Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures, maps and tables
- Glossary
- Notes on spelling and currency, weights and measures
- Preface
- 1 Maritime trade in Asia
- 2 Imperial foundations: the Estado da India and Macao
- 3 Population, personalities, and communal power
- 4 Country traders and Crown monopoly
- 5 Merchants and markets
- 6 Country traders and the search for markets
- 7 Imperial relations: Macao and the Estado da India
- 8 Imperial survival: Sino-Portuguese relations from Ming to Ch'ing
- 9 Macao, Companies and country traders: the other Europeans in China
- 10 Conclusion
- List of abbreviations and notes
- Primary Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Population, personalities, and communal power
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures, maps and tables
- Glossary
- Notes on spelling and currency, weights and measures
- Preface
- 1 Maritime trade in Asia
- 2 Imperial foundations: the Estado da India and Macao
- 3 Population, personalities, and communal power
- 4 Country traders and Crown monopoly
- 5 Merchants and markets
- 6 Country traders and the search for markets
- 7 Imperial relations: Macao and the Estado da India
- 8 Imperial survival: Sino-Portuguese relations from Ming to Ch'ing
- 9 Macao, Companies and country traders: the other Europeans in China
- 10 Conclusion
- List of abbreviations and notes
- Primary Sources
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Portuguese society in China was a highly diverse, multi-racial, communal aggregation. Through inter-racial marriage, concubinage, conversion to Catholicism and the attraction of commercial and political advantage, non-European elements joined this grouping of Portuguese Crown administrators, country traders and missionaries. Although Macao's European population were acculturated to many of the local conditions in China, the fundamental characteristics of the economic, political and social organisation in which these country traders participated remained Portuguese.
No attempt has been made to view as a whole the activities of a Luso-Chinese community or to stress the individual racial or religious inter-mixtures that were present at Macao. The Portuguese community at Siam, for example, was largely mestiço, lived in the Portuguese quarter, and supported the largely Catholic missionaries that were part of the Portuguese Padroado; this community in the eyes of the Siamese and European observers was Portuguese. The conditions were similar in other Portuguese communities throughout the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
If we compare the casado's position within Portuguese colonial society at Goa and at Macao, we find a few major similarities and several sharp differences. The most important similarity was that of size; the total number of individuals was very small. Although there were methods by which many segments of colonial society, including indigenous merchants, religious and Crown administrators, were involved, the casados provided the bulk of the resources and the impetus for Portuguese participation in inter-Asian maritime trade.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Survival of EmpirePortuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea 1630–1754, pp. 30 - 45Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986