Your search

As is well known, the arrival and settlement of the Portuguese in Maritime Asia were determined by the conveniences of the Crown. As the driving force, financier, and administrator of the expansionist enterprise, the Crown left limited room for manoeuvre to private initiatives and the pursuit of their respective economic gains. The practice of maritime seizures, established early on in the waters of the Western Indian Ocean as a result of competition with Muslim trade and routes, was likewise regulated, thus constituting a legal framework for privateering. Although written sources on the subject are not abundant, the parallel development of piracy by Portuguese subjects throughout the sixteenth century has become evident. Several cases exemplified this kind of situation. These included, first and foremost, the violation of rules in the course of naval missions carried out under the aegis of the Estado da Índia, but also desertions from official service, motivated by problems with the Justice system or by mere personal ambition, followed by the free exercise of raids. Also noteworthy are the trajectories of other men who, either for extended periods or permanently, settled in areas of the so-called Shadow Empire, incorporating piracy into their activities.

As

Professor, journalist, poet, and association leader, José Silveira Machado [24.10.1918 – 18.11.2007] was a charismatic member of the Portuguese community, having arrived in Macao in 1933 and remained there until the end of his days.

In this article, we aim to revisit Gonzaga Gomes in light of the new studies undertaken since, and to analyze the work of Luís Gonzaga Gomes as a teacher and pedagogue, as well as a promoter of Macau's identity and of the Luso-Chinese intercultural dialogue.

"Orientalism in Maria Ondina Braga" is an essay that seeks to analyze the manner in which the writer Maria Ondina Braga observed the Far Eastern reality, as well as the possible affiliation of that analysis with the perspective of Edward W. Said.

The Macau-baptized Zheng Zhilong took the opportunity of the Ming-Qing transition and emerged as a compelling Ming official and an invincible pirate king rivalling the elusive Dutch. He forged a huge piratical empire and helped install a shadow government of the defunct Ming court in south China. Immersed in Ming Loyalism, his son Zheng Chenggong ousted the Dutch from Taiwan and established the Kingdom of Dongning to challenge the ruling power of the new Qing Empire.

Martins Janeira was born in Felgueiras, Moncorvo, in Northeast Portugal, in 1914 and died in Estoril, in 1988.

Presentation silver is one of the most enduring forms of the art of silver-making, which succeeds in blending style and aesthetics with a pure human need to express appreciations or to offer congratulations. For the sake of scholarship, so little attention has been paid to the Chinese presentation silver pieces with some crucial historic figures that firmly connect the history of China with internationally its engaged past. This article will introduce such silver pieces of three people that would shed new light on the material cultural history about silver and some relevant people and events. We hope this paper will be the beginning of many to focus specifically on historic silver pieces so that we gain a better understanding of the roles they play in the undocumented history of China and its study.

Rui Rocha is part of a group of Portuguese poets from the Macanese literary delta who represent not only the contemporary directions of poetry in Macao, but also its most refined expression.

The Compromise of 1627 is the first original regulation of the Misericórdia of Macau, directly following the compromise texts of the Mother House of Lisbon and, complementarily, of the Misericórdia of Goa.

The Holy House of Mercy was established, in 1569, the Hospital of the Poor was created, as well as an isolation hospital to attend the lepers, the Hospital of S. Lazarus, with an attached small church, called Our Lady of the Hope (current church of S. Lazarus), and, also, almost since its beginnings, the House of the Displayed, or Roda, as commonly called, in order to collect the foundlings, generally children of Chinese and slave women. New hospitals had arisen, asylums for aged persons had been established and the orphanages had spread. The poor, in general, were taken care of by giving them material help. As well as the gatherings for women and wisdom in needs.

António Manuel Couto Viana (1923-2010) is the author of a remarkable and vast literary oeuvre, having left us a legacy that ranges from theater, to poetry, and to short stories (for children and adults).

The artisans who were active in Canton from 1700 to 1842 are some of the most elusive figures of the China trade. Despite the enormous quantity of artefacts that they produced, and which are now housed in private collections and museums throughout the world, the authors left very little information behind about themselves. It was not until the Americans entered the China trade in 1784, that we begin to have more extensive information about some of these artists and craftsmen.

The history of Macao is closely associated with piracy. It is often said that the Portuguese acquired Macao as a result of helping the Chinese Ming government suppress piracy in the area in the 1550s. Yet some Chinese sources claim that actually the Portuguese were pirates who kidnapped Chinese women and children to sell into slavery. While there is a good bit of truth in both stories, the undeniable fact is that the waters around Macao had always been notorious for piratical activities. Even centuries before the Portuguese settled Macao neighboring islands served as pirate bases. One of the earliest pirates was Huang Yi, who had strongholds on Montanha and Dom Joao islands in the 14th century. But perhaps the most notorious pirate was Zhang Baozai who operated out of bases in Taipa and other nearby islands in the first decade of the 19th century. In the early 20th century a female pirate known as Lai Choi San was dubbed the “Queen of Macao pirates” in Western accounts. While Macao is certainly important for its multiculturalism and as a bridge between East and West, nonetheless piracy reveals another important but darker side of the city’s history.

Chinese export painting had a strong appeal to foreign powers active in China and neighbouring Asian countries in the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. As a result, today, Chinese export paintings can be found in eighteen public col- lections in the Netherlands. These collections have an historic, an artistic, and a material value and are closely related to the overseas historical China trade, either brought back by VOC employees, private merchants, diplomats or government workers. These integrated economic relations produced, among other things, integrated art objects such as paintings, which, as a result of their representative and social functions, over time formed a special artistic phenomenon, and a shared cultural visual repertoire with its own (EurAsian) character.

The Portuguese chronicler Diogo do Couto, in one of his Décadas da Ásia concluded in 1600, includes a chapter entitled «De como Francisco de Gale foi por ordem de ElRey descubrir a Costa da nova Hespanha de 40. gráos pera sima: e da derrota que levou desde o porto de Acapulco até Japão, e dahi até tornar ao mesmo porto», indicating that he had access to a travel account written by the navigator himself, which had been sent to the viceroy of New Spain. Who was this Francisco Gali, who in 1584–1585 accomplished the singular feat of guiding a ship across the Pacific Ocean in both directions, following routes seldom used by Spanish vessels, on the passage between Acapulco and Manila? And how did his account reach the hands of Diogo do Couto? Could there be any connection with a handwritten itinerary preserved in the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, which coincides with the version of the voyage that Couto transmits? Such is the purpose of this text: to systematize the available information on Francisco Gali, to contextualize his adventurous peregrinations, and to uncover the channels of circulation of the itinerary he produced, which enjoyed extraordinary European success through its publication in Jan Huygen van Linschoten's Reys-gheschrift in 1595. In addition, the manuscript held at the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal is published in the appendix.

Without watercraft, the Canton Trade could not have taken place. It is therefore not surprising that so many of the scenes depicted in paintings of that trade are set on the water, and that in these scenes, boats, junks, and East India ships figure so frequently and so abundantly.

The first phase of Anglo-Japanese relations, 1587-1673 was, unlike the second 19th century hase, characterized by English desires to reach Japan and East Asia. The English developed the technology and invested the time, money, and lives needed to traverse the globe and supplicate themselves before Japanese rulers. Japan was seen as a potential key ally against Spain and Japanese trade as a source to strengthen the English economy, also with an eye on defending the realm against Spanish aggression.

The union of the crowns of Spain and Portugal in 1580 affected the relations between Macao and Manila and gave rise to new possibilities of cooperation and mutual trade. This paper will analyse and give new evidence to the political and economic role of the Macao-Manila route throughout the period of the Iberian Union (1580-1640), according to the developments of the Portuguese trade network via Luzon and the fight against the Dutch and English East India Companies.

At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Qing state confronted its most serious maritime threat since the conquest of Taiwan in 1683. From the 1790s to 1802, huge Chinese pirate fleets allied with the newly unified Vietnamese state (Tayson regime, 1778-1802) and ravaged the coastal frontier of South China. Worse yet, Britain, hoping to grab a much-needed foothold in East Asia, launched two naval expeditions to occupy Macao, a long-time Portuguese settlement under Chinese ownership, in 1802 and 1808. This paper takes the Sino-Vietnamese pirates and British intruders as a prism to view the complexity of the Qing's oceanic governance. Furthermore, it examines how this dramatic combination of transnational and global crises affected the Qing's notions of maritime sovereignty and suzerainty before the full onslaught of Western aggression in the first Opium War. As the first step, this paper studies the contested constructions of oceanic space in late imperial China and how those constructions shaped government policies and precipitated violence at sea. It also throws new light on the contingent, piecemeal and experimental nature of British imperialism in China.