atlantic. Drawing primarily on two detailed accounts — one by Francesco Carletti (a witness aboard the *Santiago*) and another by Melchior Estácio do Amaral (an inquisitorial proceeding conducted in Portugal) — the article reconstructs the confrontation, emphasizing the centrality of artillery in the outcome without resorting to boarding. The capture is interpreted as a landmark in the chain of losses of the *Carreira da Índia* under the conjuncture that opened in 1598, when the Cape route began to be navigated by Dutch fleets in a regime of active competition. Methodologically, the research proceeds to the internal triangulation of the Portuguese testimonies and the historical-military contextualization of the episode, including the informational limitations of the Dutch side. It concludes that the three-day battle, culminating in surrender due to the risk of sinking, reveals structural vulnerabilities arising from new probabilities of confrontation on an Atlantic scale, as well as the operational dimension of the “relief armadas” of the early seventeenth century as elements that, despite reinforcing transport capacity, did not eliminate exposure to captures.

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.