Your search

Journalist Paula Moura Pinheiro presents the program that brings together the best moments from the episodes broadcast throughout the year 2008.

Biographical documentary about Aníbal Cavaco Silva, Portuguese economist, university professor and politician, highlighting the period in which he led the PSD and the ten years he was prime minister from 1985 to 1995.

Program presented by José Hermano Saraiva dedicated to the Museum of the Orient and the exhibitions "Masks of Asia", "Portuguese Presence in Asia" and "Gods of Asia".

Bullfighting magazine, presented by José Cáceres, highlighting the draw of bulls for a bullfight, the on-foot bullfight held in Vila Franca de Xira, the bullfight held on October 6th in Alcácer do Sal, and the Sommer D'Andrade cattle ranch.

Journalist Paula Moura Pinheiro interviews historians Isabel Pina and Jorge Santos Alves about Tomás Pereira, the Portuguese Jesuit priest who in the 17th century exercised great influence with the Chinese Emperor Kang Xi.

Program presented by José Hermano Saraiva dedicated to Beja, a city in Baixo Alentejo, highlighting its history, culture, and architectural and archaeological heritage.

Interview with João Calvão, director and coordinator of the Museu do Oriente.

Continuation of the Beijing Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, at the National Stadium or Bird's Nest. Comments by Nuno Delgado, Armando Marques (former medalists), António Caeiro (journalist), Laurentino Dias (Secretary of State for Sport), Carlos Lopes and Aurora Cunha (former athletes).

Program presented by José Hermano Saraiva dedicated to the life and work of the poet Luís de Camões.

Program presented by José Hermano Saraiva dedicated to the names of some illustrious Portuguese who, for having spent a significant part of their lives outside their country, contributed with their work and their deeds to the recognition of Portugal abroad. From Saint Anthony to Father António Vieira, from Damião de Góis to Fernão Mendes Pinto, from Luís de Camões to Fernando Pessoa, among others, an opportunity to recall the legacy of these emigrants of the past, in fields such as Science or Literature.

Program presented by José Hermano Saraiva dedicated to the historical, architectural, and cultural heritage of the municipality of Borba, in Alto Alentejo, its natural, agricultural, and tourism resources.

Journalist Paula Moura Pinheiro interviews Wang Suoying, professor and Chinese reader at the University of Aveiro, and Moisés Silva Fernandes, researcher at the University of Lisbon and director of the Confucius Institute of Lisbon, about China and its culture, economic growth, and the Olympic Games in Beijing in August 2008.

Detlef Haberland's article examines the historical relevance of François Caron's account, published in the Dutch Republic under the title *Beschrijvinghe van het machtigh Coninckrijck Iapan* (1645; translation/description associated with a broader work attributed to the chronicler), for understanding the European reception of Japan in the seventeenth century. The central contribution lies in situating Caron's text as an "intermediary" testimony between images still marked by the fabulous imaginary of earlier voyages and the subsequent turn toward more systematic and scientific approaches to Japan. Methodologically, the author reads the work as a product of multiple layers of observation—Caron's own experiences during voyages and commercial/diplomatic contacts with foreign agents and institutions—while simultaneously articulating the European "angle" of interpretation (Europe of the Thirty Years' War, confessional conflicts, and the persistence of traditional hierarchies) with the chronicler's descriptive strategies. As findings, Haberland argues that, despite its formal sobriety and lack of stylistic pretensions, Caron's description offers valuable material for capturing the political and cultural dynamics of Tokugawa-period Japan, functioning as a decisive step in the consolidation of "complete otherness" within the European xenological repertoire, and preceding the milestone represented by Engelbert Kaempfer.

The article argues that the historiography of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries on the Moluccas has been dominated by European sources (Portuguese, Spanish, and Dutch), while contemporary local accounts remain rare and underexplored. In this context, G. L. Koster focuses on the *Hikayat Tanah Hitu* ("History of the Land of Hitu"), arguing that this text — associated with a confederation of Muslim villages (hitu) in the northern region of Ambon — constitutes an exceptional source for reconstructing indigenous perspectives on political and identity processes during a period of intense transformations. Methodologically, the author employs a historiographical and philological reading based on the recent Dutch critical edition prepared by Hans Stravers, Chris van Fraassen, and Jan van der Putten, contextualizing the *hikayat* within the available European documentary ecosystem and assessing its potential as a "counternarrative" beyond the official chronicles. As its main findings, the article contends that the *Hikayat Tanah Hitu* offers valuable information on the formation of local alliances, dynamics of Islamization and conversion, and regional historical memory, thereby allowing for the supplementation (and at times correction) of interpretations derived solely from colonial archives. The conclusion is that the systematic incorporation of this type of local source is indispensable for a more plurivocal history of the Moluccas.

The article analyzes the first diplomatic contact between the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the sultanate of Pontianak in 1778, taking as a case study the role of Nicolaas Kloek, the "bookkeeper" entrusted with the visit. The central proposal is to demonstrate, through the Pontianak episode, how the VOC's political advance in Asia depended on everyday relations, mediated by local intermediaries and shaped by reciprocal expectations, even when the ties between Batavia and peripheral territories were "fragile." The methodology combines a critical reading of VOC archival sources with a reconstruction of the encounter and the political context of the recently founded sultanate, emphasizing the microhistorical dimension of Kloek's work: his incompetence as a representative and his meticulousness as a chronicler make possible a close examination of the daily functioning of local politics. It is concluded that the sultanate's demand for Dutch recognition is not explained by simple commercial interests, but by strategies of legitimation and consolidation of power in an unstable regional scenario; simultaneously, the reliance on limited bureaucratic agents meant that the "lines" between Batavia and Pontianak, although decisive at certain moments, remained unstable and frequently interrupted.

Leonard Blussé's article reassesses the little-studied figure of Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest (1739–1801), a Dutch merchant and observer within the context of the dynamic Luso-Sino-European trade of the eighteenth century, arguing that his trajectory—marked by ambition, reversals, and an intense accumulation of artifacts and accounts—allows for an understanding of broader processes in the history of commerce in Canton and the transnational circulation of goods, knowledge, and prestige. Blussé employs a method of documentary "collage," combining archival sources from the Netherlands (including personal manuscripts and materials from Van Braam's brother), texts produced by the subject himself, and information recovered from local collections in the United States by descendants and historians linked to his family. The analysis also incorporates the subsequent reception of the "mission account" to the court of the Qianlong Emperor (1794–1795), frequently reissued in European versions through translations and adaptations. As findings, the author contends that Van Braam should be read both as an economic actor and as a private chronicler: his narratives and collections, despite the moralizing interpretations of contemporaries, reveal the internal logics of the VOC's commercial policy and the material conditions of cultural mediation between Europe and China.

The article analyzes the "Descrição da China" attributed to the Franciscan friar Jacinto de Deus, offering a historical-cultural reading of how the missionary constructs a "portrait" of China in the context of Catholic expansion in the Far East. The author argues that the text should not be interpreted merely as factual testimony, but as a device of mediation: it articulates direct observation, rhetorical strategies of legitimation, and European theological-cultural presuppositions, while simultaneously responding to Luso-Castilian political tensions and the specific conditions of the Franciscan presence in Macau. Methodologically, the study combines documentary criticism and discourse analysis, situating the "Descrição" within a network of circulation of accounts, missionary objectives, and institutional disputes among orders and empires. Through the chronological framing of the Franciscan missions and administrative reforms (custodies and chapters), the author demonstrates how writing about China also operates as an instrument of the mission's internal organization. Among the main results, the identification of recurrent themes stands out (government, customs, religion, and social practices), treated according to Western categories but reconfigured by a local experience marked by Jesuit and colonial mediations. The conclusion is that Jacinto de Deus's text is simultaneously a source for Luso-European intellectual history and a revealing document of the intercultural negotiations that traversed Macau in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Manel Ollé analyzes the image of China constructed by the Spanish Dominican Domingo Fernández de Navarrete (c. 1610–1680) in his *Tratados historicos, politicos, ethicos, y religiosos de la monarchia de China* (1676). The article argues that the *Tratados* should not be read as mere compilations or proto-ethnographic manuals devoid of intention, but rather as an argumentative device embedded within the "Rites Controversy," which pitted Jesuit missionary policies against those of Dominicans, Franciscans, and certain dissidents. The author employs a contextual and hermeneutic reading of the text—articulating its missionary, political, and intellectual framework with the literate culture of Baroque Spain—to demonstrate how the informative ambition (based on the author’s observations in China and extensive translation and selection of materials) is converted into material for serious debate. Among the central findings, the productive tension stands out between an idealized China, associated with "good governance" and moral philosophers, and the desolate picture of the Spanish present, marked by the imperial failure of Philip IV’s reign. Thus, Ollé concludes that the work simultaneously functions as a theological defense and as a mirror of Iberian political practices and anxieties, while also exerting a lasting influence on the European reception of thought about China.

This article analyzes how the Philippines were integrated into the “memory of the Castilian feat in Asia” in the early seventeenth century, focusing on two reference authors: Bartolomé Leonardo de Argensola and Antonio de Morga. Drawing from Donald F. Lach’s observation on the historical marginality of the Philippines in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European literature, the study proposes that the consolidation of the archipelago as an “insular platform for expansion” generated new possibilities for the production of information, but did not ensure full narrative centrality in printed historiography. Methodologically, the research conducts a comparative reading of the chronicle discourses and the devices of geographical and toponymic representation present in the works analyzed, confronting them with the political-military context and the networks of knowledge circulation between the Asian terrain and editorial centers. It concludes that, until the first decade of the seventeenth century, the construction of Castilian historicity tended to be mediated by institutional and religious objectives, which contributed to asymmetries in the framing of the islands and to deficiencies in the apprehension of space. The cases of Argensola and Morga thus evidence how the visibility of the Philippines emerged accompanied by interpretive limitations, reflected in toponymic errors and in an uneven integration of the archipelago into the imaginary of Spanish expansion in Asia.

The article analyzes how Macao is represented in Samuel Purchas's compilation, *Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes* (1625), arguing that this "Macao" results less from direct observation than from an editorial process of translation, selection, and framing of Portuguese and European materials. Proceeding from the centrality of travel collections to the circulation of Atlantic-Asian knowledge in the early seventeenth century, the study interprets Purchas's role within the informational ecosystem that fed English commercial and strategic interests, notably through the East India Company. Methodologically, the author confronts relevant passages of the text with the body of sources read and reused by Purchas (including manuscripts attributed to the legacy of Richard Hakluyt and earlier narratives by authors connected to the Portuguese empire), as well as with the composite logic of the "relations of the world" that characterize *Hakluytus Posthumus*. The main findings show that Macao is constructed through recurrent topoi (routes, commercial utility, religious circulation, and validation of accounts), in which the authority of print and Purchas's theological-historiographical framework reconfigure the city's place as a node between "discovery," cultural confrontation, and potential for expansion.