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This article presents the author index for issues 17 to 20 of the “RC Internacional” section of the *Revista de Cultura*, bringing together contributions published between January 2005 and October 2006. Rather than constituting an autonomous study, the publication assumes the function of a bibliographic tool and editorial guide, articulating a thematic sample marked by global circulations and transcultural interactions between the Portuguese sphere and the Asian world, with emphasis on missionary contacts, regimes of knowledge (botany, cartography, and medicine), and the historical-narrative flows that connect Macau to broader networks. The section gathers works of a historical and cultural nature, from various authors, which explore, for example, expeditions and chronicles (such as Magalhães’s voyage and Pigafetta’s interpretation), dynamics of evangelization and hagiographic production, as well as processes of scientific and sanitary transfer, including the introduction of vaccines and debates on immunization. The article concludes that the organization of the index evidences the methodological coherence underlying the included issues—the comparative reading of sources and the analysis of the transit of people, texts, and knowledge—thereby reinforcing the value of the *Revista de Cultura* as a platform for interdisciplinary research on the history and culture of Macau in the Eurasian context.

This article analyzes the presence of drugs of Chinese origin in Portuguese medicine throughout the eighteenth century, arguing that the notion of "Chinese medicinal substances" cannot be applied in a linear or chronologically precise manner. The author maintains that, due to historical networks of circulation—particularly overland and maritime routes, as well as Arabic mediation and the very integration of species with analogous uses—many products would have reached Europe through earlier channels, or would have undergone pharmacological reconfigurations over time. Methodologically, the study draws on the reading and comparison of eighteenth-century Portuguese documentary sources (medical materials and therapeutic repertoires), framing them alongside Chinese documentation concerning the intensification of medical-pharmaceutical exchanges during periods such as the Tang dynasty and the circulation of knowledge facilitated by translators and travelers. The analysis pays particular attention to the role of the Jesuits and the emergence of European sinologies in the development of scientific interest and in the translation/codification of knowledge about natural products and their therapeutic applications. It concludes that eighteenth-century Portuguese documentation allows for the identification of examples of Chinese drugs used in a Western medical context, but rarely permits a precise determination of when and through which specific mechanisms these products entered European pharmacopoeias.

The article examines the circulation of Brazilian tobacco in China, arguing that its “arrival” and the consequent image of an established market stem from historiographical misunderstandings and a teleological reading of sources. Rather than accepting common narratives—such as the idea of a late entry, the regional naturalization of the plant, or the precedence of opium consumption—the author reconstructs the chronology and transfer circuits of tobacco from the American continent to the Far East, highlighting how agronomic adaptation, differentiation of preparations, and Iberian knowledge (pharmacopoeia, cultivation, and processing) enabled the rapid expansion of *Nicotiana*. Methodologically, the work articulates syntheses of historical literature and documentary evidence on routes and milestones of adoption (India/Goa and the western coast via the Portuguese; the Philippines via the Spanish; projection into Southeast Asia and Japan), in order to then problematize how the Chinese presence was described and interpreted. The conclusions indicate that the expansion of tobacco in Asia depended on specific mercantile and cultural networks, but that later readings—especially in the West and in retrospective records—tended to transform a complex diffusion into a simplified “market,” obscuring mediations, uneven temporalities, and changes in consumption practices.

The article analyzes the "medical" dimension of Engelbert Kaempfer's (1651–1716) intellectual itinerary, arguing that his contribution to European knowledge about Asia surpasses cultural observation by encompassing a clinical practice informed by intercultural encounters. The author contends that, although Kaempfer is chiefly remembered for his description of Japan, his positions and therapeutic decisions reveal a model of knowledge based on experience and on the rejection of superstitions, bringing him closer to local medical traditions without, however, abandoning the criteria of rationality proper to his own milieu. Methodologically, the study reconstructs this "ecology" of medicine through a critical reading of Kaempfer's writings (including his doctoral thesis, essays, and fragmentary medical notes), confronting them with biographical evidence and academic records produced during his travels through Europe and upon his return. As results, the article highlights the absence of systematic treatment of medical practice in previous approaches and proposes a reconstruction of how Kaempfer conceived the role of the physician as traveler and intermediary. It concludes that the European "frontier," in Kaempfer, is above all epistemological: contact with the Asian natural and therapeutic world reconfigures his understanding of method, authority, and efficacy, making medicine a decisive axis of his writing about Japan.

The article analyzes how the circulation of naturalist knowledge in the eighteenth century was articulated with Swedish expeditions to Asia, taking as its central case the Linnaean program for the voyage of Christopher Tärnström (1745–1746) in the service of the Swedish East India Company. The author argues that Linnaeus's "apostles" were not sent merely as scientific observers, but as mediators of a project that was simultaneously taxonomical, utilitarian, and politico-economic: they were to collect plants, animals, and medicinal materials; preserve specimens and samples in a standardized manner; and produce descriptions oriented toward classification and material exploitation (for example, plants of interest, secrets of porcelain production, and pharmacological resources). Methodologically, the text reconstructs the link between Linnaeus's instructions, epistolary networks, and collection routines, confronting the epistolary "task notebook" with the logic of the nomenclature system based on sexual reproduction and with Linnaeus's dependence on external correspondents and informants. The main conclusions indicate that Linnaeus's taxonomy was reinforced by the infrastructure of travel, preservation, and observation; and that knowledge of the Asian flora, although presented as universal, emerged from colonial practices, state interests, and strategies for translating the natural world into classifiable objects.

Elio Brancaforte's article analyzes Engelbert Kaempfer's scientific activities during his period in the Safavid Empire (1683–1688), arguing that his observational practice—informed by European training in medicine, natural sciences, history, and languages—constituted a method of knowledge production that was not limited to the reissue of earlier accounts. Proceeding from the principle that Kaempfer "confines himself to what is new or insufficiently recorded," the study contextualizes his integration into a Swedish diplomatic mission and demonstrates how, despite limited linguistic acquisition, he resorted to sketches, corrections of earlier descriptions, and systematic collections on flora, fauna, and the human world, encompassing areas such as cartography, botany, and ethnography. Methodologically, the investigation articulates a critical reading of Kaempferian texts with the reconstruction of his itinerary and working conditions in Persian territory, evidencing the passage from observations gathered in Persia to the author's subsequent interests, particularly in the studies that would culminate in Japan (1683–1693). It concludes that the "thirst for knowledge" expressed in the traveler's own self-justification translates into a culture of archival practice and empirical verification, which contributed to reorienting the European mode of knowing the "Asian world."

Elisabetta Colla analyzes the representation of the "Asian natural world" in Francesco Carletti's *Ragionamenti* (1594–1606), arguing that the work simultaneously articulates empirical curiosity, cultural imagination, and a progressive alignment with models of observation then valued as "scientific." Departing from the historical context of Iberian expansion and European mercantile circulation, the author situates Carletti within the "Italian model" of traveling merchants, whose narratives contributed to networks of knowledge and the description of foreign environments. Methodologically, the study privileges a close reading of the *Ragionamenti*, examining how categories of nature (plants, animals, resources, and landscapes) are mobilized in arguments, comparisons, and judgments, as well as the rhetorical mediations that transform travel experience into narrative knowledge. The main conclusions highlight that the Asian natural world emerges less as a simple inventory of the "real" than as an interpretive field in which cultural hierarchies and European expectations are negotiated. In this process, the act of seeing and recording consolidates itself as a device of credibility, yet remains traversed by inherited symbolic schemas and by readings of economic and gastronomic utility. Thus, Colla shows how Carletti participates in a transition between the fantastic and the observable, producing an image of natural Asia that is at once globalizing and historically situated.

The article examines how the habit of betel chewing (consumption of quid from leaves of *Piper betel*) moved from Asia into the European repertoire at the threshold of Portuguese expansion, focusing on sixteenth-century testimonies. The central thesis holds that, despite the existence of earlier mentions in Arabic and medieval sources circulating in Europe, the effective presence of betel in European descriptions depended above all on the “informational event” associated with the Cape route and Portuguese accounts, which introduced both observed practices and local vocabulary (e.g., *atambol/atanbor*; *betola*; lexical variants linked to Malayalam *vettila*). Methodologically, the author undertakes a critical and comparative reading of descriptions by travellers and chroniclers, confronting the reliability of passages, the chronology of first occurrences, and possible editorial mediations (such as interpolations and re-editions in European languages, including Ramusio). As main results, the article identifies Álvaro Velho as the first early modern author to record betel chewing with social and ritual detail, and demonstrates that in subsequent Portuguese texts the practice appears associated with different strata (“kings and commoners”), often described by its visible effects (red mouth and darkened teeth). It concludes that betel became consolidated in the European natural-cultural imagination through direct observation and translation—not merely through textual inheritance—shaping the way Asian alterity was narrated.

This editorial by Rui Manuel Loureiro presents and contextualises the second thematic issue of the *Revista de Cultura* devoted to “European travellers” and the Asian natural world between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. The central argument holds that the relations established by European agents with Asian natural resources—as well as the forms of appropriation, circulation and associated knowledge—constitute a field still insufficiently explored by Western historiography, yet one endowed with great interpretative potential for Eurasian history. In line with this objective, the issue brings together methodologically diverse contributions based on primary and scientific sources, including travel memoirs, manuscripts, and catalogues of botanical and medico-pharmaceutical circulation, thus enabling the reconstruction of networks of observation, collection and cultural translation. Among the results, the studies on specific authors and works (such as Francesco Carletti and Engelbert Kaempfer) stand out, as does the analysis of scientific itineraries and medical practices in multiple Asian spaces, and the treatment of concrete natural products (Socotrine aloe, betel/oriental mastic, tobacco and related masticatories). The volume further highlights processes of Euro-Asian acculturation, identifying drugs and intellectual intermediaries that contributed to the diffusion of knowledge about “China” in Europe.

The article analyzes the historical circulation of “aloes” over the longue durée, with particular emphasis on the modern period, in order to explain how a plant product associated with medicinal and cosmetic properties was described, identified, and commercialized by botanists, travelers, and compilers of knowledge. Based on a comparative reading of European textual sources (from Greco-Roman antiquity to the most recent centuries), the study discusses the central issue of the correspondence between “aloes” as a generic name and the species actually used, in a context in which multiple aloines—and even products of different natures, such as “lenho-aloés”—could be confused. Methodologically, the author organizes the narrative by chronological stages, selecting representative documentary “threads” of the main developments and comparing authors’ descriptions with the geographical and taxonomic variability of the genus. Among the results, it is noteworthy that the reputation of aloe’s efficacy acted as a driver of successive markets of knowledge and commodities, but that the heterogeneity of species and the problems of identification produced “disorders” in the learned tradition. The conclusion emphasizes that only the botany and chemistry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made it possible to reorder part of those ambiguities, without entirely eliminating the confusions built up by travelers and merchants over millennia.

The article analyzes the “botany” section of Jan Huygen van Linschoten’s *Itinerario* (1596), discussing, on the one hand, its internal organization (chapters 49 to 87) and, on the other, the nature and provenance of the materials mobilized by the author and his collaborator, Bernardus Paludanus, who was responsible for annotating most of the chapters. It is argued that the designation “botany” is partially problematic, since the collection also includes medicinal substances, minerals, and other elements that exceed the strict category of plants, but, at the structural level of the book, constitutes a relatively autonomous block, subdivided in a more or less systematic manner. Methodologically, the study articulates the reading of macrostructures with the identification of the editorial intentions underlying the use of diverse sources, emphasizing how the selection and ordering of content respond to the objective of producing practical knowledge for sedentary readers and potential travelers. It concludes that the textual architecture of the botanical segment results from an illustrated dissemination strategy oriented toward the market: besides satisfying readers’ “exotic” appetite, it instrumentalizes knowledge derived from the “Book of Nature” for pedagogical and commercial purposes in a context of European expansion.

The article analyzes the *Voyage à Goa* of Henry IV's physician, attributing to it value as a privileged source for understanding the circulation of natural, colonial, and medico-pharmaceutical knowledge between the Mediterranean/Europe and the Indian subcontinent in the early seventeenth century. The author argues that the journey of the apothecary-naturalist Jean Mocquet should not be read merely as an exotic account, but as a practice of observation and collecting oriented by the court, in which the ethnography of plants, medicaments, and "singularities" articulates with the political and cognitive needs of royal power. Methodologically, the text is anchored in a critical reading of the travel account and in available biographical information, reconstructing Mocquet's social position within Henry IV's entourage, as well as the manner in which the narrative transforms empirical experience into classifiable knowledge for European circulation. Among the principal results, the account's function as a mediation between natural/Islamic/Indo-Islamic worlds stands out, as does the tension between admiration of "nature" and utilitarian purposes (medicine and applied botany), and the relevance of the courtly framing in explaining descriptive choices, documentary priorities, and strategies of legitimization of the traveler. The conclusion reinforces that Goa operates as a determining node in this network of cultural and scientific transfer.

This article examines the figure of Paulinus a S. Bartholomaeo, a missionary and naturalist observer active between Kerala and Rome in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, interrogating the boundaries between "amateurism" and professionalization in the field of knowledge of the Asian world. The author argues that Paulinus embodies a process of transition in which empirical competencies and collecting practices—typical of traveler-experts—come to be legitimized, contested, and reconfigured by emerging academic criteria, particularly within the Roman circuit. Methodologically, the text mobilizes historical analysis and hermeneutics of writings and documentary practices attributed to the author, situating them within Catholic networks and European dispositifs for classifying the natural world. The reading articulates the epistemological problem of "understanding and reporting" with the material problem of "possessing, appropriating, and dominating" nature and populations, showing how collecting curiosity and descriptive routines are transformed into language and authority of a more "scientific" kind. It concludes that the difference between "amateur naturalist" and "professional orientalist" cannot be reduced to a fixed hierarchy of knowledge, but rather results from institutional negotiations and regimes of validation, in which local observational work is reconverted into global credentials.

The article investigates the relationship between trade, research, and "science" in the context of the presence of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in Asia, using as a narrative axis an episode of 1779 in West Borneo: scientists and traders associated with the VOC attempted to observe local nature and capture an orangutan, while the trade mission and collection routines revealed an immediate articulation between economic interests and knowledge production. Based on historical analysis of travel accounts, institutional documentation (especially the initiatives of the Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en Wetenschappen founded in 1778), and historiographical discussion regarding the alleged "anti-scientific" character of the VOC, the author questions readings that describe the Company as indifferent to the arts and sciences and suggests that what seemed like an exception may reflect a more systematic practice of collection, description, and investigation. It concludes that the VOC's policy of secrecy aimed primarily at protecting commercial and cartographic information, not at hindering scientific activities; furthermore, the supposed continuous trajectory of decline in the eighteenth century is relativized. Thus, trade and research appear as complementary processes, capable of expanding both knowledge of the natural sciences and Asian ethnology, with lasting impacts on European collections and research agendas.

This article analyzes the circulation of botanical and pharmacological knowledge between Portugal, Renaissance Europe, and the Asian sphere, using as a comparative axis the work of Garcia da Orta and the mediation of Carolus Clusius. The author argues that, in the transition from medieval culture to more "modern" ways of observing nature, travelers and naturalists not only incorporated Asian species and products into collections and herbariums, but also reconfigured criteria for observation, description, and validation of knowledge, privileging "experiential knowledge" and empirical detail. Methodologically, the text articulates historiographical and textual analysis of botanical and medical sources, confronting passages concerning plants and spices with the way Clusius reinterprets, classifies, and integrates them into the European intellectual landscape. As results, the dual dynamic of revelation and translation is evidenced: Asian species function simultaneously as objects of scientific curiosity and as research resources, stimulating cultivation practices, correspondence networks, and encyclopedic strategies. The conclusion is that Europe does not merely "discover" new plants; it learns to reorganize the natural world based on them, consolidating a regime of knowledge in which experience becomes central to the emerging science.

Michael Pearson's article examines the relationships between Portuguese and Indian medical systems in the early modern period, arguing that the interaction did not produce a uniform transfer of knowledge: in some domains, commonality and the possibility of mutual exchange are observed; in others, early signs of European advantage emerge, though initially limited. The methodology consists of a historical and comparative reconstruction of the Eurasian medical environment before the sixteenth century, followed by a progressive focus on India, and in particular on Goa, assessing the main health risks and associated healing practices. Pearson contrasts the epidemiological profile of Portugal and Europe—marked by plague, smallpox, and syphilis, in addition to endemic diseases and nutritional fragilities—with European perceptions and classifications of illnesses considered “specific” to certain regions, including interpretations of differences between Indian and European pathologies. He concludes that, although neither Europe, nor the Muslim world, nor India held a general medical “superiority” at that time, the identification of geographically localized diseases and the persistent circulation of ideas and practices paved the way for European advantage to expand over the following centuries. This process would culminate, in the nineteenth century, in the victory of Western medicine over Asian medical knowledge and practices.

This article investigates the circulation and medicinal use of Radix Chinae (“China root,” tu fu ling), a rhizome of the Smilacaceae family, within the context of Euro-Asian interactions between approximately 1535 and 1800. It argues that “China root” was not a mere botanical curiosity: it constituted a product of steady demand, often profitable for mercantile networks and pharmaceutical intermediaries, whose relevance derived both from therapeutic expectations and from the constant reconfiguration of names and identities attributed to the material (variations in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, French, German, and Arabic/Persian terminology, as well as confusions with galangal, ginseng, and ginger). Methodologically, the study articulates a historical-philological analysis of early modern European medical sources and glossaries (treatises, lexicons, and therapeutic recipes) with a reading of botanical descriptions and commercial circuits referenced by travelers and authors of pan-European circulation. The results show that, in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts, Radix Chinae was used above all for dermatological afflictions, infectious processes, and pain, with internal administration prescribed as a sudorific, in addition to applications associated with hepatosplenic conditions and symptoms related to syphilis. It concludes that the product’s trajectory, until its decline in the early nineteenth century, evidences the coevolution of commerce, natural knowledge, and therapeutic classification on a Euro-Asian scale.

This article proposes a critical framework for the editorial program “European travelers and the Asian natural world,” highlighting that the systematic contacts between the Portuguese (and, soon after, other Europeans) and the Asian world from the late fifteenth century onward produced enduring impacts across multiple domains. It argues that the intensification of travel and direct observation—though conditioned by initial linguistic mediations—allowed Europeans to reorganize knowledge about landscapes, cultural practices, climatic regularities, artisanal productions, and, above all, the natural world. The analysis maintains that the deepening of knowledge about Eastern nature was reflected in processes of revision and reconfiguration of traditional European knowledge, particularly in botany and medicine, also generating dynamics of imitation and “symbiosis” in therapeutic practices. Methodologically, the text functions as a programmatic introduction: it synthesizes the objectives of the dossier and announces diversified approaches centered on authors, textual corpora, and editorial mediations. As results, it notes the variety of studies gathered across two issues, which mobilize travel literature and scientific treatises to highlight mechanisms of circulation, translation, and reformulation of Asian natural knowledge within the European space.

The article analyzes how Cristóvão da Costa constructs, in his *Tractado de las drogas y medicinas de las Indias Orientales*, images of the “Asian natural world,” interrogating the relationship between travel experience, medical-natural knowledge, and visual culture. Starting from the hypothesis that iconography functions not merely as illustration but as a device for credibilization and translation of the distant for European audiences, the author mobilizes a comparative reading between textual descriptions and the engravings inserted in the work. The methodology thus relies on iconographic analysis and philological contextualization of passages in which the author claims direct contact with plants and practices (for example, tamarind, cinnamon, “sad tree,” stops in Goa, Cochin, and Malabar), confronting them with cases in which pictorial fidelity seems more problematic. The study suggests that, while certain species exhibit greater proximity to what was observed, others—originating from distant regions for which there is no evidence of personal testimony—may reveal mediation by sources, circulation of models, and limits of observation. It concludes that the images of nature in Costa articulate empirical authority, encyclopedic pedagogy, and mechanisms of cultural imagination, revealing an ecology of knowledge constructed between travel, printing, and knowledge networks.

This issue of *Revista de Cultura* proposes, in editorial format, a reading of continuity between Francis Xavier and Alessandro Valignano within the framework of the "spiritual conquest" of East Asia. Starting from Xavier’s death on Sanchoão (December 1552) and Macau’s role as a strategic platform from 1557 onward, the text reconstructs how Jesuit projects were articulated with maritime dynamics and the fragile balances of Luso-Chinese circuits. It argues that, although Xavier’s death went largely unnoticed by Portuguese merchants fearful of trade disruptions, the Society of Jesus later succeeded in transforming the missionary’s memory into a powerful devotional and institutional engine. Methodologically, the editorial is organized as a historiographical synthesis: it establishes chronologies, contextualizes places and networks (Goa, Malacca, China, Japan), and relates the circulation of knowledge to the circulation of people. As results, the "religious cartography" produced by Xavier through his voyages stands out, along with the establishment of priority objectives for missionization in China and Japan. The decisive turn is attributed to the 1570s, when Valignano promoted adaptationist methods, including language learning, the decoding of Chinese civilizational practices, and integration into daily life in Japan, contributing to Catholic expansion and the Jesuit opening in China (Zhaoqing, 1583), with a direct impact on Matteo Ricci’s later mission.