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The article examines the political economy and commercial relations of Macau during the transition period from the reign of Qianlong to the Pombaline era, situating the city within the broader process of reconfiguration of Luso-Portuguese trade in southern China and the dynamics of the Canton system. The central proposal is to relativize the historiographic tendency that privileges the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, arguing that an understanding of the “single port” and of the negotiations between European powers and Chinese commercial governance requires an analysis focused on the eighteenth century, when the dispute over foreign access to the coastline was still unfolding and reached peaks such as the Flint episode. Methodologically, the text undertakes an exercise in historiographic survey and analytical framing, comparing existing approaches to maritime trade, coastal mercantile networks, and the rise of the Cohong, as well as the Portuguese and Anglo-Saxon literature on the circulation of goods and societal structures. Among the conclusions, the article highlights that Macau operated as a decisive gateway vis-à-vis Canton in the eighteenth century, and that the integration of regional (Pearl River Delta) and global (Indian Ocean and Atlantic-Lusophone routes) scales can reveal continuities and institutional readjustments in the articulation between politics, regulation, and trade.

The article examines the figure of Father Álvaro Semedo and argues that his work, in particular the *Relação da Grande Monarquia da China*, constitutes a central landmark in the construction of European knowledge about China in the Ming period. Starting from the context of the "Sino-foreign cultural exchange" initiated by the Jesuit mission — frequently associated with Matteo Ricci — the author maintains that Semedo should be recognized not only as a missionary on Chinese soil, but as the first Portuguese sinologist and one of the pioneers of Western sinology, whose historiographical reception has been unjustly marginalized in favor of more frequently cited authors. Methodologically, the text articulates historiographical framing and biographical recovery in order to situate Semedo within mission networks and the practices of language learning indispensable to evangelization and textual production. The analysis of the *Relação* is oriented toward highlighting Semedo's contribution to the dissemination of Chinese culture to a Western readership, in dialogue with the dynamics of transition between the Ming and Qing dynasties. The conclusion is that Semedo's work deserves greater academic attention as a historical source and as a document of cultural mediation, thereby contributing to correcting gaps in studies on the Portuguese presence in China and on the circulation of Luso-Jesuit knowledge.

Starting from a historical reading of globalization as a multidimensional process (economic, political, and cultural) and the centrality of cities in the reorganization of flows and powers, this article analyzes the relations and "bridges" between Macau and Hong Kong, focusing on the contemporary period after the transfer of sovereignty in 1999 and the early years of the 21st century. The argument maintains that, in the Pearl River Delta space, the persistent ties between the two cities simultaneously contribute to preserving local specificities and enhancing integration strategies at distinct scales—China, Asia, and the World—converging toward the emerging status of "global city." Methodologically, the text articulates a historical-cultural approach with analytical syntheses inspired by academic literature on globalization and urbanization, mobilizing references on urban and economic policies and on the role of Hong Kong in regional and international connections. As results, the article shows that Hong Kong consolidates its integration into the world economy through planning and modernization (housing, revitalization of the central district, port infrastructure, and airport), reinforcing its function as a platform connecting to international markets with the rise of the PRC as a commercial power. It concludes that interdependence with Macau, within a regional metropolitan ecosystem, sustains the capacity of both territories to position themselves in transnational networks, from the regional space to the global scale.

The article argues that the concession of Hong Kong, agreed within the framework of the First Opium War and formalized in the Treaty of Nanking, should not be read merely as a Luso-British territorial reconfiguration on the southern coast of China, but rather as a "disturbing factor" interpreted by the Portuguese of Macao in their dealings with the Chinese authorities. Based on a critical reading of official documentation and public interventions attributed to Portuguese protagonists of the period (including communications and discursive framings regarding the expected economic and administrative effects for Macao), the author reconstructs how these agents allegedly sought to sensitize the imperial power to the gravity of the arrangement: the transfer of the island and port would be presented not only as an immediate commercial threat, but as an ominous sign for the continuity of the Qing "imperial order." Methodologically, the text combines historical contextualization with rhetorical and political-institutional analysis, highlighting a significance that historiography has barely explored concerning the meeting held on 6 November 1841 at the Temple of Lianfeng, in Macao. It concludes that the Portuguese initiative aimed to produce mutual awareness and reinforce the possibility of a Chinese response articulated with the defence of Macanese interests, anticipating systemic tensions that historiography has frequently relegated to the background.

The article analyzes how Leung Ping-kwan (也斯), one of Hong Kong’s leading poets and cultural critics, constructs an image of Macao through his “new poetry” (xinshi 新詩). It is argued that the author’s poetic writing transforms the observation of landscapes, ruins, and everyday practices into cultural reading: the city emerges simultaneously as a historical-Portuguese space and as a setting for Luso-Oriental encounters, traversed by nostalgia, ambivalence, and stereotyped perceptions. Methodologically, the author undertakes a thematic and chronological reading of the poetic corpus associated with Macao, articulating textual images with concrete historical contexts—namely, the infrastructural modernization linked to the bridges (Macao–Taipa) and the persistence of religious and material memories (such as inscriptions, temples, and ruins). The main conclusions emphasize that Leung’s poems mobilize topographies (cobblestone streets, shadowy houses, provisional supports, murky sea) to dramatize decay and uncertainty in the face of the future; at the same time, the juxtaposition of Western monuments and Chinese devotional spaces reveals a cultural “ecology” of coexistence, but also signs of dissonance and erosion. Thus, Leung’s “Macao” offers a critical window onto transformations and the ways in which the city is imagined, remembered, and reinterpreted.

This article investigates how the urban fiction of Henrique de Senna Fernandes and Leung Ping-kwan mobilizes the cityscape to reflect on social change and the construction of regional identities in Macau and Hong Kong, particularly against the backdrop of the political and cultural transformations of the late twentieth century. The central argument posits that, although urban nostalgia is a recurring trait in Chinese literatures and even comparable to those of other metropolises, the case of Macau and Hong Kong renders this nostalgia inseparable from specific historical conjunctures: the peripheral status of the cities and their dual position as cosmopolitan centers of cultural encounter. Methodologically, Brookshaw proceeds with a comparative reading of the two authors’ works, articulating literary analysis (including differences in realism, narrative structure, and stylistic effects) with cultural geography and social history, in order to relate representational strategies to uses of territory. The article concludes that Fernandes, associated with a more conventional realism crossed with romanticism, tends to reconstitute an “anterior past” in which hierarchies and ties between zones—the “Chinese city” and the “Christian city”—appear less threatened by contemporary ruptures. In contrast, Leung’s writing, with its looser narrative structures and influences from the nouveau roman, dramatizes the city as a space in continuous mutation, highlighting new forms of sociability and disintegration. Thus, the texts function as imaginative archives that inscribe urbanity into the region’s history.

This article analyzes the presence and circulation of Iberian *arbitrismo*, taking the colonial spaces of Macau and Manila as case studies, and seeks to understand how discourses of *arbítrios* (technical-political and fiscal proposals directed at royal authority) were mobilized to address conjunctures of crisis, financing, and governability within the Spanish imperial system and, in articulation, within the Luso-Asian universe. The central argument holds that, beyond mere reformist rhetoric, *arbítrios* functioned as mechanisms of mediation between local observers and decision-making centers, converting mercantile, administrative, and maritime experiences into suggested solutions—often with a strong fiscal bent and generating tensions vis-à-vis representative bodies. Methodologically, the approach rests on a historical-semantic contextualization of *arbitrismo* and of the agent known as the *arbitrista*, articulated with the reading and framing of the opinions and proposals related to these two Far Eastern nodes. It concludes that the circulation of these texts reconfigured administrative practices and expectations of rewards (*mercês*) and, simultaneously, contributed to the construction of an ambivalent image of the *arbitrista*, marked by criticisms of extravagance, opportunism, and increased burdens on populations and privileges.

The article argues that Hokkien merchants from the southern coast of Fujian acted as "bridges" between the Eastern and Western maritime systems in the Asian space before 1683. Rather than treating these agents merely as isolated participants in trade routes, the author proposes analyzing them as a group integrated into a regional system of ports and entrepôts, capable of connecting itineraries spanning from the far north (Korea) to the south (Sumatra), with special emphasis on Qing (Quanzhou) as a logistical and shipbuilding center. Methodologically, the study combines a historiographic reading of Chinese sources and ancient compilations with a comparative selection of representative entrepôts. It examines a framework of ports within the East Asian maritime system (Korea, Kyushu, and Taiwan), complemented by the case of Manila as an emblem of a Hokkien hub in Southeast Asia. The main findings indicate that the formation of temporary overseas communities, conditioned by seasonality and monsoon winds, fostered stable networks of trade and cultural mediation. The article further demonstrates that the expansion of Hokkien activities, already structured between the 6th and 13th centuries, predates and helps explain later transformations in the regional organization of maritime trade.

This article analyzes how the poetry of Leung Ping-kwan (Yesi) mobilizes Macao to reflect on the "cultures of the sea" and the Luso-Chinese cultural encounters in the Macau Peninsula and the Pearl River Delta region. Arguing that maritime experience—marked by circulation, displacement, and the translation of sensibilities—operates as a poetic and historical matrix, the text reconstructs the way in which the author transforms urban landscapes, figures, and flavors into forms of cultural memory. The methodology is eminently interpretive and intertextual: drawing on passages and cycles mentioned by the poet himself (including the Macao series, "Macao: East and West," and poems integrated into projects such as Foodscape), the article articulates aesthetic reading and cultural reflection, highlighting strategies such as the emotional restraint characteristic of Chinese landscape poetry, descriptive imagery, and the elision of direct commentary to suggest tensions and mediations. Among the main findings, the article concludes that Macao emerges less as a fixed "theme" and more as a relational device: a place in which multiple "Easts" and "Wests" interpenetrate, producing "dong xi," that is, things and materials created by contacts, with food and the sensory archive (cuisine, streets, houses, shorelines) serving as privileged avenues for historical understanding.

The article analyzes the historiographic value of the unpublished manuscript *Autobiography and Reminiscence of Candido Gutierrez (1824–1903)*, written by a pioneer born in Macau and deceased in Emeryville/Oakland. Arguing that autobiographical writing, even if scarcely ‘literary,’ constitutes a privileged archive for understanding transnational mobilities and experiences, the author frames the document within the institutional context of the Society of California Pioneers (archival records, transcriptions, and supplementary documentation such as the “In Memoriam” and the biographical file). Methodologically, the research combines critical reading of the text with documentary contextualization and comparison with other pieces from the Society’s archive, emphasizing how Gutierrez organizes the narrative in response to a constitutional ‘request’ to gather information on the early settlement of California and on the institution’s members. Among the results, the reconstruction of the author’s stages of displacement stands out: birth in Macau, passage through Hong Kong, and arrival in California in 1849, as well as specific episodes from the first weeks in San Francisco. The autobiography is also explored as a source for economy, legislation, and financial risks associated with gold and mining, revealing practical networks and ethical-professional dilemmas in a context of territorial expansion and integration of foreigners.

Wilhelm Snyman's article analyzes the manuscript-memoir by John Pownell Reeves, “The Lone Flag,” highlighting how this document, little explored to this day, reconstructs the political and social life of Macau during World War II. From the singular point of view of a British consular official (consul in Macau between 1941 and 1946), the text argues that the city’s Portuguese neutrality did not signify safety: the constant presence of the Japanese threat conditioned decisions, refuge networks, and assistance practices. Methodologically, Snyman bases his historical reading on the intersection between Reeves’ memoiristic narrative and known contextual information (including institutional records and biographical references), allowing the interpretation of the “lifting of the veil” as a recovery of a daily life of tension, intrigues, and rescues. The main conclusions emphasize that Reeves does not merely observe; he intervenes strategically, mobilizing scarce resources to protect refugees, particularly those with British passports. The article also highlights the value of the account as a first-hand source on mechanisms of diplomatic mediation, espionage, and local solidarities, in addition to evidencing Reeves’ human and ironic tone, which transforms a personal archive into a historical testimony on collective survival in Macau under regional siege.

This article proposes a critical reading of how the West constructed "cultural realities" about China, arguing that the arrival of the Jesuits in 1582 marks a decisive turning point: from otherness fabricated through excerpts, textual mediations, and fragmentary imagination to an otherness produced through coexistence, sustained observation, and comprehensive understanding. Within this framework, Beatriz Moncó analyzes the trajectory and work of Diego de Pantoja as an expression of an encounter between history and anthropology, capable of articulating cultural singularity and the claim to universality. The methodology articulates historiography and the anthropology of history, mobilizing biographical chronology and the institutional context of the Society of Jesus to interpret the knowledge devices employed in the mission (strategies of insertion, circulation through networks and spaces, and forms of representing difference). The main conclusions sustain that the image of an "exceptional" China in Pantoja results not only from European presuppositions, but from the practice of co-presence and direct observation that reorients categories and sensibilities. Thus, the article highlights how the construction of the "other" can shift from myth and the "absolute other" toward a situated understanding, without eliminating the tensions and limits inherent to the missionary enterprise.

The article examines how the popular cult of Nezha 哪吒, the "prince"/child god often characterized as rebellious and eccentric, took root in Macau and how its forms of devotion reflect the circulation between religious traditions and concrete social needs. Drawing on legendary narratives and historical evidence associated with two temples dedicated to Nezha, the author argues that the development of the cult cannot be understood merely as a continuation of Chinese mythology, but rather as a practice of local reinterpretation. Methodologically, the analysis articulates competing versions of the apparition legend (including an episode described as witnessed by both local residents and a Portuguese woman) with records of the cult's founding and institutional reconfiguration, particularly following epidemic outbreaks. The findings highlight that, in 1898, the miraculous survival of the inhabitants of the Morro do Diabo/Carvalho area—associated with "Morro do Marmelo" 柿山—spurred pilgrimages, donations, and the expansion of the temple, converting myth into a mechanism of consolation and healing. The conclusion is that Nezha functions as a liminal deity, recognized by Daoist and Buddhist practices, and whose devotion in Macau materializes folkloric "humor" and community agency in contexts of crisis.

This article analyzes the colonial representations constructed in the feminine through the *Diário de Uma Viagem a Timor* (1882–1883) by Isabel Pinto da França Tamagnini. The author argues that the “Orient” mobilized by the diarist is not merely an exotic backdrop, but a narrative device that organizes colonial hierarchies through practices, perceptions, and affects inscribed in the experience of a young European woman within a colonial administration context. Methodologically, the study articulates a close reading of the diary with a historical-cultural framework on the sociocultural status of women in nineteenth-century Portugal, examining how education, daily life, and limitations of mobility/authority shape the ways of observing, describing, and interpreting. The analysis of episodes and empirical details—domestic routines, social life, informal teaching, and interactions mediated by religion and etiquette—simultaneously evinces Tamagnini's participation in imperial circuits (travel, tutelage networks, and circulation of knowledge) and her self/hetero-deprecation as a legitimate voice. The article concludes that the diary produces a “gendered” colonial gaze, in which restraint, modesty, and fear of ridicule coexist with moments of curiosity and learning, revealing the tensions between agency and subalternity in colonial feminine writing.

This article analyzes the life stories of women and families between Macau and Timor in the first half of the twentieth century, arguing that the major political and military conflicts in China, although not directly involving the territory of Macau, profoundly reshaped ways of life, producing particular vulnerabilities among women, children, and lower-resource households. The author mobilizes the methodology of life histories to articulate individual experiences with social and cultural projections and representations, situating family trajectories within a broad historical context marked by post-Qing imperial instability in China, the Republican revolution, the emergence and confrontation between nationalists (Kuomintang) and communists (CCP), and the subsequent Japanese aggression and World War II. Within this framework, the article reconstructs how affective trajectories, marital practices, and domestic dynamics articulate with displacements, economic insecurity, and political reorganizations, including the circulation of people and memories between colonial spaces. The main conclusions underscore that social suffering and precarity were not “side” effects, but rather constitutive elements of family relations, enabling an understanding of Macau and Timor as historical nodes connected by human flows, cultural transformations, and reconfigurations of gender and kinship.

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 examines the material and military evolution of the Fort of São Paulo do Monte, today known as the Monte Fort, in Macau, with a specific focus on its artillery armament ("cannons at the Monte Fort"). The central argument maintains that the reading of the cannons—their origin, typology, and spatial distribution—allows for the reconstruction of distinct phases of fortification and the reconfiguration of threats, articulating the role of the Jesuits, military authorities, and defensive transformations of the nineteenth century. Methodologically, the author undertakes a descriptive and historiographical analysis based on documentary evidence and contextual observation of the remaining structures, supplemented by technical data on the construction materials of the walls and by the classification of the cannons currently preserved (cast iron, smoothbore, muzzle-loading), approximately dated to 1860. Among the main conclusions, the continuity of the defensive system stands out: although the fortification was reinforced from 1840 onward to confront incursions originating from the Chinese mainland, the full replacement of the artillery park would only occur around 1870. Thus, the cannons of the Monte Fort are interpreted as remnants of the final modernizations of that period, also integrating into a broader ecosystem of similar pieces in other fortifications of Macau.

This article analyzes the historical figure of Marta da Silva Van Mierop (1766–1828) through the tension between fiction and documentation, taking as its starting point the historical novel *City of Broken Promises* by Austin Coates (1960s), which decisively contributed to the historiographic visibility of Macau’s “greatest benefactress.” The investigation seeks to reconstruct the life and “legacy” of the shipowner, confronting the novelistically constructed plot with data gathered from wills, oral tradition, English historical archives, and the institutional memory associated with the Santa Casa da Misericórdia. Methodologically, the author conducts a critical reading of literary and historiographic mediation, discussing the controversy sparked by Fr. Manuel Teixeira’s positions against the alleged implausibility of the novel. At the same time, the common traits between the character and the referent—her status as a foster orphan, her relationship with Thomas Kuyck Van Mierop, and her donations to charitable institutions—are compared with elements lacking documentary proof, such as the supposed prostitution or the narrative of abandonment. It is concluded that, although Coates amplified gaps and inaccuracies, the novel functioned as a device for identity recovery and the circulation of memory, encouraging a revision of sources and a distinction between a literarily constructed “possible life” and a historically verifiable life.

The article argues that European knowledge of the hydrography of Cambodia in the Early Modern period was constructed, between the 16th and early 17th centuries, from a network of Portuguese mediations—articulating navigation accounts, administrative reports, and cartographic practices—that gradually replaced more speculative images inherited from earlier learned traditions. Based on a historiographic analysis of textual and cartographic sources produced under Portuguese influence, the author reconstructs the ways in which rivers, coasts, and fluvial communication systems were described, prioritized, and mapped for purposes of trade, navigation, and politico-military projection within the scope of the Estado da Índia. The methodology relies on a comparative critical reading of descriptions and maps, identifying continuities, reformulations, and levels of accuracy, as well as the contexts of circulation of these materials (manuscript and printed) in Lisbon and in the European sphere. As results, the article shows that Cambodian "hydrography" in Portuguese materials is not merely a reflection of the terrain, but also a product of concrete informational needs and institutional frameworks. It concludes that Portuguese cartography and writing played a decisive role in the transition from symbolic representations to more operationalizable representations of Southeast Asia, producing lasting effects on the European perception of Cambodia.

The article analyzes the role of Dejima, in Nagasaki, as a historical device for cultural contact between Edo-period Japan and the European world, proposing that the institutionally controlled “window” of the Dutch trading post not only transmitted Western knowledge to the archipelago but also reshaped Japanese visual and intellectual practices. Drawing on Western records, notably the descriptions of Engelbert Kaempfer, the author examines how the observation, curation, and translation of the “Japanese world” produced by European travelers fed informational circuits that returned to Europe. The study then shifts its focus to visual works created approximately 140 years later, centered on a Japanese artist linked to the scientific and cultural mediation associated with Philipp Franz von Siebold. The method articulates a historiographical reading of Japanese sources (including translated documents) with a comparative analysis of content and style, in order to capture continuities and transformations as Dejima’s trade intensified and subsequently stabilized at more moderate levels. It concludes that Dejima functioned simultaneously as an import center and a collection hub for information, producing lasting impacts on Japanese material culture and artistic production, while also contributing to Japan’s internationalization in the European gaze.