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The article analyzes the continuities and ruptures in the Sino-Portuguese relationship surrounding the "Macao question" during the political transition from 1909 to 1911, within the simultaneous context of the advent of republican regimes in both Portugal and China. The central hypothesis holds that, despite converging in their nationalist impulse and their pursuit of state modernization, the new leaderships in Lisbon and Beijing reconfigured negotiation practices in an uneven manner, revealing both diplomatic persistences and institutional confrontations when sovereignty, jurisdiction, and security in the Macao space were at stake. Methodologically, the study articulates a comparative framing of the "two revolutions" with a historical reading of diplomacy, foregrounding the contrast between internal agendas (the crisis of the monarchical system and republican reorganization in Portugal; the consolidation of the regime following the Wuchang Revolution in China) and the direct effects on instructions and discourse concerning Macao. The findings indicate that the emergence of the new regimes did not automatically nullify previous lines of dialogue: certain management mechanisms and political language endured. However, the period of 1909–1911 evinces relevant ruptures, above all owing to the instability of legitimacy, the redefinition of external priorities, and the difficulty of reconciling different understandings of Macao's status, rendering negotiation increasingly conditioned by internal pressures and by shifts in the international order.

The article examines the political-administrative debate in Macau between 1911 and 1912, when the First Portuguese Republic sought to reform the colonial governance system and reduce the political influence of the Leal Senado. It argues that the controversy surrounding the abolition and/or reconfiguration of this institution served as an initial test of the new republican regime's capacity to reorganize the local power dynamics, favoring groups with closer ties to metropolitan mechanisms against entrenched interests within the Portuguese-descendant socio-economic milieu. Based on a critical analysis of official correspondence, minutes, and interventions produced in colonial and local decision-making bodies, as well as documents published in the Boletim Oficial, the study reconstructs the political sequence involving Governor Álvaro de Melo Machado, the opinions of the Colonial Council, and the drafting of the first Draft Guidelines for Administrative Reorganization (May 1912). The main findings underscore the persistence of resistance articulated by local elites, the relevance of internal dynamics beyond the "metropolitan" level, and the ambivalence of the reformist project, which was interrupted without full implementation amid regional instability and the need for political "rapprochement" with Chinese authorities and population.

The article analyzes the contribution of “Nanban Tçuzu” (通辭) to Luso-Japanese trade in the late sixteenth century, focusing on the role of the Jesuit missionary João Rodrigues as a commercial agent for shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. It argues that religious mediation functioned, simultaneously, as a diplomatic-economic infrastructure: the permanence and status of missionaries in Japan were tolerated and “regularized” not only for ideological reasons, but above all for the commercial utility linked to the resumption and continuity of Portuguese navigation to Macau. Methodologically, the authors articulate historiographical evidence centered on episodes from 1593–1598—including direct encounters between Rodrigues and Ieyasu, inquiries about the return of the “nao” to Macau, and the management of political fears following damage to Jesuit properties in Nagasaki—with analysis of the dynamics among Japanese authorities, local daimyos, port administration, and mercantile expeditions. Among the findings, it is noteworthy that Rodrigues acted as translator and advisor in contacts with foreign delegations, facilitating the flow of information and access to decision-making networks; moreover, he was tasked with garnering the “favour” of lords and officials, linking the Christian cause to the needs for armaments, silk, and port taxation. It is concluded that “通辭” must be understood as an instrument of commercial governance and intercultural negotiation, in which Rodrigues played a decisive role.

The article analyzes the *Correspondência Luso-Brasileira* as a narrative of intercultural transit between Portugal and Brazil, focusing on the histories of the Pinto da França and Garcez families, and, in particular, the trajectory of Maria Bárbara Garcez Pinto de Madureira (1779–1851). Based on an epistolary corpus comprising approximately 127 letters (1807–1823), the author argues that Maria Bárbara’s writing functions simultaneously as an instrument of reading, mediation, and political intervention, enabling us to trace the progressive negotiation of a hybrid and assertive identity: from spectator-reader to commentator-actor-protagonist-author. Methodologically, the text proposes a contextual and situated reading of the letters, avoiding a positivist “objectivity,” and mobilizes the concept of intercultural translation formulated by Boaventura de Sousa Santos. In this perspective, intercultural comparison demands procedures for seeking proportion and correspondence between cultural, epistemological, and everyday practical differences. As its main conclusions, the article reveals that the epistolary exercise constitutes a continuous work of correspondence between rationalities and worlds, through which it becomes possible to reconfigure belongings, interpret events (including Brazilian independence), and rewrite historical meaning from displaced positions.

The article argues that the cosmopolitanization of Southeast Asian coastal cities between the first and sixteenth centuries must be understood as a direct product of the maritime trade regimes articulated by India and China. By tracing seasonal routes and monsoon conditions—with port stays during transitional periods—the text maintains that the continued presence of crews and passengers, interacting with local populations, generated specific forms of urban cohabitation, sometimes marked by integration and at other times by social and spatial barriers. Methodologically, the contribution operates at a historiographical level: it reconstructs trajectories and connections through an interpretative synthesis of contact chronologies, patterns of maritime mobility, and settlement dynamics. The discussion situates Melaka as a key point of convergence for these networks and as a space where urban emergence intensifies: the scale and strategic role of the strait would facilitate both supply and trade as well as the formation of settlements by immigrants—especially South Asian groups—contributing to the consolidation of local powers. It concludes that the "cosmopolitan city" results not merely from abstract commercial circulation, but from a coastal urban ecology shaped by markets, environmental vulnerabilities (such as fires), and demographic reorganizations that reconfigure identities and sociabilities in port contexts.

The review article presents and evaluates Zhidong Hao's book *Macau: History and Society* (2011), arguing that Macau's history should be read simultaneously as a study of Sino-Western relations over the past four centuries and as a pathway to interpreting the city's unique cultural and identity-related characteristics. The reviewer highlights that Hao frames Macau within the scope of "Greater China" and employs the past as an interpretive method for understanding political, economic, and cultural processes, including sovereignty disputes and dynamics of cooperation and conflict between communities and European powers. The work is structured into an introduction, eight thematic chapters, a chronology, and a bibliography. The initial sections address Macau's formation within the context of Portuguese maritime expansion and the defensive strategies of imperial Chinese power, questioning traditional readings based on "bribery" and proposing the existence of hidden political-military and economic considerations (the "Macao formula"). Subsequently, the evolution of the political system, the model of dual jurisdiction, and the contested notion of sovereignty are analyzed; then the economy and social survival are examined, although the periodization presents limitations due to activities that transcend historical periods. The central chapters demonstrate with particular quality the cultural, religious, and artistic interactions, though a weak effective circulation of skills between Chinese and Westerners is observed. Finally, the book discusses contemporary social problems and formulates challenges for the future, advocating for Macau as a platform for multicultural exchange, symbolically represented by the façade of St. Paul's Church.

This study examines how Macanese ethnolinguistic identity is constructed and negotiated through code-switching and code-mixing practices in Macao. Building on interactional sociolinguistics, the article argues that mixed-language choices are not merely stylistic or referential but perform social actions that index alignment, solidarity, and group belonging in situated discourse. Methodologically, the author adopts Gumperz’s (1982) framework of “we/they-codes” and Myers-Scotton’s (1993) view of code-switching as an interactionally unmarked option, analyzing patterns of switching and mixing among Cantonese, English, Mandarin, and Portuguese within Macanese community speech events. The analysis focuses on three dimensions: (1) social motivations for switching/mixing, (2) discourse functions served by particular mixed codes, and (3) recurrent interactional patterns. The study finds that communicative selection of languages and varieties is closely tied to how speakers position themselves with respect to ethnic boundaries and shared identity claims. Rather than functioning as random alternation, code-switching and code-mixing operate as systematic resources for managing participation, signaling in-group affiliation, and sustaining a distinct Macanese identity amid Macao’s multilingual and postcolonial sociolinguistic landscape.

This article analyzes Portuguese participation in the slave trade in the Philippines between 1580 and 1600, situating it within the Atlantic-Asian networks created after the union of the Iberian crowns. The authors argue that the circulation of people and goods under Luso-Castilian domains and intermediations cannot be understood merely as a product of local practices, but rather as the result of political, diplomatic, and commercial articulations that connected Macau, Malacca, and Manila. Methodologically, the text mobilizes historiographical analysis and critical reading of contemporary sources referred to in the narrative (including episcopal correspondence and official missions), reconstructing the mechanisms by which Portuguese agents sought to secure access and trading bases in China, as well as the impacts of these operations on the Philippine supply chain. In particular, the concession of political-economic space after 1581, the actions of colonial authorities in the Philippines, and the missions sent to Malacca and Macau evince how the pursuit of commodification and maritime security translated, on the social and economic plane, into strategies for the acquisition and transfer of captives. The article concludes that, in the transition between the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the slave trade appears integrated into broader circuits of maritime intermediation and negotiation among authorities, in which the Portuguese acted as agents and beneficiaries.

The article analyzes political violence in the First Portuguese Republic (1910–1926) as a structuring force of the revolutionary process and state consolidation, challenging interpretations that reduce the rupture of 5 October to an exclusively founding event. It argues that the collision between a republican agenda marked by secularism and the persistence of monarchical-clerical and Catholic matrices, as well as the doctrinal fractures within the Republican Party, broke the initial consensus and fueled persistent instability. Methodologically, the study proposes to understand "the planes of violence" as a mechanism of political regulation, a social device, and a symbolic-cultural production, observing how struggles for control of the state favored the exclusion of adverse sectors and the progressive gestation of an authoritarianist rhetoric centered on the idea of "order." The structural crisis of the state, exacerbated by conjunctures such as the Great War, functions as a condition of possibility for the intensification of revolts, conspiracies, and cycles of counter-revolution. It concludes that violence was not an epiphenomenon but a determining element in the institutional reconfiguration of the regime and in the redefinition of the Republic's political horizon, anticipating, in Portugal, tendencies of "order" that were also observed in contemporary revolutionary experiences.

The article proposes a sociodemographic portrait of the "Portuguese of Hong Kong" between 1879 and 1949, framing the Macanese diaspora within the context of the political and economic transformations of the nineteenth century in East Asia. The central thesis argues that the patterns, directions, and persistence of migration between Macau and the then British colony depended on established socio-familial networks, which conditioned the social composition of the Portuguese/Macanese community in Hong Kong. Methodologically, the study mobilizes primary sources of a consular nature, in particular the "Livros de Matrícula dos Cidadãos Portugueses" provided for by Portuguese consular regulations (1903 and later 1920). From these records, the author collects 4,168 names, exploring the available variables: sex, age, marital status, number of children, occupations, places and dates of birth and death, with treatment of documentary gaps and nominal duplication in cases of successive registrations. The results indicate a significant Portuguese/Macanese presence in the 1881 census, with 61.5% among European and American Westerners, and confirm a balanced distribution between men (2,086) and women (2,082) in the consular records. It is concluded that, although not corresponding to a population census, the consular corpus allows the reconstruction of relevant demographic and social trends for understanding integration and the maintenance of cultural ties with the territory of origin.

This article analyzes the presence of the French painter Auguste Borget in the South China region—first in Hong Kong and subsequently in Canton and the Portuguese colony of Macao—between August 1838 and July 1839, proposing that his visual and written production constitutes a singular mode of "seeing" and interpreting a culturally distant civilization. The author articulates the study of two complementary materialities: the artist's drawings and his texts, exploring how empirical observation is converted into aesthetic construction and, simultaneously, into explanatory discourse. Methodologically, the analysis draws on the comparative reading of motifs and visual conventions, situating Borget's iconographic choices within broader artistic networks, including influences from the Italian veduta and Western repertoires of the Canton factories, as well as the circulation of pre-existing images. Among the principal findings, the emergence of a landscape "manifesto" in "View of Hong Kong" stands out, which also functions as a discreet self-portrait of the draughtsman, along with the re-elaboration of the Canton factories according to a personal framing that combines familiar elements (buildings, flags, vessels) with a distinctive geometry of its own. The article concludes that Borget transforms the travel testimony into cultural mediation, offering a simultaneously aesthetic and interpretive vision of the coastline and the maritime structures of the territory.

This article examines the role of Portuguese missionaries in shaping linguistic knowledge of Japanese, focusing on João Rodrigues and the "linguistic outline" presented in *Arte da Lingoa de Iapam* (1608). The central thesis holds that Rodrigues' grammatical production must be understood as an instrument of intellectual mediation between Western linguistic theories and the systematic description of Japanese, situated within a historical context marked by intense Luso-Japanese cultural exchange in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Methodologically, the study undertakes a historiographical reading of the work's compilation process, correlating Rodrigues' formative trajectory (Jesuit education in Latin and the humanities, contact with internal translation networks within the Society, and everyday language learning) with the analytical and classificatory choices visible in the *Arte*. The analysis identifies how Rodrigues applies, adapts, and redefines categories derived from European traditions—particularly Latin grammars and European models—to address aspects where the "Latin" framework proved insufficient, simultaneously pursuing the "perfect expression" in Japanese and the explanation of its origin and development. The study concludes that Jesuit linguistics, by describing Japanese in a formal and transmissible manner, contributed to the transnational circulation of knowledge and to the establishment of a European "Japanological" horizon, anticipating debates on method, description, and linguistic comparison.

David Brookshaw's article analyzes Julian Lees's novel **The Fan Tan Players**, arguing that **Macao** constitutes the narrative's nuclear space, functioning simultaneously as the point of departure and return for its protagonists between 1928 and 1945. In light of comparison with Lusophone Macanese fiction—particularly authors such as **Rodrigo Leal de Carvalho** and **Henrique de Senna Fernandes**—the study contends that Lees mobilizes familiar configurations (geographical and chronological mobility; the presence of "White" refugees in post-Bolshevik-revolution China) yet reconfigures the types and the tone: in contrast to figures marked by melancholy and fragility, the novel privileges a **romantic regime of persistent love**, in a register more attuned to hope and attachment. Methodologically, the article proceeds through **interpretive and contextual reading**, highlighting the way in which Macao's **cultural topography**—sensations, social habits, and linguistic diversity—is worked through a choral cast of expatriates, friendships, and communal practices. Brookshaw concludes that the title alludes to the local imaginary of gambling (fan tan) above all as a **metaphor of contingency** (luck, coincidence, and probability), while the representation of Macao as a "home" relatively less hierarchical than Hong Kong simultaneously evinces an adherence to colonial myths and an implicit critique of the dynamics of prejudice.

The article "Canções de Beber e Outras Visitas" (Manuel Afonso Costa) proposes a cultural and intertextual reading of a set of lyrical texts that reenact, in the form of songs and confidences, the circulation of classical motifs and their reconfiguration in environments of "cosmopolitan" sensibility. The central argument holds that the figures of wine, wind, bamboos, clouds, and poetic encounter function less as thematic ornaments than as passage devices between worlds: between civility and retreat, desire and vanitas, social life and liminal experience. Methodologically, the author proceeds through comparative approximations and close reading, articulating explicit references to poets and writing regimes (e.g., Wei Mu, Wang Wei, Ruan Ji, Li Bai, Xu-Mo, Han-Shan), to evince how metaphors and textual allusions consolidate a common affective grammar. The conclusions highlight that poetry emerges as a practice of existential orientation ("one can even live in the midst of men"), while simultaneously dramatizing impermanence (aging, death, the flowing of rivers) and legitimizing forms of sociability mediated by song, intimacy, and wine. Thus, the analyzed texts reveal Macao as a possible mirror of cultural crossings, where languages and images regroup into new constellations of meaning.

Manuel Lobato’s article reexamines the figure of Francisco Serrão (c. 1511–1521), often presented in Iberian sources as the “first European” to settle in the Maluku Islands, critically situating him within the “shadow of Magellan” and, above all, within the geopolitical and historiographical context of the Luso-Spanish disputes over access to spices. Drawing on a heterogeneous body of documentary evidence—chronicles and archival records, including testimonies compiled from the 1520s onward in the context of the “Moluccan Question”—the author argues that much of the information about Serrão was shaped by national rivalry, diplomatic interests, and deliberate distortions, necessitating a strict reading and cross-referencing with potentially contemporary data. Methodologically, the text articulates source criticism and a reconstruction of the early process of maritime links between Melaka and Maluku, shifting the focus of traditional historiography from “discoveries” to navigation, trade, and regional political history. Among the findings, the insufficiency of biographical data prior to 1511 and the limited direct evidence about his life in Asia stand out; at the same time, the author contextualizes the Portuguese arrival within a setting previously dominated by commercial networks and Muslim alliances (especially Ternate and Melaka), which would help explain the rapid visibility and impact of Serrão’s actions in the early stages of the Portuguese presence in the archipelago.

This article analyzes the trajectory of the Macao International Music Festival between 1987 and 1999, a period of political and institutional transition in which the event moved from the "dream" of transforming Macao into "a Salzburg of the East" to a reality marked by material limitations and shifts in governance. Drawing on a retrospective reading of contemporary press and publications, the author frames the Festival as a cultural project that sought to elevate Macao's artistic centrality, confronting, from its very origins, the clash between programmatic ambition and the absence of infrastructure, know-how, and technical equipment. Problems such as the lack of a concert hall, the difficulty of operatic staging, and the scarcity of musical resources (including a quality piano, only acquired later) explain the need for improvised and costly solutions. Concurrently, the text emphasizes the impact of political upheavals—especially the change of governing team from 1990 onward—on artistic direction and on the delay of structuring projects, such as the restoration of the Teatro D. Pedro V, the creation of the Macao Cultural Centre, and the professionalization of local orchestras. The article concludes that public controversies over costs and "economy" must be read critically within their temporal context, articulating the budgetary discussion with the challenges of cultural consolidation in a regime in transition.

The article proposes a philological and historiographic reading of references to the “mongoose” (menggui 蒙貴/蒙貴 with variable characters) in Chinese sources from the Ming and Qing periods, focusing on the circulation of descriptions between Siam (Xianluo 暹羅), Guangdong, and Macau. Drawing on information from the *Aomen jilüe* 澳門記略 (1751), the author observes that the characterization of the animal—resemblance to a cat, long legs, hairy tail, three color varieties, and utility in rat hunting—also appears with remarkable proximity in Qu Dajun (*Guangdong xinyu* 廣東新語, c. 1700). The methodology consists of comparing entries and descriptive sequences across relevant compilations and treatises, including the *Guangdong tongzhi*, *Tong ya* (1636/1666), *Nan Yue biji*, and above all, the *Hai yu* 海語 by Huang Zhong (1536), which explicitly links the animal to “Thailand” and records lexical variants such as *mengju*/muɐkœy. The main conclusions indicate that the “Siam–Guangdong–Macau” constellation does not derive from a simple episodic importation, but from a long duration of circulation of animals and zoological knowledge, mediated by compilatory practices and phonetic correspondences with southern traditions. Thus, the article suggests that “exoticisms” in Macau reflect networks of textual and commercial transmission, rather than merely local observation or narrative intent.

The article proposes a comparative reading of two literary and anthropologically oriented works about the enclave: *A Chinesinha* (1974), by Maria Pacheco Borges, and *Aguarelas de Macau 1960–1970* (1998), by Ana Maria Amaro. The central thesis holds that both narrators, albeit in distinct registers, construct “ethnographic landscapes” of Macau and southern China through a memorial and pedagogical gaze, rearticulating racial images, social relations and cultural topographies as if they were field observation. To sustain this argument, the study mobilizes intratextual and contextual analysis, crossing narrative procedures (focalization, descriptions of spaces and social figures) with biographical and historical data on the authors and the conditions of production/edition of the works. In particular, the article examines how Macanese childhood and youth function as an affective archive in *A Chinesinha*, while *Aguarelas de Macau* operates a retrospective reconstitution anchored in everyday practices (such as horticulture and local dialogues) and in experiences of crossing between the Portuguese territory and China under Portuguese administration. It concludes that the ethnographic representations produced in these texts reveal an ethnography “situated” by memory, yet also modulated by colonial imaginaries and by categories of classification of the “other,” offering an interpretive path to understand the persistence and transformations of the images of Macau and the population(s) of southern China.

The article examines the Senna Fernandes family as an interpretive axis for the historical and cultural formation of Macao, articulating genealogy, public life, and diaspora dynamics. The central thesis holds that the prominence of the Senna Fernandes family in the political, economic, and social spheres is not explained solely by individual trajectories, but by the way the family crystallizes broader patterns of Macanese society: the embrace of diverse origins through marriage, the creation of translocal networks, and participation in migratory movements that projected the name of Macao onto other continents. Methodologically, the text combines genealogical reconstruction (based on biographical records and historical references), a contextual reading of the positions and institutions associated with family members, and an interpretation of the connections between geographical origin, family alliances, and integration into port economies. The analysis culminates in the figure of Bernardino de Senna Fernandes (1815–1893), whose diplomatic, mercantile, and philanthropic career accompanies the consolidation of the local elite, simultaneously evidencing the continuity and transformation of Macanese family models through endogamous marriages and connections with Goa, Lisbon, and other regions. The article concludes that the family functions as a "living archive" of the relations between family, culture, and mobility, enabling an understanding of Macanese identity as a historical synthesis in constant recomposition.

The article analyzes the little-known figure of the French painter Auguste Borget through his visual and epistolary diary of his journey in China between the summer of 1838 and the summer of 1839, proposing that this experience explains the singularity of his watercolors and sketches “directly from life.” The author argues that, although contemporary reception tends to reduce Borget to a “painter of exotic places,” his gaze is not guided by commercial exoticism nor by a touristic pursuit of profit; rather, it manifests fidelity to Chinese reality and an intention to remain and understand “from within” the territory visited. Methodologically, the text articulates a biographical reading and a historical framing of the evolution of landscape painting in France (from the classical tradition to Romantic innovations) with an analysis of the artist’s trajectory as a humanist nomad. Based on the letters and the iconographic corpus produced during the journey, it concludes that Borget positions himself simultaneously as a sensitive observer and an emotional participant in the space depicted, transforming the landscape into celebration and contemplation, rather than mere record.