Portuguese Macau (1557): Europe's First Foothold in China

The Portuguese settlement of Macau, established around 1557 on a small peninsula in the Pearl River Delta, was the first lasting European foothold in China. Ming officials allowed Portuguese merchants to live and trade there in return for duties and rent, while China kept sovereignty. Macau grew into a wealthy port linking China, Japan, India and Europe, and the main gateway for Catholic missionaries into East Asia.

Background: a difficult start

Portuguese ships first reached China in 1513, when Jorge Álvares landed on an island at the mouth of the Pearl River. The Portuguese had already captured Malacca in 1511 and Goa in 1510, and they hoped for an official trading relationship with the Ming empire.

That hope soon collapsed. An embassy led by the apothecary Tomé Pires reached China in 1517 but failed, partly because of the misbehaviour of Portuguese captains on the coast and the protests of the deposed sultan of Malacca, a Ming tributary. Fighting broke out in 1521 and 1522, and the Portuguese were expelled from Guangdong.

Ming law, under the haijin sea ban, forbade private overseas trade, but demand for foreign goods and silver remained strong. Through the 1530s and 1540s Portuguese traders worked illegally along the coasts of Fujian and Zhejiang alongside Chinese smugglers, until crackdowns pushed them south again.

Winning permission to stay

In the early 1550s the Portuguese traded from temporary camps on islands in the Pearl River Delta, such as Shangchuan, where Francis Xavier died in 1552, and Lampacau. Around 1554 the Portuguese captain Leonel de Sousa reached an agreement with Wang Bo, a senior coastal defence official in Guangdong, allowing the Portuguese to trade at Guangdong ports if they paid customs duties like other foreigners.

Within a few years, around 1557, the Portuguese were allowed to build permanent houses on the Macau peninsula. Later Portuguese tradition claimed the right was a reward for helping Chinese forces against pirates, but historians generally see it as the result of local negotiation, the needs of provincial revenue and payments to officials.

From the 1570s the settlement paid an annual ground rent of 500 taels of silver to Chinese authorities. In 1573 the Ming built a wall with a gate across the narrow isthmus linking Macau to the mainland, allowing officials to control movement and food supplies. Chinese magistrates continued to exercise authority over the Chinese residents, and the Portuguese governed themselves under Chinese oversight.

A hub of trade

Macau’s fortune came from its position between China and Japan. Japanese and Chinese governments did not trade directly in this period, and the Portuguese stepped into the gap. Each year a large Portuguese merchant ship, known as the Great Ship or nao do trato, sailed from Goa to Macau and then to Japan, carrying Chinese silk and gold and returning with Japanese silver. After 1571 it called at Nagasaki.

Macau also linked China to India, Southeast Asia and Europe, and from the 1580s to the Spanish city of Manila, where silver arrived from the Americas aboard the Manila galleons. Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, African, Indian and Malay residents gave Macau a mixed population, and a distinctive Macanese community and cuisine emerged.

In 1583 the settlers formed a municipal council, the Senado da Câmara, which ran the city’s affairs. In 1586 the Portuguese viceroy in Goa granted Macau the status of a city, later confirmed by the crown.

A gateway for missionaries

Macau became the headquarters of Catholic missions in East Asia. The Diocese of Macau was created in 1576. Jesuits used the city as their base for Japan and as the entry point to China, and in 1594 they founded the College of St Paul, which trained missionaries and taught Chinese and Japanese.

The Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci arrived in Macau in 1582 before entering mainland China. The great Church of St Paul, built from about 1602 to 1640, burned in 1835, but its carved stone façade survives and has become the best-known symbol of Macau.

Life in early Macau

Early Macau was a small, crowded settlement whose survival depended on China. Food, building materials and labour came from the mainland, and Ming officials could close the barrier gate or halt supplies whenever disputes arose, a powerful means of keeping the Portuguese in line. The Portuguese were also forbidden from building major fortifications without permission, although they later constructed forts such as the Monte Fortress, completed in the 1620s.

In the early years the most powerful figure was the captain-major of the annual voyage to Japan, who held authority while his ship was in port. Over time civic institutions, the bishop, the religious orders and wealthy merchant families came to dominate local affairs.

The city’s mixed population produced a distinctive Macanese culture. Many Portuguese men married Asian women, and their descendants developed a creole language, Patuá, and a cuisine combining Portuguese, Chinese, Indian and Malay ingredients and techniques.

Key people

• Jorge Álvares: the first Portuguese known to have reached China by sea, in 1513.
• Tomé Pires: leader of the failed Portuguese embassy of 1517-1521.
• Leonel de Sousa: captain who negotiated the agreement of about 1554 with Guangdong officials.
• Wang Bo: Ming coastal defence official who agreed to the trading arrangement.
• Matteo Ricci: Jesuit who passed through Macau on his way into China.

Later history

Macau’s golden age ended in the 1630s and 1640s. Japan expelled the Portuguese in 1639, cutting off the silver trade, and the Dutch captured Malacca in 1641. Macau had survived a Dutch attack in 1622 but lost much of its commerce, though it remained an important port. Its merchants turned to other routes, including trade with Manila, Southeast Asia and the sandalwood of Timor. Under the Qing dynasty, Macau later became the place where Western merchants trading at Guangzhou spent the off-season, which gave it a new role in the 18th-century China trade.

In the 19th century, after the British acquired Hong Kong, Portugal stopped paying ground rent and asserted full colonial control from 1849. The Sino-Portuguese Treaty of Peking in 1887 recognised Portuguese rule. The Sino-Portuguese Joint Declaration of 1987 set the terms for the end of Portuguese administration, and Macau was returned to Chinese sovereignty on 20 December 1999 as a Special Administrative Region. Its Historic Centre was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2005. The listing includes the A-Ma Temple, the Senado Square, the façade of St Paul’s and other buildings that reflect more than four centuries of Chinese and Portuguese coexistence.

Timeline

• 1513: Jorge Álvares reaches the Pearl River Delta.
• 1517-1521: Tomé Pires’s embassy to China fails.
• c. 1554: Leonel de Sousa reaches a trading agreement with Wang Bo.
• c. 1557: Portuguese settle permanently at Macau.
• 1573: The Ming build a barrier wall and gate across the isthmus.
• 1576: The Diocese of Macau is established.
• 1582: Matteo Ricci arrives in Macau.
• 1622: A Dutch attack on Macau is repulsed.
• 1639: Japan expels the Portuguese, ending the silver trade.
• 20 December 1999: Macau is transferred to Chinese sovereignty.

Why it matters

Macau was the first enduring European settlement in China and, for more than four centuries, a meeting point between China and the West. Through it flowed silk, silver, ideas and missionaries, and its unusual status, a European-run city under Chinese sovereignty, made it a unique experiment in coexistence.