Um porto entre dois imperios: Estudos sobre Macau e as relacues luso-chinesas.

AuthorPTAK, RODERICH
PositionReview

Um porto entre dois imperios: Estudos sobre Macau e as relacues luso-chinesas. By JORGE MANUEL DOS SANTOS ALVES: Coleccao Memoria do Oriente, vol. 14. Macau: INSTITVTO PORTVGVES DO ORIENTE, 1999. Pp. 229 (paper).

This book opens with a short preface by Luis Filipe Barreto, a well-known Portuguese historian working on the Estado da India. There then follows a brief introduction by the author, Jorge Manuel dos Santos Alves. The main body of the work consists of six essays written between 1993 and 1999, four of which have also appeared elsewhere. They all deal with LusoChinese relations in one way or another and thus have a common theme. The period covered extends from the beginnings of Macau through to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. One special aspect is that, in several places, the Macau scenario is tied to Portugal's presence in Southeast Asia, notably on northern Sumatra. This in turn can be linked to the idea of a "Southeast Asian Mediterranean," with the coasts of China at its northern rim--a concept outlined by Denys Lombard and others, and later followed by several Portuguese scholars, including Jorge Alves, with some degree of enthusiasm.

Alves' first piece, originally published in 1996, is a skillful analysis of Luso-Chinese diplomacy from the sixteenth to eighteenth century. Among other things, it presents a "typology" of Portuguese embassies sent to China. State-to-state relations between Lisbon and Beijing were significantly different from "local" relations between Macau and Guangzhou, as Alves correctly shows. Since I have discussed these matters in Mare Liberum 13 (1997), only one or two additional comments shall be given here. At one point, Alves addresses the obvious rivalry between Fujian and Guangdong and its possible implications for SinoPortuguese trade and diplomacy. Recently, this theme has been taken up in several studies, but a thorough investigation has never been made. Such an investigation is urgently needed as a basis for future research. The same applies to the various proposals for subduing China by military force. Again, a kind of "typology" might be useful: why and how were these proposals made, to what extent can they be considered serious, how are they to be distinguished from the projects by Alonso Sanchez and other Spanish "hardliners"? Finally, in the first part of his paper, Alves notes that some Asian powers were in touch with China prior to the arrival of the Portuguese. In the eyes of...

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