Your search

Paul A. Van Dyke's article proposes an integrated reading of the relations between Manila, Macao, and Canton, arguing that these Southeast Asian ports—created within the context of Iberian expansions—shared trajectories conditioned by common dynamics in the South China Sea. Rather than treating each space as an isolated unit, the author reconstructs historical connections from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries to demonstrate how commerce, religion, and international conflict simultaneously shaped local economies and societies, linking the interests of the Pearl River Delta to Philippine and Atlantic-Iberian circuits. Methodologically, the text combines historiographical synthesis with a contextual reading of events and transregional networks, articulating sources and studies on interdependent markets, Christian missions, and military interventions by European powers (particularly the English and Dutch) in the archipelago and maritime routes. As its main findings, the article demonstrates that Protestant competition against the Portuguese and Spanish functioned as a "regional factor" that affected Manila and Macao in similar ways, with repercussions in Canton and its port ecosystem. It concludes that understanding social, political, and economic developments in Macao (and, by extension, in Hong Kong and the region) requires considering Philippine flows and agents and, above all, the structural interactions that continued to "tie" these spaces together over time, including the significance of the Balmis episode of 1805 as a meeting point of these imperial communities.

The article analyzes, in the context of the early nineteenth century, the trans-imperial circulation of the smallpox vaccine and its introduction in the Philippines and Macao in 1805. It argues that the “vaccine expedition” organized by the Spanish Crown was not merely a biomedical response to epidemic outbreaks, but a political-administrative project of global reach that articulated royal authority, Atlantic mobility, and local networks of medical and institutional assistance. Methodologically, the author reconstructs the trajectory of the *Real Expedición de la Vacuna* through a narrative reading supported by historical documents and existing historiographical discussions, with particular attention to the logistical conditions necessary to maintain the efficacy of the vaccine fluid in transit. The study highlights the pioneering solution of Francisco Xavier Balmis—the transport of the “live” virus in the arms of unexposed children—and examines the three aims of the program: large-scale vaccination, the training of professionals, and the establishment of local supervisory bodies. As main findings, the article situates the landing in Manila and the subsequent process of transfer to Macao as stages of a continuous imperial strategy, revealing the international dimension of Luso-Spanish public health and the modalities of adaptation to tropical environments and colonial structures.

This article presents an analytical index of the authors published in issues 13 to 16 of the *Review of Culture* (2005), bringing together contributions in Portuguese and English devoted to the history and culture of Macau and its transregional connections. The central proposal is not expository but rather bibliographic and historiographic in nature: by organizing authors, titles, themes, and chronological intervals, the index highlights the main lines of research running through the journal during that period—among them, studies of the Misericórdias in Iberian and Catholic Asia; Luso-Asian commercial and mercantile circuits; cultural mediations between China and Europe; as well as interpretive approaches to memory, power, and representation. Methodologically, the work operates through systematic cataloguing and the identification of thematic frameworks (charitable institutions, Qing justice, cultural dynamics, literature, and social history), allowing the reader to quickly locate contents by author and by issue. In terms of results, the index consolidates an overview of the intellectual production associated with the journal's editorial project, underscoring the convergence of multidisciplinary perspectives (history, philology, cultural studies, and institutional history) and offering a research tool for future investigations on Macau in the context of the Euro-Asian space from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries.

The article analyzes the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan (1521) as the inaugural milestone of a first “globalization” marked by simultaneous dynamics of transformation (“change”) and circulation (“exchange”) between the Old and New Worlds, with a focus on the repercussions for the Philippines. In dialogue with historiographical interpretations of post-1492 “encounters,” the author argues that the intercontinental connection produced not only geographical contacts but a lasting reordering of ecosystems, food practices, knowledge systems, and demographic configurations, operating through biological and cultural flows, as well as colonial violence. The methodology is essentially interpretative and comparative: it articulates the general framework of the great Iberian voyages (Columbus, da Gama, and Magellan) with evidence and examples of exchange—such as transfers of agricultural crops, animals, and diseases—to highlight the “seeds of change” and “seeds of exchange” generated in the Philippine region. It concludes that the outcomes of contact were ambivalent: alongside material and cultural gains and enrichments, epidemic devastation, population reorganization, forced migration, and racial hierarchies intensified, the effects of which persisted beyond the immediate period of the voyages.

The article proposes a re-reading of the Philippine episode of Fernão de Magalhães's expedition (1521) as a "globalization event" of a historical and cartographic nature, rather than merely as a political milestone of European colonization. The author argues that, although the navigation through the archipelago constituted a brief segment of the circumnavigation, its effects were decisive for the "connectivity" of the European and Asian worlds in physical, imaginary, and institutional terms: the arrival in the Philippines consolidated Spain's territorial claims in Asia and triggered competitive reconfigurations among the Iberian powers, mobilizing future colonial dynamics. Methodologically, the text conducts a historiographical and source analysis, situating Antonio Pigafetta's account (official chronicle) — consulted from the Blair and Robertson edition (1909) — as the basis for examining how the event was interpreted across different Philippine historiographical traditions. It concludes that, after 1946, national writing tended to reduce the centrality of European episodes, but recent changes have favored social and cultural approaches, making it possible to reassess the expedition as a founding moment of the islands' inclusion in European routes, records, and maps, with enduring repercussions on the Asian horizon.

The article proposes reading the convergence between Fernão de Magalhães and Friar Bartolomé de Las Casas as a historically situated encounter between expansionist projects and ethical-juridical discourses on conquest. Based on Las Casas's narration, particularly in the *Historia General de las Indias*, the author reconstructs the episode of their meeting in Valladolid (March 1518) and traces, in broad terms, Las Casas's trajectory—from his condition as encomendero and priest to his rupture with the practices of the system—in order to frame the moral and political reading of the "first impulse of globalization" that oceanic navigation symbolizes. Methodologically, the text privileges an intradiscursive analysis of the representations left by Las Casas regarding Magalhães (characterization of the navigator, strategy of secrecy, geopolitical interests linked to the Iberian Treaty of demarcation and the route to the Spice Islands) and establishes an interpretive bridge with the subsequent itinerary that would lead to the circumscription of the Philippine archipelago as a space of convergence. It concludes that, although the immediate interests of both seemed distinct, the dynamics among navigation, imperial claim, and critique of colonial violence render their "convergence" toward the Philippines a key to understanding the articulation between global expansion and contestation of human abuses.

The article proposes an inventory, brief description, and comparative analysis of the principal European and Chinese cartographic specimens from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that depict Macau, privileging maps, plans, and views with sufficient scale to apprehend the urban footprint and/or relevant architectural elements. Building upon the image collections and catalogues assembled in reference works (especially the compilations of Charles R. Boxer and Luís Silveira, as well as the contributions of Armando Cortesão and Avelino Teixeira da Mota), the authors synthesize the state of knowledge concerning these visual testimonies, highlighting that, although less studied than eighteenth- and nineteenth-century cartography, the production of the sixteenth–seventeenth centuries constitutes one of the rare preserved contemporary records of the territory's early days. The methodology rests upon bibliographic triangulation and a historical-cartographic reading oriented toward the identification of origin, "fortune," and reappropriation of models. The results evince that the circulation of the "European model" associated with Pedro Barreto de Resende was decisively reconfigured by Chinese draughtsmen or appropriated as specific information by actors connected to central power. Conversely, the analysis reveals Chinese influences welcomed into Western cartography, namely in the incorporation of the outline of the delta of the Western Rivers and of the lines pertaining to the Macau peninsula in manuscripts attributed to Portuguese authors.

Ivo Carneiro de Sousa's text proposes framing Fernão de Magalhães's voyage (1519–1522) as a historical paradigm of "globalization," understood not as a sudden phenomenon, but as a long process of transformation in maritime circulations, economic exchanges, and cultural cross-fertilization between Europe and Asia. Drawing on a historiographical debate, the author articulates the expedition with the structuring rivalry between Portugal and Spain, demonstrating how the opening of the Atlantic to the Pacific reconfigured the terms of colonial and diplomatic competition, with particular impact on access to Southeast Asian commercial circuits and strategic zones in southern China. Methodologically, the article privileges a contextual and processual reading, relating Magalhães's route to juridical-political instruments (including the legacy of the Treaty of Tordesillas and subsequent disputes) and to the documentary and cartographic production that consolidated expansion rights. It concludes that the circumnavigation, beyond being a nautical event, functioned as a catalyst for an emerging European colonial order, in which Macau–Manila would emerge, over the long term, as one of the most striking axes of this Iberian global interconnection.

This article analyzes the cartographic representation of the Moluccas, the Philippines, and the southern maritime "corridors" of the South China Sea in Portuguese maps produced between 1537 and 1571, interrogating whether such images resulted from "crossed representations" that expressed divergent interests. Starting from the premise that cartography functions simultaneously as a technical record and a political-economic instrument, the author proposes a comparative reading of sixteenth-century cartography: mappings associated with different information circuits (ports, mercantile networks, and Asian mediations) and spatial reorganizations resulting from geopolitical choices. The methodology combines iconographic and toponymic analysis, identification of design patterns (including the degree of detail and consistency between coastlines and routes), and historiographical contextualization based on the prior evolution of Portuguese cartographic knowledge. The conclusion is that, during this period, cartography not only "updates" nautical data but also reconfigures strategic areas according to the availability and type of information mobilized, revealing tensions between views oriented toward the control of spice trafficking and interpretations oriented toward alternative routes and regional complementarities. Thus, the Moluccas, the Philippines, and the southern corridors of the South China Sea emerge less as fixed geographical realities than as cartographic constructs where interests, informational capacities, and expansion objectives converge (and sometimes diverge).

The article problematizes the recurrent historiographical readings of the first circumnavigation associated with Fernão de Magalhães, arguing that much of the academic production remains excessively centered on the factual sequence of the voyage and sometimes resorts to anachronistic frameworks that align it with other explorations and milestones of modernity. The author proposes shifting the focus to the historical-cultural elaboration that underpins the expedition, taking as its interpretive axis the work of António Pigafetta and its inscription within a broader “discoveries” program. Methodologically, a recontextualization is carried out along four vectors: the Iberian Renaissance context; the political-diplomatic competition between Portugal and unified Spain; the “global” nature of the undertaking, visible in the plurality of origins and the circulation of imperial ideologies; and the role of cultural representations that reconstruct mission, sovereignty, and colonial order. The analysis further emphasizes the memorial and literary dimension of the accounts, distinguishing the textual construction from the actual social experience of the crew, marked by unfulfilled expectations, religious guilt, and judicial proceedings for compensation. It concludes that Pigafetta not only records but organizes the memory and the mercantile and religious mentalities that helped legitimize Iberian expansion in the new world order.

This article analyzes the reception of Fernão de Magalhães’s “great adventure” in sixteenth-century Portuguese chronicle writing, arguing that the narrative construction of the episode results not only from documentary gaps, but from representational choices that condition the attribution of political and moral meaning to the voyage. Through a comparative reading of Portuguese chroniclers—with particular emphasis on Fernão Lopes de Castanheda and the humanist mediation of later traditions—the author examines how categories such as “treason,” “grievance,” and “breach of faith” were mobilized to frame Magalhães’s departure from the Manueline order and his eventual alignment with the monarchy of Charles V. Methodologically, the study reconstructs the “memorial order” of chronicle discourses, confronting the narration with the way it incorporates (or silences) memories and interrogations of participants involved in networks of power and commerce in Southeast Asia. The conclusion is that the Portuguese chronicles function simultaneously as testimony and as an interpretive device: by reorganizing facts, they reveal access to official archives and, above all, produce categories that reconfigure the consequences of the expedition in Luso-Iberian political and commercial circulation, including the role of private agents in the Moluccan spice trade.

The article proposes a critical recontextualization of the voyage of Fernão de Magalhães (1519–1522) and the so-called “Manueline counter-voyage”, arguing that the enterprise should not be read primarily as an intended circumnavigation, but as a project aimed at reaching the Moluccas via a western route not previously traversed. The author frames the endeavor within the Iberian competition in Southeast Asia, highlighting that the Luso-Spanish demarcation of the world, inspired by the Treaty of Tordesillas, generated relevant negotiations and restrictions, including the prohibition of sailing through areas of the Indian Ocean considered under Portuguese influence. Methodologically, the text articulates historiographical analysis and comparative reading, revisiting sixteenth-century Portuguese productions and contrasting them with contemporary approaches, especially from the end of the nineteenth century, in order to overcome panegyric limitations and critically reconstruct the political-economic context. As results, the tripartite structure of the voyage (southern America, vastness of the Pacific, and Philippine islands) is identified, and its cultural inscription in the European Renaissance is problematized, as it spurred cartography and debates over jurisdiction of the Moluccas. It concludes that Magalhães projects, with particular tenacity, a decisive stage of the first globalization, reconfiguring geographical knowledge and imperial disputes.

The article argues that the European “discovery” of the Philippine archipelago must be understood less as a simple factual record and more as a textual production: a set of discursive strategies that converted unknown spaces into legible objects for European audiences. Taking Antonio Pigafetta's *Primo viaggio intorno al mondo* as its central source, the study examines how the navigational narrative, supported by allied devices such as maps, letters, and drawings, governed the way in which the islands were represented, revealed, and also deformed or omitted. Methodologically, the text is treated as a literary construction and historiographical archive, situated within the broader context of early exploration accounts and their rhetorical and intellectual exigencies. The article further traces the complex material trajectory of the manuscript and its multiple versions (Italian and French) and printed editions, assessing how these mediations impacted the reception of the Philippine section—approximately one-third of the entire account—which would function as the centerpiece of the “production” of the Philippines in the European imaginary. It concludes that Pigafetta not only transmitted data but mobilized conventions of knowledge and wonderment that reconfigured the region as a field of ethnographic and literary knowledge.

This article analyzes Chinese laudatory couplets — specifically 牌匾 (plaques), 錦旗 (brocaded banners), and 镜框 (frames) — found in the collection of Dr. António do Nascimento Leitão, a collector associated with the Luso-Chinese milieu of Macau. The author argues that these epigraphic artifacts are not merely decorative objects or local "curiosities," but rather concrete means of producing and circulating social recognition, moral competence, and religious/professional legitimacy within the Chinese communities of South China, whose memory is reactivated through celebratory writing. Methodologically, the study undertakes a documentary and interpretative reading of the textual content and material framing of the pieces, cross-referencing categories of devotion and popular imagery — such as protective figures, deified heroes, and stellar spirits — with the sociocultural function of formulas of praise. As a result, it is observed that the texts of the couplets organize symbolic hierarchies and project a cosmology of protection and prosperity, articulating the collector’s individual memory with collective practices of veneration and credentials of merit. The conclusion is that Leitão’s collection functions as a hybrid cultural archive, in which the identity and continuity of traditions are preserved and recontextualized within the Macanese context.

João de Pina-Cabral’s *Between China and Europe: Person, Culture and Emotion in Macao* is presented as a distinctive contribution to historical and social anthropology, extending the author’s earlier work on Macanese identity and its shifting relation to Portuguese and Chinese heritages. The review emphasizes the book’s central analytic claim: Macao’s social history is repeatedly reconfigured by “incidents” that alter Portuguese–Chinese governance and, in turn, transform how Macanese people understand their own cultural practices. Drawing on field-based insights and sustained historical observation, the study links well-known turning points—particularly the consolidation of formal colonial rule in 1846 under Ferreira do Amaral and its reversal in 1966–67—to symbolic sites and commemorative practices, including statues of colonial figures and monuments whose meanings exceed their official intentions. The review highlights Pina-Cabral’s ability to connect political events to lived emotion and collective memory, showing how local accommodation, resentment, and cultural nuance emerged under changing imperial pressures. Key findings thus foreground the performative power of material symbols (even when plans fail) in mediating personhood, emotion, and cultural affiliation between China and Europe across the nineteenth, twentieth, and early post-1999 periods.

The article critically examines the so-called "(de)cannibalization" of the Portuguese during the first Sino-Portuguese contacts in the context of Ming dynasty China, particularly the recurrence, in Chinese sources, of descriptions of alleged cannibalism practiced by the Europeans. The authors argue that such narratives should not be taken as direct evidence, but understood as products of historiographical and political-discursive processes: the circulation of accounts, subsequent reinterpretations, and the possible instrumentalization by Canton authorities and anti-Portuguese imperial censors. Methodologically, the text reconstructs the genesis and evolution of Chinese information, making a systematic comparison between different Chinese chronicles and compilations and contemporary Portuguese records. Based on the analysis of a set of references—including the work *Yueshan Congtan* (attributed to Li Wenfeng)—the authors demonstrate how the allegation may derive from ambiguous geographical references, local rumors, and successive rewritings, sometimes without verifiable basis. It is concluded that the "official rumor" of cannibalism functioned more as a mechanism of legitimation and othering than as historical testimony, contributing to correct historiographical readings that reproduced these sources without questioning.

The article analyzes the references to Chinese silk found in European printed documentation from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, discussing how this news coverage helped shape perceptions, desires, and commercial practices within the European sphere. Starting from the observation that silk frequently appears in works of the period and that, although trade involved it as a commodity, its value extended beyond a strictly economic logic, the author argues that the printed circulation of "news" about silk also functioned as a mechanism for producing imaginaries about the East, reinforcing the prestige of China as a region of wonders and artistic excellence. Methodologically, the work carries out a historiographic and documentary reading of European editorial production, organizing the contents into thematic nuclei to identify how the origin, material qualities, forms of circulation (including circuits and entrepôts), and social uses associated with the fabrics are described. As a result, it concludes that Chinese silk, even when compared with less expressive European textiles, was perceived as incomparable in lightness, resistance, color, and plasticity, fueling demand among civil and religious elites. Thus, printed documentation not only recorded the presence of the product but also intensified its capacity to impact European society, articulating consumption, status, and cultural fascination.

This research reexamines the circulation, authorship, and material drift of the "Macao Hymno" (also known as "Ao Leal Senado e ao povo de Macau"), a municipal hymn whose score remained for decades either missing or disassociated from its archival records. Against the traditional attribution suggesting that Melchor Vela was a native of Macao, the article demonstrates, on the basis of journalistic and administrative documentation from the late nineteenth century, that the composer was Spanish, despite maintaining close ties with Portuguese communities in Shanghai and Hong Kong and with the president of the Leal Senado, António Joaquim Basto. The investigation draws primarily on minutes of the sessions of the Leal Senado, press reports (including references to Vela's participation in concerts and to the reception of the hymn), and the analysis of material evidence in the manuscript itself (for example, linguistic traces in technical terms). It concludes that the hymn was composed around 1896–1897, offered to the Leal Senado, and immediately performed in concert, but that it never became officially consolidated as a municipal "song"—probably owing to its non-Portuguese origin and the absence of printing, despite the decision to lithograph copies. Finally, the article reconstructs the subsequent trajectory of the manuscript up to the Historical Archives of Macao, clarifying how cataloguing failures and documentary losses contributed to its long invisibility.

The article investigates the tradition of "wind bands" in Macao, framing it as a historical phenomenon of transnational circulation and as a cultural device of memory and local identity. Starting from gaps in the available musicological bibliography—especially concerning wind formations in Portugal—the author proposes a historical-cultural reading that links the arrival and consolidation of bands in Macao to European models, particularly the circuits of French influence on the organization and repertoire of military and civilian bands in the nineteenth century. Methodologically, the study is based on secondary source research and historical-cultural contextualization: it reconstructs the evolution of the concept of "banda" in Europe (from functions of signaling and escorting processions to more complex instrumental ensembles), describes the transformation of the military prototype into municipal and philharmonic bands, and, by historical analogy, explains the mechanisms of transmission to the Macanese context (including the presence of bands associated with education). It concludes that the persistence of bands in Macao is not solely due to institutional continuity, but to the capacity of these formations to materialize European models adapted to local dynamics, contributing to music education, community cohesion, and the construction of a shared cultural identity.

The article analyzes the group of Macao's *shenshi* (gentry) in the mid-Qing dynasty (18th–19th centuries), arguing that their influence transcended the local sphere and articulated with the political, economic, and cultural circuits that structured the city's external relations. Drawing on the classical typology of the *shenshi* in imperial China — divided into upper and lower categories according to the pathways of access to status (examinations, merit-based appointments, and purchase of office) — the study reconstructs the trajectories of the literati and officeholders linked to Macao, with particular attention to the *juren*, the *gongsheng*, and the *zhengtu*, as well as figures promoted through purchase. Methodologically, the research proceeds through a prosopographic analysis, tracing careers, titles, and offices referred to in biographical and documentary sources (including, among others, examination records and works attributed to the individuals in question). Comparison with the Chinese interior allows the author to interpret the Macanese case as a microcosm of social mobility and of the reproduction of prestige. The study concludes that the composition of the group reveals the coexistence of meritocracy and mechanisms of institutional investment, with the upper category concentrating administrative power and literary reputation, while the purchase pathways expanded access to networks of authority that helped shape Macao's social space.